What is the relationship between emotions and how to live? Are emotions an evolutionary relic that interfere with rational behavior, or are they what separate us from machines and make life worth living? To what extent can (and should) one choose one's emotions? For example, should we try to minimize negative emotions and maximize positive emotions? Should we systematically seek to make our emotions rationality-based, or are emotions and rationality often in opposition not just by default but by necessity? I have some tentative answers to these questions but would like to hear what others think.
posted by howtolive.org at
8:00 AM
5 Comments:
I've studied emotions and their relationship with rational thinking. There is a popular psychological therapy called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy which aims to keep emotions in check by rationalizing through them. It is very effective among people with depression, anxiety, OCD, PTSD, fobias, and many other conditions.
I have found that one's previous emotions associated with a traumatic event or memory can be brought up later on through a different, unrelated, event. Healthy people can distinguish the difference in magnitude of each event and apply the appropriate level of emotion to it. Mentally unhealthy people must re-learn how to make that distinction.
For example, it is hard-wired and natural for humans to be afraid of poisonous snakes. Someone healthy will react appropriately to a real poisonous snake (psychologists say that these reactions don't go through the neural cortex where they can be rationalized first). However, someone with a snake fobia can't even get close to a picture of a snake or a stuffed toy snake. Their level of emotion overcomes them in either case.
Anyway, my opinion is that emotions make us human and it is our responsibility to keep healthy mental habits to apply the right amount of emotion to each event that we experience. To me, that means living in the NOW and not allowing disproportionate emotions to take over simply because I thought of something that happened in the past or that could happen in the future. Usually, the anxiety that I feel because of my thoughts of something potentially bad happening is much worse than the consecuences of experiencing the future event itself.
By
95%Unconscious, at 11:16 AM
You ask if emotions are an evolutionary relic or what separate us from machines… Well, that reptile part of our brain is what handles emotions and some of these are automatic responses that affect the rest of the body, like stress or anger, so we could say that emotions are a relic. However, there is a genetic component to the control we can have over our emotions or even the capacity to learn to gain control of them. The knowledge we need to learn to control our emotions is also based on rules of society and interpersonal interaction, so even if you want to control your emotions, are you not complying with other’s regulations then? I mean, you ask if we should control our emotions, but to what extent are we in control in the first place…
If we let rationality influence our emotions then can we say that there is some truth to emotional intelligence? I know it is supposed to be a type of intelligence, but that would imply that emotions are not entirely different than reason, wouldn’t it? Emotional intelligence is an important skill to have to perceive or assess someone else’s emotions or your own, that’s what let’s you get along with other people, however, we do this by taking our clues from others, so couldn’t you argue that a machine could also learn how to look for these clues and answer in a similar “controlled” manner? I realize there is a big difference, but I think that in the end, the fact that you are human and you have emotions even if you fight them, means that the way you live is in part dictated by those feelings/emotions in the first place.
I would like to know your answer on the question you ask about the juxtaposition of emotions and rationality.
By
aem, at 11:57 AM
> If we let rationality influence our emotions then can we say that there is some truth to emotional intelligence?
I think there is definitely an emotional intelligence of the kind that Daniel Goleman has proposed. In this respect I would agree with you that emotions and reason are not (to use Stephen Jay Gould's phrase out of context) "nonoverlapping magisteria", but rather that there is a reason-based (reason-able?) emotion to experience in any given situation.
> The knowledge we need to learn to control our emotions is also based on rules of society and interpersonal interaction, so even if you want to control your emotions, are you not complying with other’s regulations then?
Controlling your emotions in the ways that society strongly encourages is certainly one option, but I don't think it's the only one. Although it's hard, I think it's possible for thinking people to gain some measure of control over their emotions by choosing on their own what they want to feel and when.
> I would like to know your answer on the question you ask about the juxtaposition of emotions and rationality.
I'm still working on my answers to these questions, and so I'm hoping for comments from more readers before I try to "cohesify" my position on this. Because the question is so broad and there are so many different types of emotions, I have had difficulty distilling dozens of random thoughts into anything coherent.
Thanks for your comments and questions!
By
howtolive.org, at 4:20 PM
You say:"Controlling your emotions in the ways that society strongly encourages is certainly one option, but I don't think it's the only one. Although it's hard, I think it's possible for thinking people to gain some measure of control over their emotions by choosing on their own what they want to feel and when." But after today's post (Thu Jul 13), do you still think that you can choose what you want to feel and when? I don't think it is really possible to control your feelings, you feel something and you might decide to supress the feeling, but it's still there. But if you don't think we are in control at all, what did you mean here?
By
aem, at 4:39 PM
My position is that by default people have very little control over their emotions, but by consciously examining the emotions they feel in different situations (and to a lesser extent, imagining what emotions they'd feel in other possible situations), they can gain some control over their emotions. How much, I don't know yet. In my own case, this examination has changed my emotional responses to a lot of things, both helping me not feel emotions I previously felt that I don't want to feel (e.g. anger, jealousy, etc) and feeling emotions I previously didn't feel but do want to (e.g. awe). At least in my case, it's not simply that I still have an emotion and am suppressing it, but rather than I've been able to change the emotions I feel.
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howtolive.org, at 1:59 PM
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