Kim Jones wrote:
> Admittedly a bit off-topic but hey - there are some great minds on this
> list and it could give birth to something relevant. There! ;-D
>
>
>
> Why do we have emotions? Aren't simple, value-conferring feelings good
> enough or something? Emotions cause a host of extraordinary, beautiful
> and wondrous things to happen in life as well as all sorts of
> nonsensical and disastrous issues in the world.
>
> We should definitely study this a bit more carefully n'est-ce pas?
>
> A worm probably doesn't have emotions but we might just allow that it
> has feelings. There is much evidence to support this, apparently.
I'm not sure what distinction you're making. As far as I'm concerned
feelings=emotions.
>
> Do we have emotions because we are noble, sensitive, artistic,
> expressive, complex, huge-brained, warm-blooded etc. highly-evolved
> creatures (intrinsic feature)
>
>
>
> or
>
>
> because having emotions has Darwinian survival value? (extrinsic feature)
"Emotions are nature's way of making you do what is necessary to reproduce."
--- Robert Wright, "Man, the Moral Animal"
Brent Meeker
>
>
>
> I favour the second view (whilst acknowledging that the first has many
> elements of truth to it as well)
>
>
> THE EVIDENCE
>
>
> Emotions change the appearance of an organism in the sight of another
> organism and are therefore slightly unusual to witness
>
> Do I need to illustrate that? No, great- so we'll skip to the next part
> then.
>
> No - just one clean one:
>
> Maybe think of the way you or I may view the face of Sarah Palin with
> mild feelings of amusement at her stereotypical look. Now imagine the
> violently emotional, brain-boiling, artery-bursting hatred and rage she
> inspires in most feminists
>
>
>
> THE CON
>
>
> A person having an emotion even at the periphery of your field of view
> is virtually impossible not to look at directly if only for an instant
> to verify
>
> This can can be exploited to advantage
>
> As Edward de Bono points out near the start of his recent book "Six
> Information Frames", the mind is instantly drawn to the unusual
>
> This is not a strength of the mind but a weakness of the mind. This is
> because the person having the emotion could quite easily be faking it to
> manipulate us
>
> "You were really moaning away there darling, I'm glad I excite you. Do
> any of the others?"
>
> "No. Only you do that to me, honey. See you this time next week?"
>
>
> sort of thing
>
>
> So here is the Darwinian survival value part...the human mind - knowing
> intuitively it's own Achilles Heel - has conspired to manipulate itself
> to it's own mutual advantage
>
> As a schizophrenic might say "I'm never lonely. I've always got each other"
>
> This is kind of how everybody - as Woody Allen puts it - "sells everyone
> to everyone else."
>
> Emotions are therefore a signalling device to a 3rd party - we say we
> 'have' emotions; in fact we 'give' emotions
>
> If we forget for a moment the wonderful and vast internal experience of
> emotions, that vast symphonic chorus of chemicals zapping about in our
> brains when we are well above the baseline mood-wise and for whatever
> reason - could even be drugs...
>
>
>
> like
>
>
> Tchaikowsky's 6th Symphony 1st movement where he claimed to want the
> audience to feel graphically through his music, the sheer unutterable
> anxiety and guilt and shame and despair and agony of his existence
> (trying to be vaguely gay as a public figure in Tsarist Russia....Oh boy
> I can hear that music right now in my head - it's like a freakin drug.
> If you want to experience true black dog depression for a good twenty
> minutes or so, have a listen. It's a virtual reality experience of what
> it is like to have bipolar disorder.)
>
>
> So
>
>
> Let's forget momentarily that so well-known aspect of emotions (Aspect One)
>
>
>
> Let's hold in our minds the notion that emotions did not arise in this
> way. The Pleasure and Pain qualia are merely a bonus. Simple feelings
> are good enough to supply the mind with the information it needs to sort
> out values and predict futures and survive its collision with reality
>
> We only ever needed emotions in the past to avoid being eaten by a
> Sabre-toothed cat like in some freakin silly Roland Emmerich movie
>
> This is Aspect Two of emotions
>
> Emotions are there to cause ACTION at critical moments. All the right
> chemicals start whizzing about in microseconds and we survive the attack
> by acting in a survival mode
>
> Like
>
>
> Woody Allen again - "I was like, I was like so scared to death, the, the
> adrenalin was, was like, squirting outta my EARS!" (Love and Death -
> still his best flick)
>
>
> But that is not enough - humans don't just want to 'break even' - humans
> want to 'do better than average'
>
> Don't they? If not - what's a brain for? (Here's the 'relevant' bit, then)
>
> That is the undeniable goal of the human race. To become better than
> what it is somehow. It's a stage-act we have been rehearsing sinse
> Adam's Balls Dropped. (Era ABD)
>
> Emotions in this sense are just like everything else about us - we only
> have them because some accidental miscopying of DNA resulted in a useful
> adaptation
>
> The survival value lies precisely in that emotions are a speechless
> organism's only way of getting another speechless organism to help it
> survive somehow
>
> like Bonobos flashing there bums at each other to get a sex coupling
> going as a reward for something altruistic done by another (could even
> be a gay coupling with Bonobos, apparently. They don't care. Sex is
> usually a REWARD for something done on one's behalf. Makes sense to
> Bonobos, why not Catholics?
>
> like
>
> scatch my back and I'll...yeah
>
>
> So,
>
>
> There's no point in ever being swayed by the emotional impact of
> anything because it's a kind of a con. Wagner was the master of that.
> Emotions inflate the importance of everything, often to a fictional
> extent. Think of the music Wagner wrote for Wotan's Farewell (to his
> daughter Brunnhilde) in The Ring. It's music that makes your heart soar
> to the ceiling and then explode like a shower of crimson fireworks
>
> But it's only this old twit of a god performing an honour "virtual
> killing" of his own favourite offspring because of some ridiculous case
> of family honour besmirched
>
> YET
>
>
> Wagner makes us feel like some COSMIC TRAGEDY is unfolding under our
> very noses and here is the moment when his love LET HER GO - crescendo,
> crescendo and then the adrenalin starts squirting from our ears
>
> This is of course a bit simplistic but I'm trying to make the necessary
> point about emotions that, like anything else, there should be no
> special pleading for them; "Because you happen to have this overwhelming
> feeling of self-righteous urgency and dire necessity in connection with
> something right now does not of itself necessarily implicate me in your
> issue" (Office wall sign)
>
>
> Life of course would be dull without emotions because they communicate
> value to us - well understood point. Things with high value will provoke
> strong emotions
>
>
> Like Wagner's and Stravinsky's music
>
>
> Perhaps the greatest value emotions have for us lies in our being able
> to continuing playing this archaic game of
> exploitation-by-emotional-blackmail-of-ourselves for a living
>
>
> As Dawkins points out, we should probably strive to escape from
> Darwinian evolution because, like our thinking system, it's a kluge
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kludge
>
>
>
>
> Kim Jones
>
>
>
> Nørretranders' Law of Symmetrical Relief
>
> If you find that most other people, upon closer inspection, seem to be
> somewhat comical or ludicrous, it is highly probable that most other
> people find that you are in fact comical or ludicrous as well. So you
> don't have to hide it, they already know.
>
>
> >
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