EMOTIONS, FEELINGS AND MOOD Part 2

I remember clearly during my upbringing and many years of education (and being repeatedly reminded) that to be smart and rational, logical thinking was all that was required. Emotions and feelings only make us act with emotional and irrational impulses, and therefore they are considered weaknesses of character.

At a one stage of my adult life, I finally realized that I am a very emotional person. I always have very strong opinions about things in life, and that they are an inseparable part of me and make me who I am. I think our brain, our mind, our body and our personality characteristics are genetically determined and inherited as a whole; emotions and feelings are a part of it.

If being smart and rational are that is all needed, then advanced computers that are programmed with excess memory, AI, and machine learning could do a better job. But that would be lifeless, cold machines with no emotion, feeling or empathy and caring. Thank God that we as humans have our emotions, feelings and a soul. We are social creatures. Only this way we can connect with other people, socialize, pick our friends, get emotionally involved, think, and create.

It is believed that humans acquired emotions and feelings as a part of Darwinian evolution. Imagine our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors walking on a savannah to gather food and to hunt with no emotion or feelings. They would have been unconcerned and unprepared to face possible attacks by wild animals. Only emotions and feelings that generate fear would have made them hypervigilant and prepared to face this possibility. So, emotions and feelings were necessary to survive in the wilderness. Over time, this became a genetically acquired, possibly by evolutionary mutations, to be a part of human character.

I recommend readers who are interested in understanding how emotions affect our thoughts to read Dr. Mlodinow’s book. I shall try to give a short summary of my read of his book with my own thoughts and opinions.

Extraordinary advances in psychology and neuroscience have allowed scientists to investigate the brain more closely, to decipher the electrical signals that generate emotions, to trace the connections among neurons.

Each emotion is triggered by specific emotional stimuli that is perceived by our senses (sensory input) from the external world. The perceived sensory input fist goes to the specific areas of the brain that receives raw information, and it is passed through several layers of processing and interpretations before we become consciously aware of it. Our memory provides information about the past, our knowledge base, feelings and thoughts determine our behaviors. All this mental processing is guided by our emotions.

I believe emotions, since we are not consciously aware of them, are the product of the mind. Emotions forms first, and then emotions create feeling. We are consciously aware of our feelings. Therefore, feelings with its bodily manifestations must be created by the brain.

There are substantial differences between reflexive behaviors and emotional behaviors. Reflexive behaviors therefore provide no learning experience.

Traditional theory of emotions is that there is a small set of basic emotions such as fear, anger, disgust, surprise, happiness that are intuitive and universally present in every culture. Current studies of human feelings have shown that each basic emotion is not a single emotion, but a catch-all term which includes a spectrum of feelings like embarrassment, pride and other social emotions.

We are social creatures. Historically, human survival depended on the ability to function within social contact, to understand others and form social connections. This ability to recognize your own as well as other people’s emotions is called emotional IQ or EQ (emotional intelligence). While IQ scores correlate intelligence, EQ scores correlate with professional success.

So, it appears that emotions and feelings are very necessary part of life. But because they evolved in ancient times as a response to primitive and untamed environments, they may not be optimal for modern times. Particularly, over intense emotional states could cause destructive behaviors, chronic emotional states could lead to panic attacks, chronic anxiety and depression.

We need to keep our emotional impulses in check with our thinking and higher mental faculties. We should always remember that emotion is a part of every human being, and nobody is perfect. We should accept that on occasions there is always going to be temper tantrums, disappointments, and not so perfect judgement calls in life.