emotions

[xevos]

ok ive been thinking about emotions. i kind of understand them but at the same time i dont. im just curious on peoples opinions on if u think they are good or bad if u understand them or not. to me they kind of seam bad every emotion leads to something bad. the only expetion is happiness but at this point in time i see that as a base line not realy even an emotion. but yeah just post ur ideas on this and please think hard on this before you post.(i thought i should mention this im new here)

 

[EyeSeeCold]

Tell me, why do you think emotions may be "bad"?

 

[Words]

the only exception is happiness but at this point in time i see that as a base line not realy even an emotion.

"We get an emotion thread every week." - overheard from a denizen of INTPforum.

A "base-line"? What do you mean by that? Is happiness an emotion? Or is it a set of "positive" emotions? Do you think excitement, fulfillment, and relief could be under happiness? What about regret, depression, jealousy and worry being under unhappiness?
(Strange how I could think of more negative emotions than positive ones. Granted, I am not sure if my definition is even accurate.)

What I have engaged from recently reading books of meditation is the idea that you can learn to "control" your subjective self. (not really "subjective self" but I place emotion under subjective. Subjective can include mental stimulation as well(an emotion?) and point of views, and what else?) Convert emotion-discomfort to comfort.

 

[EditorOne]

Emotions aren't good or bad. I'm oversimplifying, but if you regard them as simply something you're not wise to depend upon for decision-making, it gets easier.

An analogy might be baseball, or even cricket for the Brits and Commonwealth folks. Some people have the physical skills and mental ability to play baseball well. Others put their hands up to defend themselves if the ball is hit to them, can't see the pitch, can't run and, importantly enough, don't see the point of the game. They simply don't do well in baseball. That's us, often, with emotions. We tend to fend them off rather than make the play with them, we don't see them coming much of the time, we can't run with them, and, importantly enough, we really and truly don't see the point. That doesn't mean they are unimportant or even useful to and valid for other people. It just means we often don't do well with emotions. Even applying our strong suit to them doesn't work, because thinking about emotions while ambivalent (sometimes that's a really good alternative description of "perceptive") just doesn't seem to do the job in terms of reaching a successful analysis of what's going on.

Hope that helps. There's nothing wrong with emotions per se, but don't decide on a career or anything of major importance in your life based just on emotions.

 

[JarNew]

Emotions are a biological response in the body.

It's not emotions that are important

But EMPATHY.

Empathy is the basis of love, love is the basis of creation.

It's human nature to create.

Plus ++++ Our emotions can be easily manipuluated by visual cues.

Take Grimace for example. This human emotion represents disgust, or pleasure. You can tell from a person's eyes. Read up on microexpressions if you're interested OP.

This one is called a grimace

 

[Cognisant]

As far as I can tell the human mind is a result of many small processes happening at once, which is why we have emotions, to put it basically our emotions are how every part of us has its vote on what the entity as a whole does.

Pain is an emotion, a very primitive and very potent emotion, when you touch something that hurts you that emotion has a profound effect on your overall emotional state, giving it a higher priority than the other wants/needs you may be experiencing at the time; likewise pleasure can have the same effect, for example next time you experience a paper-cut or some other manner of discomfort, eat a piece of chocolate, now sure you'll still feel the pain, but in the presence of strong pleasure you don't really care as much.

Emotions are the raw soup from which our will is derived.

 

[BigApplePi]

Try this: emotions are to action as intuition is to thinking.

Emotions are a setup for action; intuition is a setup for thought?

Take fear. Fear says move away. The juices get flowing to do so.
Take my intuition says this politician is a bad one. I have to think about that to see if I can support it.

 

[BigApplePi]

im just curious on peoples opinions on if u think they are good or bad

I would say they are good if they do the job. Simple emotions should do that. If they are complicated by involvement with other emotions, one has to stop and figure out their message.

If the message can't be read, that's bad. If the message takes too long to read, that could be dangerous. If the message is read, that could be very informative just as intuition is.

 

[SpaceYeti]

ok ive been thinking about emotions. i kind of understand them but at the same time i dont. im just curious on peoples opinions on if u think they are good or bad if u understand them or not. to me they kind of seam bad every emotion leads to something bad. the only expetion is happiness but at this point in time i see that as a base line not realy even an emotion. but yeah just post ur ideas on this and please think hard on this before you post.(i thought i should mention this im new here)

Emotions aren't bad, they're simply your motivation. When I was younger I went through a period where I would have wished away my emotions, but then I realized that emotions are a necessary part of life. Yes, they may interfere in being reasonable, but without them you wouldn't care about anything. You'd simply exist. There's nothing wrong with simply existing, but there's also nothing good in it.

 

[BigApplePi]

... without them you wouldn't care about anything.

Emotions (feelings) without them if you saw a cliff, you'd pass it by, walk around it, or walk off it. It wouldn't make a bit of difference.

 

[SpaceYeti]

Exactly.

 

[Zensunni]

Tell me, why do you think emotions may be "bad"?

For me, they try and interfere with sound judgment.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

For me, they try and interfere with sound judgment.

Hmm. Well I'll argue two points.

1.) As stated before me, emotions provide the drive that makes one judgment more important than another. Without emotions logic would exist but there'd be no reason to act logically.

2.) The world does not exist as pure reason and pure irrationality. Everything is a mix of both. Sure, sometimes your emotions may muddy up or even override your reasonable judgment, but sometimes they have to. The inconvenience of emotions is just a result of the unpredictability of life, nothing is perfect.

 

[xevos]

please excuse any spelling mistakes

why i think they are bad:
i see emotions ass bad because the fact they can blur judgement.
love can cause you to lose everything and make u "blind", anger is the same also it can start wars, sadness takes energy as long as your sad ur worthless as in the meaning that ur dont do as much and you dont apply yourself. every emotion blurrs judgement.

what i mean as base line:
i was talking to my cousin who is taking pyschology and ill paraphrase pretty there is a mechanism in ur brai that generaly keeps your emotions in check (there are expetions) and happiness might have been the best word but its the only one i can think of for it, what i ment is you know when u have a good day but realy nothing good or bad happend, just neutral.

pain isnt an emotion its a feeling the happiness the chocolate cause getts your mind off the pain that all the pain just cause a negative feeling, which is your brains subtle way of training you in a sense not to do or avoid the cause of the pain.

saying all feeling wasnt the right way to say that i just kind caught up in the idea and i was tired. what i should have said was that emotions other then the base ones needed for growth of the speices only keep mild happiness for motivation very mild fear just enough to tell you something is wrong, curiousity just for the growth of technology and maybe i a few other mild emotions just enough to give that nudge. but we dont need anger, sadness, envey, or love (now i will say this i have a girlfriend ive been with for 2 years now i love her i know how it feels) love cause you to make stupid choices and also if you remove it along with lust we would have places like china over populated we are far enough along (intelgently) we would be able to mange our population by saying only so many can have kids, now some would say without the parental emotions that would cause issues with kids but not realy, it would allow us to have people with genetic major dieses like parkinsons not able to have kkids they wouldnt care and u wouldnt be risking the life of another which they do when they have a kid (now i understand some dont know but then the child does and when older should consider if its right to risk a life) or other things. we would become more effecient with everything and at the same time not risk harming the earth.

 

[xevos]

i should also mention ive gotton to the point were i can comletly block emotions if i want but i only do that if i need too. same with pain but i beleave thats part how ive been trained i do boxing wrestling and just fighting in general. but idk that could also be what made it so easy for me to control them (i have to catch myself to stop the emotion sometimes that doesnt happen)

 

[SpaceYeti]

Don't presume you can actually block off emotions. You may be more dominated by your emotions than you believe. Just as an example, I've seen people claim to have "conquered" their sexuality in the sense that they rid themselves of it, only to have sex the very next time they had the opportunity. Don't assume you have control over something you don't.

After that little warning, my initial point remains. Your emotions are a part of you. The trick is to understand your emotions, not to eliminate them.

 

[Melkor]

An unnecessary evil.

 

[Dimensional Transition]

Don't try to be the cliché, cold, awkward, alienated INTP too much.
Really, almost everybody has emotions in some way. Without emotions we would be mere machines, I think consciousness also relies on emotions a little. As INTPs, some more complicated emotions will feel weird and unrecognizable, that's for sure, but I still appreciate they are there. They give me some sense of reality.

 

[BigApplePi]

I have a concrete emotion(s) I will tell you about. I have to ask the same Q you are asking: Are they good or bad?

There is a discussion group coming up here in the near future. Emotionally I am interested, but I dread being there. It is a horror. I am trapped. If I get involved in the discussion, these people will lay a heavy trip on me. It's their confidence and my (INTP) inadequacy. I've been to this discussion group already twice. The first time I thought about it, was modestly prepared, they liked me and I said to myself, "This was fine. I accomplished what I wanted, I participated, no problems." The 2nd time I winged it. I sat down, waited, didn't want particularly to talk, couldn't think of what to say anyway, was mostly silent, was asked questions that embarrassed me. I hated it. Failure ... even though one guy said he enjoyed meeting me. I had nothing in common with him. So I say I should go a 3rd time. But I hate and fear going. What is my plan? To ignore my emotions. They are in my way. If I can keep my head clear to start and get lucky, I'll be okay. But maybe not. Maybe I'll change my mind and decide I don't like this group. Now what?

 

[Zensunni]

Hmm. Well I'll argue two points.

1.) As stated before me, emotions provide the drive that makes one judgment more important than another. Without emotions logic would exist but there'd be no reason to act logically.

2.) The world does not exist as pure reason and pure irrationality. Everything is a mix of both. Sure, sometimes your emotions may muddy up or even override your reasonable judgment, but sometimes they have to. The inconvenience of emotions is just a result of the unpredictability of life, nothing is perfect.

Emotions, when they get rowdy, attempt to change my decisions. They attempt to alter what I know to be right when I was in a staid, contemplative mode.

If you like, they are a screaming Id that want what they want without regard for the learned modifications of the Ego or the overarching governance of the Superego.

 

[EditorOne]

This is a pretty interesting thread.

 

[BigApplePi]

Emotions are good ... I think. Not sure what they are though although many have been named. Emotions are what happens when feelings, wishes or desires boil up to the surface. No reason why those shouldn't boil up to the surface. Just don't let them boil over. Our brains (thought) are there to control them.

Feelings, wishes and desires are the stuff of life. Without them we would just exist. Might as well be dead. If we try to control them instead of guide them, we feel like we are dead. <-- Is that right?

 

[EditorOne]

There's always the question of how, in the absence of enough information, or even knowing what information you have let alone need, you know whether or not you actually are managing your emotions or they are managing you.

That was a complicated first sentence, but run it through a couple of times. A lot of people seem pretty sure they've got things under control. My experience has been that sometimes people like us let emotions make the decision but kid themselves they reached it through the use of thinking and logic. It's kind of hard to know how to judge the effect of a force you're not trained or innately equipped to use. Sort of like being given something that is an explosive, but nobody tells you what sets it off. Lots of room for "oops".

The problem seems to abate with experience. Pick up the pieces of your existence a few times after playing a game where you don't know the rules and you eventually learn the danger signals.

 

[LAM]

Hmm emotions can be anything really. I only deal with them directly when they are interfering negatively with my life for no particularly good reason (hate, overly shy/embarassed, rage, raaaaaggggeeeee, etc.) I found that things such as music help me get over these "problem" emotions....

im too tired for long post D:

 

[BigApplePi]

Music somehow brings us into immediate contact with emotions. But how? Why? Are they voluntary or involuntary?

 

[Zensunni]

Music somehow brings us into immediate contact with emotions. But how? Why? Are they voluntary or involuntary?

There is a reason Plato had Socrates ban music in The Republic, it messes with rationality.

 

[LAM]

^^^
Well thats not really an answer to his question...

http://www.chordpiano.com/articles-chord-piano/music-emotions-4.htm

says here that the brain parts which ar stimulated when listening to music are the ones that are also stimulated by food and sex. so I guess that music for some reason affects our brain chemistry, otherwise known as emotions.

Heres some other sources for you (you could just google it yourself....)
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro04/web2/gvaidya.html
http://www.suite101.com/content/why-do-you-love-that-song-a59065

Also another question you might be interested in answering for yourself is about the link between memory and music.

 

[EditorOne]

Good stuff. Minor chords make me sad, for sure, but I find dissonance interesting rather than disturbing.

I once hung around with a piano genius who could not only play any song he heard as soon as he heard it, he could then play it again with a blinding selection of wrong notes that amounted to sarcasm if he thought the piece was maudlin crap. And everyone who heard it knew what he was thinking. Pretty amazing. I remember he reduced a teenage girl to tears by playing "Love is Blue" derisively. It was her favorite song, she'd just sweated it out proudly playing it for us at a drinking party, and this guy stepped in, played it once right and then trashed it. Yeah, I'm that old, most people won't have heard the song. Think sugary sweet, overwrought harpsichord. A link if you want to ruin your night.

Acapella doo wop makes me vaguely nostalgic, which is logically ridiculous since I was just a little kid 1955-62. Go figure.

 

[BigApplePi]

There is a reason Plato had Socrates ban music in The Republic, it messes with rationality.

Plato. You deny irrationality? How irrational. If I were Socrates, I'd punch you in the mouth!

 

[BigApplePi]

As long as he didn't make fun of Robert Mitchum.

 

[EditorOne]

You can punch Paul Mauriat if you want. He deserves it for producing that schlock.

Mitchum's days as an avatar are dwindling. Knees are getting better. Won't be needing a Robert Mitchum mask for much longer.

 

[LAM]

wow its you editorOne.. I didn't recognise you at all because I was so used to your old avatar (It looked like some kind of school photo thing I think.)

 

[EditorOne]

LAM, I adopted Robert Mitchum as the toughest "yeah, so what?" guy I could think of as oblique inspiration for ignoring knee pain for a few months. :-) I'll get back to an actual photo in a bit. Won't be kicking any field goals in the playoffs, though.