Monday, January 24, 2011

Emotion

DISCLAIMER: This is one of my most scatterbrained pieces of work ever. If you thought some of my previous rants and raves were bad, wait until you read this. I could take time to polish it up, but frankly I just don't care enough. I put this down to put my own thoughts into words to help me look at the issue in a new light. Whether or not you get anything out of this is of no concern for me. I wouldn't post this at all if it weren't something to write about, and I want to keep Dania happy with me.

It's a funny thing. On one hand, it can be absolutely crippling. On the other, it can be what gets us through the day. From an evolutionary standpoint, it can be downright baffling. Often, it detracts from the cool intellect that is so great for adaptation and survival. Because of emotion, humans have a remarkable ability for spite. Most observed organisms do not exhibit spiteful behaviors: ones that harm the other individual at the cost of harming that individuals fitness. In a very real sense, natural selection is a very level-headed process. It's a pure cost-benefit analysis. Behaviors are selected for benefits to the fitness of individuals. Spiteful actions seem to not make sense, unless the action would harm the other individual's fitness more than their own and therefore there would be a net gain by that individual. Many human behaviors caused by emotion, however, do not have this effect. For example, I watched the film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps with my roommates the other day (I do not recommend this film unless you have some sort of filter; although it is PG-13, it has some very strong language). It depicts the story of several Wall Street insiders who, through their thirst for vengeance, cause the stock market to crash--the film is set in 2008, but it is not an actual representation of the events that led to that crash. In the end, everyone involved ended up worse off. Such behavior should theoretically be selected against, yet it persists in humans.

Examples such as this are way I am a firm stoicist. I do my best to keep my emotions in check at all times. It's part of why I am sometimes labeled as a pessimist (part of it is because I kind of am). I rarely express positive emotion, so I must think every thing is not going well. However, if you notice, I also rarely express negative emotions. Emotion often is an enemy of logic, so while I do my best to understand my own emotional reactions and, to be blunt, manipulate the emotions of others, I keep my own emotions in check. I honestly think I make better decisions because of this. At times when my emotions do run away from me, as has happened all too often in the past couple of weeks--to both positive and negative extremes--I try to refrain from action. Passionate emotions tend to impede judgment, and decisions made while under these extreme emotions can often lead to unintended consequences.

I do not wish to put forward a full on condemnation of emotion, however. While emotions can lead to poor decision-making, it is partially emotion that makes good decisions a desirable goal. I also recognize that stoicism can be taken too far. When we abandon all emotional reaction and go based off purely cold intellect and reason, we can arrive at horrible conclusions. Look at Johnathan Swift's A Modest Proposal if you need any proof of that. The work is an wonderful example of satire, but when you look at the idea he puts forth, it makes absolute perfect sense. Removing emotion entirely can lead to horrible ideas like breeding children for food.

The answer, then, is a healthy mix. It is one of life's great difficulties. I know that I have not yet arrived at that healthy balance. The exact mixture between intellect and emotion that we should use is elusive. Much like the old game Lemonade Tycoon, the key is experimentation. The trouble is that likely by now you have found a combination that seems to work pretty well for you. My formula seems to work rather well right now, and adjusting it might lead to a decrease in effectiveness. I am also fairly confident, however, that my current formula is not ideal, and as circumstances change I will have to adjust the balance. In the end, I'm willing to risk it because I'd rather live with a bunch of human beings than a bunch of programmed robots. It makes life worth living. Yes, humans have a remarkable capacity for spite, but they also have an astounding ability for altruism, and the source of both types of behavior is the same.

2 comments:

  1. Well said! There is no black-and-white, and there's always a middle ground with the perfect balance.

    ReplyDelete
  2. OMG! YOU WROTE SOMETHING!!! I miss your writings ever so much. And yeah, I never thought of spite as an emotional downfall but you have a point. The balance is like Spock and Kirk. Spock is the intellect and Kirk is pure emotion. They're both cool on their own, but when you put them together...they're legendary! Pure babe magic!

    ReplyDelete