Emotions

It has been a long-standing interest of mine to understand emotions.  They are evident in life; we feel them.  Therefore, their conventional existence should be intrinsically implied.  In what regard, however, are they felt and or created?  There are two major possibilities: emotions are immaterial or they are material.  If the reader is a duelist, then it is easy to see that it very well may be a combination of both.  But this dualism will be void if it is discovered that either of the two sources contain the full or none of the properties and origination of emotion.  It would be wise to exhaust both immaterial and material origins before simply becoming a dualist.

If emotions are immaterially sourced, then they are actually inspired by the soul.  Would it be possible for emotions to be non material?  It would, as it turns out.  If we allow the idea of immaterialism to be plausible, we allow the idea that the soul can interact with the body.  Therefore if emotions are like the soul, immaterial by nature, we would expect interaction with the material to be plausible, if not most certain.  Consider, for a moment, the basic emotion of anger.  A flash of anger seems at times to come out of nowhere, as if it literally inspires itself.  As soon as calm returns to your person, you know you experienced a change in mental status.  Then could it be that this change in status was brought on by an immaterial vector?  Well, if we argue yes, the consequences are rather evident.  If emotions are indeed immaterial, we should not be able to accurately predict their onset.  Just as much as the idea of the soul is not predicted by science, the idea of anger should not be a measurable quantity.  In that same breath, we have a contradiction.  Anger can be measured by brain scans, and has a correlation attached to neural activity and anger felt.  This seems to be counterintuitive.  The soul, for example, may or may not be measured.  It is simply and abstract concept to explain higher thought.  But anger, given the same initial conditions, should not be measurable either.  In fact, it should just be an abstraction we cannot verify.  But in our world, we can induce anger with chemical alterations and certain stimuli.  In fact, we have sourced the origin of these chemicals to a gland in the brain.  More so, all basic emotions can be sourced to this point or similar points.  For example, euphoria, sexual attraction, sadness, fear, and anger all have material origins and are measurable there.  In this case, it would be foolish to assume that they are immaterial.

So, then basic emotions live within the material realm.  But what about more complicated emotions?  They do not have chemical components.  Love, appreciation, hate, remorse, and things of that nature do not have measurable components.  It might be useful to say that these complex emotions are abstractions of simple emotions.  Given our memory, it is possible to analyze and draw conclusions on things you must have felt.  At this point, emotions switch from the material world to the immaterial world.  So in a way, it could be useful to be a dualist.  But most importantly, it would be a crime to say that all emotions are pieces of both the material and immaterial.  They are distinct, by some measure.

So then, what is the most useful application of this theory?  Careful differentiation of these emotion categories can be effective in separating your material self from your immaterial self.  More importantly, you can learn to control your emotions.  For example, by this definition of emotion, you must expect that you will undergo the feeling of anger, or sadness or attraction.  With this expectation, you feel less vulnerable, and thus in more control.  You cannot, by definition, eliminate emotions.  But, you can control the immaterial emotions.  For example (i find this most relevant to certain audiences), love.  Starting with biochemical attraction, your mind will be plagued with desire, lust, attraction, and feelings of that nature.  interestingly, euphoria can come into play.  These are basic emotions that cannot be controlled.  But after these initial feelings, your mind is left to process them.  Many people make the foolish error of assuming that these emotions are directly proportional to love.  Indeed they can be catalysts for such emotions, but they are not immediately proportional.  Love is simply an abstract concept meant to denote a particular trust, interest and agreement with another person.  It may, as it often turns out, be created based on simple attraction.  In simple attraction, the desire to be near another person might drive a trusting bond to be formed, thus starting the possibility to define the new connection as love.  Given this level of technicality and detail, it is easy to see how you can actually fall out of love with someone!  Love, contrary to popular belief, does not last forever.  Nor does it actually exist in reality!  Love is merely an abstraction.  With this noted, you can see how your most recent attractions are not so severe or life altering.  If, for example, you cannot break your "crush" on someone, i implore you to attempt the following: imagine a chart.  In this chart sits you, your crush and a line connecting you.  This line is your attraction, defined by your chemical status of your mind.  if you were to remove that attraction, pretend it did not exist, what are you left with?  If you lack trust, interest and agreement, you are not in "love" as defined by a set of conditions.  Therefore you are undergoing simple chemical manipulation, not worthy of your time.  You are simply wanting procreation, or the euphoric feeling of being in that persons presence.  In this regard, you are actually using that person for yourself, a property completely anti-love by definition.

Food for thought.  have a good day ;)