Emotions are genetically programmed reactions to stimuli, established through natural selection, interweaving into reaffirming feedback loops.
| “Robert Plutchik’s psycho-evolutionary theory of emotion is one of the most influential classification approaches for general emotional responses. He considered there to be eight primary emotions – anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, anticipation, trust, and joy. Plutchik proposed that these ‘basic’ emotions are biologically primitive and have evolved in order to increase the reproductive fitness of the animal. Plutchik argues for the primacy of these emotions by showing each to be the trigger of behaviour with high survival value, such as the way fear inspires the fight-or-flight response.Plutchik’s psycho-evolutionary theory of basic emotions has ten postulates. The concept of emotion is applicable to all evolutionary levels and applies to animals as well as to humans. Emotions have an evolutionary history and have evolved various forms of expression in different species. Emotions served an adaptive role in helping organisms deal with key survival issues posed by the environment. Despite different forms of expression of emotions in different species, there are certain common elements, or prototype patterns, that can be identified. There is a small number of basic, primary, or prototype emotions. All other emotions are mixed or derivative states; that is, they occur as combinations, mixtures, or compounds of the primary emotions. Primary emotions are hypothetical constructs or idealized states whose properties and characteristics can only be inferred from various kinds of evidence. Primary emotions can be conceptualized in terms of pairs of polar opposites. All emotions vary in their degree of similarity to one another. Each emotion can exist in varying degrees of intensity or levels of arousal.”–Wikipedia |
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Psychosomatic reactions to external stimuli, triggering internal neurological processes.
Emotions are genetically programmed reactions to stimuli, established through natural selection, interweaving into reaffirming feedback loops.
uli, triggering internal neurological processes.
| “Emotion is inseparable from the body in which it is felt, and emotion is also the basis for our engagement with the world. Social understanding in the sense of empathic connection, as well as understanding how others feel, what they mean not only by what they say in context, as we have seen, but by their facial expressions, their ‘body language’ and tone of voice – all this is made possible by the right hemisphere.In keeping with its capacity for emotion, and its predisposition to understand mental experience within the context of the body, rather than abstracting it, the right hemisphere is deeply connected to the self as embodied. Although each side of the brain has both motor and sensory connections with the opposite side of the body, we know that the left hemisphere carries an image only of the contralateral (right) side of the body – when the right hemisphere is incapacitated, the left part of the individual’s body virtually ceases to exist for that person. It is only the right parietal lobe that has a whole-body image. Importantly this body image is not just a picture. It is not a representation (as it would be if it were in the left hemisphere), or just the sum of our bodily perceptions, or something imagined, but a living image, intimately linked to activity in the world – an essentially affective experience. Which is why disturbances in it led to profoundly disturbing illnesses, such as body dysmorphia and anorexia nervosa.”[The Master and His Emissary – The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World]–McGilchrist, Iain |
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Emotional Corruption of Reason – How the Objective is frustrated by the Subjective
Within modern absolutist either/or absolutist paradigms the absolute refers to an extreme emotional state that corrupts awareness, tilting it towards one or the other emotional pole, generalized as positive/negative.
Emotion is determining modern man’s judgements. The absence of external referents, in support of his ideologies, is compensated with emotional criteria. The pleasure principle.
Emotions were for the Greeks something to be bridled, but not denied expression.
The passions include both emotions & instincts, as both of these are automated responses to stimuli, resulting in a partial or complete loss of control. An experience that can be both frightening & liberating. Loss of control being part of the Dionysian character type, liberated from the restraints of culturally determined social conventions.
Loss of emotional control – even if momentary – entails a risk, as it does not concern itself with consequences.
No matter how loudly many profess their admiration for honesty, when they actually get a taste of it, they do not always appreciate it. When a modern speaks of honesty, and living in the moment, he or she knows not what he is saying.
How else would genetic agendas enforce rational compliance if not through psychotropic effects? Intoxication is how intellect is diverted from self-interests towards group interests.
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§Monologue: Feminization – Chemical Castrations – Numb
Coddling permeates through modern organized superstructures. Expressions of survival, nourished in more austere domains, become frivolous and hollow in the mouths of children. Pathos is diluted by being converted into a commodity to be bought and sold, and eventually discarded by those who have been immunized against the repercussions.
Emotion, from a metaphysical standpoint, is a reaction to the absence of an absolute. A void in knowledge, causing anxiety; a void in strength, causing insecurity; a void in control, causing fear and anger; a void in power, causing envy.
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§Monologue: Nihilism – Inverted World – Absent Absolute
Goleman describes emotion as a feeling, and its distinctive thoughts – psychological and biological states – a range of propensities.
There are hundreds of emotions, along with their combinations, variations, mutations, and nuances. The main categories and some of their subcategories:
Anger: fury, outrage, resentment, wrath, exasperation, indignation, vexation, acrimony, animosity, annoyance, irritability, hostility.
Sadness: grief, sorrow, cheerlessness, gloom, melancholy, self-pity, loneliness, dejection, despair.
Fear: anxiety, apprehension, nervousness, concern, consternation, misgiving, wariness, qualm, edginess, dread, fright, terror.
Enjoyment: happiness, joy, relief, contentment, bliss, delight, amusement, pride, sensual pleasure, thrill, rapture, gratification, satisfaction, euphoria, whimsy, and ecstasy.
Love: acceptance, friendliness, trust, kindness, affinity, devotion, adoration, infatuation, agape.
Surprise: shock, astonishment, amazement, wonder.
Disgust: contempt, disdain, scorn, abhorrence, aversion, distaste, revulsion.
Shame: guilt, embarrassment, chagrin, remorse, humiliation, regret, mortification, contrition.
When thinking about emotions – their breadth of effects, their reach and relevance, their distorting repercussions, and their organic sources – I have come to believe in some basic commonalities: feelings are reactive, in that they are produced as automatic reactions to perceptions (external stimuli), governed by a singular drive to exist, to grow/expand, and to replicate/reproduce. Consequently, all of them can be reduced to the common denominator of an automatic response against threats and challenges, more aptly represented by the most fundamental of all emotions, fear.
Fear is the core of overcoming obstacles and threats. [Fear]
The first and primary reaction, of a developing organism to its environment, is that of stress and anxiety. We call the combination fear.
Here the fundamental nature of existence is exposed because increasing entropy – as it relates to life and its constant ordering – represents a ‘negative’ factor in the continuance of life
Monolog 8
An organism is unaware (ignorant), confronting & confronted by an uncertain world; it is constantly under stress, maintaining itself against seen & unseen adversities, e.g., predators, parasites, viruses, temporal attrition depleting its finite energies etc.
