Devotion to Emotion
Humanity seems blindly dedicated to embracing emotional causality at any cost
Emotion: "in its most general definition, is an intense neural mental state that arises subjectively rather than through conscious effort and evokes either a positive or negative psychological response to move an organism to action. An emotion is differentiated from a feeling."
Here lays emotion, a reason to allow yourself not to be responsible for your actions, thoughts, wishes, desires. A subconscious affectation of your mind based off your past experiences and biology. I say biology because there are inherent differences between that of the emotions from males and females.
But we'll concentrate on the whole of the emotion rather then the specifics. As I stated earlier, emotion is subconscious,unrealized, unknown, it is the question within our mind that nobody wants to ask. Powerful is it's ability to distract, cause physical grief, or jubulation. But what happens when you ask 'why' to these feelings as only you are able to truly know. When you feel anger you usually know why you are angry, so within that trigger one can defeat it and not rip a guy out of a car, or slap someone for acting poorly. After all, you wouldn't get far in life if you acted on every emotion you felt. One instinctively realizes the consequences for their actions, gauges the risk vs reward and decides that action is or is not warranted for this situation all subconsciously.
There seems to be a distinct separation between "good" and "bad" emotions when they are one in the same. There is no empirical proof that "love" equals 2 parts electro-chemical reaction, with a hormone released here, and a specific area of the brain is activated when one thinks of their love there.. Nobody knows scientifically.. Just as you can anger yourself by thinking of a issue that you don't agree with, you automatically associate positive and negative feelings with the scenario that the 'emotion' is placed upon..
Example: Spouse/Lover... You feel love... warmth.. Feelings of acceptance, embrace, memories of sight and smell help to fully realize that emotion. Now taint that emotion... Think of your spouse cheating on you with their ex lover. Embraced within them, offering them all they offer you, skin on skin, mind to mind. Knowing that they are laughing at you now upon realization that they know they are meant for each other. Now pay attention as your emotion turns from a positive to a negative through jealousy. WHY!?
Using that example above we conclude that the feeling of love is still attached to the spouse, however now without so much as a physcial jump you are able to realize how jealousy and love fit together. This is done by nothing more then altering your perception of that person within your mind.. The main body of the emotion didn't change, your attitude towards the thought have changed.. thus changing your state of mind and your perception of how you perceive that emotion. Once jealousy enters your mind, it depends on the person you are. Those unable to realize it, and defeat it will eventually feel anger, hate, resentment all based off their perception of the "break of trust" thought to be mutually shared by both party members. That leads to allow themselves to become obsessed with the "negative" emotion that continually pops in their head unable to stifle it. The feeling of being "cheated" is powerful enough to possess the minds of even the strongest of characters. The child emotional states in this example are mistrust, greed, insecurity, that all steamroll into one powerful collective emotion most call "depression".
What I find in humanity is a mass of people that allow emotion to dictate their actions. Which leads to poorly thought out actions and scenarios, eventually a poorly planned life.. Usually associated with rash and callous actions the emotion overrides logic and reasoning all to become engulfed within the emotion, for the emotion by the emotion. That somehow allowing yourself to fully engulf yourself within the emotion (+/-) is a pleasurable addicting experience. The general public unable or unwilling to tell when emotion is ruling their fate, they find themselves only after the fact regretting their actions (Or to a lesser extent praising them).. But rarely does the action of acting on your emotion offer a positive end goal. (Romance seems to be the fallacy held within minds of the susceptible as a positive trait for acting on pure emotion)
There are of course 2 main arguments to the mindset of controlling your emotion (Yin/Yang)
To deny emotion is to deny being Human, and an act in futility.
To deny emotion is the path to true self realization and control of the mind and actions.
The first argument is most often first brought up mostly by the "Softer side of Humanity" to help justify or vindicate their history of positive experiences with emotion. But like most they choose to only embrace the positive and try to forget or negate the negative experiences of emotional causality in the past. (Forward thinking pacifists) None of the negative examples are reflected in their mind at the end of the day. Most choose to reflect on the positive and only see the negative as a hindrance to their positive path in life. When others interject a 'realist' perspective into their life, that person is often rejected based off their rash unforgiving realist observation upon life. Seen as a negative person in the eyes of the histrionic character, a wall is fronted to protect them from their insights and offer no acceptance of their views. (example: verbal observation based on the emotional outcomes of their past.. (Procreating without planning, Perpetual Party Phase even into late adulthood, No career drive, Poor standard of living etc). All those truths are blunted by the addiction to live within an emotion which allows the distraction away from their reality. When logic dictates without the negative, one would have a distorted perception of the positive. This path to emotional embrace allows one to not take full responsibility for their actions, because within the emotion is the blinding justification of their actions. If one doesn't take time to realize why they are feeling emotion, one will not have the mental power to fully realize their situation and thus cannot be expected to take responsibility for something they are unaware of. Which of course is quite an attraction in life and the path the majority take.
The second argument is seen as the impossible by many, embraced by the narcissistic or those that are afraid to confront their emotional causality. Those that have convinced themselves that emotions are somehow harmful or negative or unwarranted. Somehow by stating one does not justify their actions by emotion, leverages them higher up mentally then those that embrace emotion. Which brings back the insecurity of the first example, and to do what the masses have chosen as the correct path in life. To continue on verbatim, those that take this stance tend to break down their logic to the minutia. Their inner monologue they use as reason instead of emotion, and only view emotion as a 3rd party interaction to their thoughts. Those that deny emotion rarely have the ability to not be initially effected by it, but it's within the later reflection the self realization happens in the inner monologue. Let's take the Spouse example from above: Indeed there is going to be initial feelings of rejection, mistrust etc. But once those are felt a person with a history of self evaluation is going to be able to recognize all the triggers and scenarios that took place for them to feel as they feel. And within that realization of telling yourself the brash truth you are able to defeat the emotion through logic. (Why do I feel rejected? Because I WAS!) Of course you will be upset that a person whom you've associated as a friend has tuned on you. But if one has a history of self evaluation, then one should have certainly realized their past, and realize %100 of their relationships have failed before this person.. Logic and statistics dictate the probability on a long enough timeline that this one too would have failed. It is that type of forethought that allows this type of humanity to embrace the positive and the negative in life, and see it as a learning expereince.
Emotions are the distraction humanity has to lure them away from their conscious thought. Within emotion is a vast array of subconscious conclusions all summarized within an emotion. Humanity loves to wallow within that feeling of emotion, they allow themselves to learn to be controlled by it and thus are powerless later on when they wish to try to and defeat such feelings (jealousy, anger, lust etc)
© Kiehl 2006