Let’s get back to the roots. What even are Emotions? /Part 1

It’s Christmas time, I’m chilling all by myself binge-watching Hawkeye (The new Marvel tv-show), with some delicious snacks and peaceful silence, excited about every episode I start. What could I ask for more? Suddenly out of nowhere, I had this confusing yet curious thought. Why am I excited? and what is excitement in the first place? Is it an emotion? What even are emotions? I don’t know, but like every like-minded introvert does. It’s time to get to work to try to answer this question that many scientists have tried to answer a long time ago.

I’ve always been interested in philosophy, thinking about life, observing nature, and just wondering how and why everything is the way it is. But I give emotions really big importance because the more I think about them the more thought-provoking questions I have, and also because I partially understand how they shape our daily life, our future, and our reality.

This is what you’re going to explore with me in this article.

Just a quick note before we start, everything I say is not considered as “True” nor as “False”. My main purpose is to share my ideas in an entertaining way and you can then form your own point of view.

Anyway, let’s Begin.

What are Emotions?

Emotions are inter-connected cognitive and physical responses interpreted through our conscious mind and our body resulting from events that can be attributed as the cause of the emotion based on the type of it (anger, love …).

What the hell does that even mean?

It explains that when we are conscious and living, our brain is constantly calculating and doing whatever he’s doing. And a part of that is determining whether to feel an emotion or not according to the situation you’re experiencing.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re walking and your phone just fell on the ground and smashed. How would that make you feel? Angry? But…What exactly made you angry in the first place?

Your brain IS the one telling you to be angry (inter-connected cognitive responses) and being angry means doing a bunch of things like shouting (physical responses) while being aware of it (Your conscious mind and your body).

Now you’re getting the idea!

But let’s not forget an important factor that plays a big role in the equation, your past determines how you feel. If you have a shitty phone and all your data is in the cloud, it won’t probably make you angry.

You can clearly see how emotions are so complicated, our brain uses an uncalculated amount of factors to determine whether you should feel an emotion or not. Concerning how he determines the type of emotion according to the situation, that’s another subject in itself.

What we discussed is a fraction of how big and complicated emotions are, even with all the technological advancement and all the evolution of humans both socially and intellectually, we are still incapable of knowing everything about them. (You can see why I’m fascinated by them).

Most of the previous well-known philosophers explained that emotions have phases and effects in which resides their fundamental structure and the way they operate, which explains their affective nature. The meaning of the word “affect” is that emotions affect behavior, attitude, thoughts… Which is widely studied, to know and understand the effects of emotions on the person’s psychology.

Emotions are created in 2 phases (based on my research and thoughts), the first step is the stimulus or the trigger and the interpretation of that stimulus on our brain, the second step is our awareness of that physical response and our awareness of that emotion.

During the stimulus phase (according to what seems logical to me), there must be a fundamental structure to let the brain project the emotion in our mind and our body (besides what the brain already has which is a bunch of processes to know which emotion is which). There is a reference that our brain checks to say that it’s time to feel that emotion, and how intensified it should be. It might be memories, it might be a specific process, I don’t know.

But, let’s make a study case to understand the stimulus phase clearly. Let’s suppose that John went through a trauma in the past that makes him anxious around a lot of people. A friend invited him to a party and now he found himself in the middle of a room full of people, 5 mins later the anxiety attack kicks in. His heart is pounding, his body is sweating and he can’t breathe correctly. All he is thinking about is to get out of there.

Let’s analyze this!

John’s brain knows that being around a lot of people is a trigger to an anxiety attack. How? He uses human senses (hearing, seeing, smelling…) to know when John is around people and when he's not. He (John’s brain) also uses memories to check if there is an additional factor that plays a role in the anxiety attacks, such as a special experience or a special memory.

This is the interpretation part.

After knowing that it’s time for anxiety, his brain uses what he already has (human nature) to know what anxiety's physical effects are and to make him feel them (increase in heartbeat rate, sweating, can’t breathe correctly…).

This is the physical response part.

That’s it!

Interpretation of the event to know if it’s a trigger to what, and then the physical response.

The second phase is the awareness phase that includes the awareness of the physical response and the awareness of the emotion.

Everything that John’s brain did (interpretation and physical response) he is aware of the results. John knows that he is feeling anxiety and he is aware of his physical responses. Why? Because it’s simply his brain.

Therefore he knows what his brain is doing (like we all do) and he also knows that he is feeling anxious because of being around a lot of people. So what does John do? He gets out immediately to a place where he can be alone until he is calm again.

It’s almost like John’s brain is doing the work of emotional survival, and he is showing the results to John’s awareness aka John, and then John can choose what to do with those results, listen to them or deny them.

A question occurs here, What makes John himself? or what makes a person a person? Stay tuned because I will definitely talk about it in the next articles.

Of course, he could have stayed in that room enduring the pain of his anxiety attack. But then we will enter into the subject of pain which is a vast topic even if it is connected to this one as well (Let’s get more in-depth in part 2)

There’s a lot to say concerning emotions, it’s a very curious natural phenomenon to think about both from the biological and the philosophical side. It let us understand socialism and some hidden aspects of life that we don’t fully understand yet.

Why Emotions?

This is probably the toughest question in this article since it requires a lot of “outside of the box” thinking, nevertheless, the probability to answer such questions is extremely low knowing that we have problems giving meaning to our existence. But that doesn’t stop us from trying to accumulate enough knowledge, because the purpose isn’t to know everything but to know enough to form an opinion and a perspective.

Emotions are a part of every human being, he is born with them and will die with them, so it only makes sense to try to understand how it works and why there are here in the first place.

This section will be divided into two parts, the first part is going to discuss the emotions in individuals and society.

Emotions in Individuals

Logical thinking is great, but sometimes our logic can fail us because we fall into a paradoxical chain of thinking in which the results are contradictory yet true at the same time. The best example for this is the emotion “Love”, you can’t explain it and you can’t explain why you fall in love with a specific person but it is most likely that a lot of people has the same qualities as the person you’re falling for, so it simply doesn’t make any sense why you’re choosing this specific person to fall for, it’s almost like it is without your consent. You didn’t choose what to “like” in a person, the perfect example is that if you can’t choose where you’re born, you can’t choose what you’re born with (Emotions, Genetics…).

Nevertheless, it is there to be felt and to be experienced, as well as all the emotions we have. We can say that when logic fails us, emotions are there to give us a hand of advice to make us better judge the current situation.

Another example is, let’s say you’re building a business and you’re facing some difficulties concerning the business strategy to make it stand from the ground, logically thinking the chances for you to make it are extremely low, but then comes the “Having Faith” emotion where you feel positive energy to get up and work, you don’t know why or how but you feel that you can make it.

A perfect paradox example is that logically speaking the chances for you to make it are extremely low, like I mentioned previously, therefore closing this business and avoiding the idea is the correct choice. But from another logical side, you should in fact go against all these odds because it’s the most humane thing you can do.

It’s almost like my logic tells me to do it and not do it at the same time.

You can see what I’m talking about.

This shows clearly how emotions can play a big role to help us perceive what we can’t with logic, it’s a form of intelligence in itself, that’s why it’s called “Emotional Intelligence”, and understanding it with evaluative thinking is a hard skill to acquire.

Emotions in Society

Society is a complex organism in which there are a lot of contributing factors to its behavior and evolution, and one of them is emotions. Emotions are shaping every society. The human’s desire (Let’s call the desire, for now, an emotion) to make life easier by evolving in technology, the desire to grow financially as a society, all of the these are driven by our desire (which is an emotion) to live a better life.

Therefore, isn’t logical to think that our life is driven by emotions? That all we do is because of our emotions?

I know that this is a hard truth to swallow, but if we think logically, all we do is because of our emotions.

We work because we want to make money, to live a happy life, to have great kids, or to simply enjoy life as it is. We can’t do “something” that is in fact contradictory to our emotions because it simply can’t exist. It’s just like saying “Not feeling is a feeling”.

Even if it seems that people who “prefer” to alone are going against their emotions but they are in fact listening to an emotion of being special (I’m guilty of it too)

And all this vortex of emotions, behaviors… is just in one person, so you can imagine if we multiply it in society.

Emotions in society and in individuals are both linked to each other, they both influence each other. Your emotions as a person influence your behavior, and your behavior influences society’s behavior, it’s a cycle where the thing that is influencing, is getting influenced. It’s a very thought-provoking idea to think about.

This clearly shows the importance of emotions in our daily life, it’s shaping our decisions and our future. That’s why it’s quite important to learn about them as much as possible because… Why not?

Hey!

Congrats, you’ve made it this far. I hope you learned something from this article, as my main goal in everything I write is to do the thinking for you and present it in a simple way!

Now what I want you to do is think about what I wrote, and share your ideas in the comments. I would LOVE that.

If you’re interested in learning more about emotions here’s a website you can check.

Part 2 is on the way! Until then stay safe!