The Nature of Emotion
March 9, 2006
One of the defining characteristics of human nature is that of structure. Generally speaking, we prefer a degree of order in our daily lives as opposed to utter chaos. Governments arose out of unstructured societies in an attempt to bring order to anarchical civilizations. Those governments imposed laws and regulations to bring structure and predictable consequences to it’s citizens. Regardless of the type of government or its method of rule, some sort of order is achieved by the structuring of society.
The basic structure of society trickles down into all aspects of civilization. From grocery shopping lists to office supply stores filled with contraptions and devices created to organize our desks, attempts at categorical organization abound. We’ve created hierarchies, labels, and elaborate technical jargon to make the world around us “fit”. We even pass moral judgments on things which, innately, have no capability for morality. Good… bad… evil… positive… negative… all words used to describe a plethora of life’s “things”.
Emotions are one of those “things” that are often categorized by moral terms. Incorrectly, I might add.
You’ve probably been told, or even thought, that something you were feeling was bad… or wrong. Some emotions carry positive connotations: happiness, joy, cheer… to name a few. Others carry negative connotations: anger, rage, jealousy, anxiety. And still others can swing either way.
These moral judgments are applied to emotions because of the anticipated behavior they elicit in those people experiencing them. For example, it is expected that someone who is happy will be pleasant to be around, generous towards others, or a source of good conversation. On the other hand, we expect someone who is angry to be confrontational, irritable, or even violent. These expectations have a tendency to cast unwarranted associates on the emotions themselves.
However, the nature of emotion is neutral… no innate “goodness” or “evilness”. Emotion simply… is.
You see, emotions enter into being on a flat, level playing field. Joy is no more good than rage is evil. Jealousy has no more tendency to corrupt than fear has to send us to flight. As I said before… the emotions are neutral. How we process, cope with, deal with, and respond to those emotions is the true source of “good” or “evil”. The thoughts and actions that lead to our emotional responses may also be morally biased. But again, the actual emotions are not.
I’ll illustrate with my previous example of happiness. We generally believe happiness to be a good emotion… a positive one. But what happens when happiness goes too far? What happens when happiness goes unchecked? It can turn into mania. And despite the positive connotations associated with happiness, mania is by no means a “good” thing. People experiencing mania are prone to racing, uncontrollable thought and speech. They become excessive, even to the point of being harmful to themselves or someone else. Ultimately, if left untreated, mania can lead to psychotic episodes and a complete break with reality.
What of the motivating thoughts or behaviors that can trigger happiness? Serial criminals and murders find happiness in their acts. They enjoy watching the life slip from another human. They enjoy brutalizing others and their property. And while this is by no means a common, healthy emotional reaction to crime, it cannot be invalidated as genuine emotion. Those individuals honestly experience the same emotional response to crime that I experience in response to eating an entire large pizza by myself. You would be hard pressed to rationalize happiness as a “positive” emotion in that regard.
When some people become angry they lash out. They act out against others or become unpleasant to be around. Sometimes their anger explodes into rage and they become violent. Most people would label these feelings and behaviors as “bad”. I wouldn’t argue with them. But what of the people who become angry at injustice and are spurred to fight that injustice civilly, and peacefully? What of the people who turn their anger into change or reform? Are these things considered “bad”?
Hopefully these examples illustrate my point. Emotions are neither good nor bad. Emotions have no moral amplitude of their own. Emotions are not the direct cause of any of the actions associated with them. The thinking and the processing of the individual is what shapes any sort of moral slant that we might associate with emotion. You and I could both become angry over the same incident. You choose to start a petition to make change. I choose to blow up the neighborhood association office. Same emotion… different response. Your choice was based on the belief that change manifests through peaceful opposition. My choice was based on the belief that terror creates change. We felt the same thing, but we processed the situation differently. And look at the difference it made.
Understanding the neutral nature of emotion is paramount to understanding emotion in general. Without such an understanding, our emotional journey will be prone to slips of prejudicial thinking and bias. Before you can truly understand something, you must understand the nature of it.
Part 2 of The Emotional Roller Coaster: Taking the Track Apart. Please visit the Series page for a complete index of all related posts.
Posted in Emotions, Human Nature, Noteworthy, Series
July 13th, 2006 at 10:12 pm
[...] Anger is one of the emotions we normally apply a negative connotation to, even though it really is neither negative or positive. It’s actually quite normal to feel anger and all part of the emotional roller coaster. It’s unavoidable. Even the most passive of specimens can and will eventually become angry over something. [...]
April 1st, 2007 at 7:47 pm
I need a little bit of your advice. If you were confronted with someone who was very angry and was yelling at you, how would you try to calm them down? If this same angry person decided to throw and break things in a room, how would you deal with this person?
April 2nd, 2007 at 9:12 pm
As soon as someone becomes loud or violent I leave. I tell them I don’t respond to violence and I leave. Once they’re calmer, we can talk.
Constructive dialog can’t take place in the presence of violence and raised tempers.
Of course… at the hospital we had a different approach to dealing with violence :P But those options aren’t usually available to us on the outside.