The Theory of Nothing

Why do humans have emotion?

Why do humans have emotion?

Emotion is defined as either an effective state of consciousness, a feeling, a strong agitation, or a reaction -- to joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or love.

Human emotion is often related to sex, as in Aerosmith’s Sweat Emotion, Samantha Sang’s Emotion, and Mariah Carey’s Emotions, but where did emotions come from?

Psychologists and philosophers have been debating that question for a long time. Scientists say that it’s the result of arousal of the nervous system. Philosophers consider emotions to be subjective and the result of biological reactions often leading to motivation for action, not necessarily in a good way. Psychologists are concerned about mental states, personality traits, moods and temperament. They consider emotions to be part of the human psyche and a barometer of mental health.

Culture (books, movies and video) exploits emotion for monetary gain, often exaggerating it to unbelievable levels. Unbridled anger, intense hatred, and extreme violence are the marks of action movies these days. On the opposite side of this is the BTK serial killer. He showed no emotion at all when talking about how he stalked and killed his victims as if it were just something to do; although he is admittedly a psychopath, a person who is not guided by normal human emotions.

Emotion is certainly related to how we humans evolved, certainly the basic emotions of fear, anger, and lust did. They were essential for survival, and they are often seen in animals.

But, animals don’t feel the empathy related emotions like sorrow, compassion and love. They do feel excitement, surprise, happiness and sadness, which are the basic emotions of infants. Darwin would have considered these basic emotions to be the development of serviceable habits, or something that would be necessary for survival of the fittest. The adaptive emotions are: fear, surprise, disgust, happiness, sadness, anger, pride and shame or embarrassment. The problem is that no one is sure of how these evolved. Some of them were needed for survival, but that’s not an explanation, hence the reason why there are so many theories about emotional evolution.

Obviously, the evolution of a nervous system had a lot to do with the development of emotions. Complicated biological creatures had to have a way of reacting to a savage environment, which often resulted in injury or death. The nervous system allows an animal to see, hear or smell danger and react to it, and once humans evolved, they had to reconcile their rational behavior to this autonomous nervous system’s prodding to raw emotions. Primitive man is often depicted as a brutish wild killer, but if that were the case, we wouldn’t be here. There is no doubt that violence prevailed in early times, but it had to be controlled to a certain extend to avoid complete annihilation of the Homo sapiens species.

Modern society has deemed sex (often called love) to be an action driven by the emotion of lust, but the fact is that lust is the natural automatic response to stimuli in the anticipation of sex. Sex resides in the brain, not the loins, and the brain has been programmed from the beginning to respond in this appropriate manner to ensure the survival of the species. In other words, the brain tells the genitals to do what is necessary. Is that really love?

I believe that love is an emotion driven by the conscious desire for reinforcement of the basic need for recognition and care. The fact that it often leads to sex is secondary. In other words, sex is not love. Sex is sex. So the next time emotion is driving you crazy, remember that it’s the way we humans are designed to be. Or, it’s Andy Gibbs idea for a song. Whatever.

Thanks for reading.