Love help: What is the purpose of “emotions”? - Help.com

Emotions are great… and terrible. They help you from danger and discomfort, with things like hate for people who need it. They made life more worth living - boredom is a surprisingly big cause for suicide. But of course they can sometimes go wrong and hurt you instead of protect you.

emotions make us human, help us deal with things-er maybe not they are what we produce when situations are handed to us

emotions are like the clothes we wear, somedays you have fat days where nothing seems to feel right and you feel down and depressed, and other days you have great days when the whole thing just clicks and you look and feel a million dollars, the trick is to learn to use the fat days to motivate you into always getting up and thinking “today i am going to feel and look great”… thats just my take on it…

gentry41u wrote:
Emotions are God’s gift to us to seperate man from animals. I know we like to think that animals show emotion, ie, the sad eyed puppy, but animal behavior is all instict. Because of emotion, we are the stewards of all creation on earth. Our emotions guide our senses to react to and care for our surroundings. They also enable us to engage one another, in both possitive and negative ways. The most wonderful aspect of this gift to me is that each emotion has a counter. Happy has sad, joy has hurt, boldness has fear.

I think animals do have emotion. You can see when a dog’s been left without its parents how afraid and upset it gets, even to an irrational point.

I think thats the main difference between instint and emotion - being rational.

X_GC_X. Yes animals do have some emotions. The most commom one being fear.

AmandaLyn.

I dont know if this is going to help, http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/exhib…

Emotions are the language of the soul.

I like this post. Let me chip in my random two cents.

I think that emotions might be the evolved form of our primal instincts. Primal instincts are the pre-wired brain physiology that we derive our basic survival concepts from: self preservation and reproduction being the two big ones (there are other communal ones of hierarchy, territorialism etc). That isn’t to say those primal instincts don’t continue to seeth, but with the development of rational congnitive/creative thought “emotions” are the primary outlet for them, or the primary manifestation of them. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t access that primal instinct or that it can’t take over in times of crisis (when you need to, or when you least want to). The link between “emotions” and your physiology (skin crawling in fear, nervous sweaty palms, tears of joy/sorrow/anger, etc) speaks to this I think.

I am by no means an expert, but it seems to me when those primal instincts “cross wires” with the communal primal instincts of hierarchy and territorialism, and someone doesn’t have an appropriate “emotional” release for them, thats where you get deviation (and hence the serial killers, the stalkers, the rapists, the spouse beaters). I’m just speculating now.

Actually, this whole reply has been speculation. I must now go fulfill my primal need to consume a mars bar.

i feel that emotions are here to allow people to have a way to feel love and be happy or sometimes to just help them get through emotional happenings (e.g. a death of someone close) or a happy emotion of having a wedding

i think they are useful because they help people in different ways

Humans have a tenancy to Anthropomorphize inanimate objects. Things that are good, we “love” (an emotion) things that are bad, we hate (an emotion)

I believe that emotions gave us an additional strategy for survival ‘back in the day’
-Emotions were the reason why we are monogamous, better chances for offspring survival
-Emotions are a pre-curser to verbal launguage, examples are apes, who do other physical acts to make bonds.
- Emotions are also a way for ones self to judge their health. I feel bad (emotionally, not physically) means that the self Needs something, food (for hunger), Sunlight/ Vit D. (melatonin/ seratonin release)

X_GC_X wrote:
I think thats the main difference between instint and emotion - being rational.

Here Here X GC X!!!
Couldn’t agree more

Emotions are life
you cant live without love or anger
you always cry and laugh
you can be happy or sad
Emotions are everything

Pip pip Ali. I think we’re two sides of the same coin. I read a book last year called the Dictionary of Instincts (don’t ask me who the author was!) that mirrors your premise I think: that human behaviour is animal behavour tempered by limitless intellect.

Sometimes rational intellect fails miserably, though. A good example would be something like road-rage which is so territorially and hierarchically primal that it overrides the little rational voice in some berserker’s head saying “let’s just put down the tire iron and get home in time for the news, please?”.

i think emotions are what make us differnet if we did’int have the ability to feel or expeariance stuff for our-selfs we would all be basicly the same

tictactomm wrote:
Pip pip Ali. I think we’re two sides of the same coin. I read a book last year called the Dictionary of Instincts (don’t ask me who the author was!) that mirrors your premise I think: that human behaviour is animal behavour tempered by limitless intellect.

I am not talking about “limitless intellect” just the opposite, our ID! We subconsciously do things, like assign human like emotions to inanimate objects. I am hypothesizing that this is an adaption that allowed us to be more successfully species.

Thanks for clarifying. I mentioned intellect because that’s where I think the ability to “anthropomorphize” exists. I would respectfully argue that assigning human-like emotions to inanimate objects falls in the relm of speculative thought and imagination (intellect) more so than ID. The Id, to me, is a collective of all those basic primal instincts that drive us.