Are Emotions Unnatural?

[Mole]

Logic is just a tool to achieve an end. What makes logical sense depends on your objective. What is a human's objective? It's to feel a particular way, otherwise there would be nothing to motivate us to action and we would wither away. It seems because he can't personally relate to others' experiences, he can't understand why certain emotions or even physical pains would arise, but it doesn't mean these things don't exist, or that they exist for no reason.

Yes, GoggleGirl17, you are right, logic is a tool, and a tool created by Euclid in Ancient Greece, 3,000 years ago, and used today on our mobile phones.

And we create our tools, and our tools create us, in particular logic teaches us to think in a particular way. Logic teaches us to think in a linear and sequential way.

Logic teaches us to think one step at a time, and building on each step before it.

By contrast, emotion responds to our environment, both internal and external. Emotion is not linear and sequential, rather emotion is immediate and global.

So logic saves us from the tyranny of the immediate and the global, while emotion saves us from building one step at a time, emotion saves us from the pedestrian.

So logic and emotion dance together, a marriage made in heaven.

[EcK]

The limbic system is an organic set of structures within the human brain that support/process emotion (among other things like memory, etc). I’d probably ask him to explain how a concrete aspect of human anatomy is ‘unnatural.’ That’s just silly.

Human emotion serves an array of natural functions (survival of the self, survival & proliferation of the species, threat detection & response, learning, list goes on). The regulation/reactions to those emotions are multidimensionally influenced by bio/psycho/social factors. Some of it is directly related to individual inborn brain structure; some is learned. Emotions in the most basic core sense are not learned, though. And that said, it should be noted that learning & conditioning are also natural processes.



Emotion plays a key role in learning & memory on both physical & cognitive levels. Mind-body connection. It’s perfectly reasonable for various experiences we have to impact the quality of our sleep, going off the OP example. For instance, a combat veteran with PTSD will have conditioned overactive startle-responses that make them wake easily from deep sleep in an alert, defensive state. This is not a voluntary act they can simply choose not to have. They are literally unconscious when it takes place.



I sense some projection/repression on his part, & perhaps a lack of general education about that big hunk of matter that occupies the top half of his head...

Emotions are totally natural, although icky.

[Lexicon]

Emotions are totally natural, although icky.

Don’t you mean, “EcKy”?

[captain curmudgeon]

Sounds like this guy definitely has some issues he needs to work through.

[EcK]

Don’t you mean, “EcKy”?

You're right, I meant to kick you.

[Coriolis]

Emotions are totally natural, although icky.

Hence my comparison with elimination of bodily wastes.

[Polaris]

The correct term for emotions is not, in my opinion, unnatural but supernatural. To emote is to get in touch with something beyond time and space, something eternal. What is it? No one knows, but it is always there, working behind the scenes.

[Dareyth]

Unnatural no, but uniquely out of place... yes. Our biology hasn't caught up to our lifestyles.

[Mole]

Of course the emotions of a false self are unnatural, because a false self is unnatural.

The false self is counterfeit, as are the emotions of a false self.

The narcissist operates a false self, and is validated by other false selves.

And there is nothing more the narcissist hates than the truth, because it exposes the narcissist to the world.

[Mole]

Fortunately we cater to the narcissist by providing sixteen ready made false selves in mbti. And these false selves are validated by all the other false selves. Mbti is a narcissists paradise, the very home of the false self.

Mbti is the very home of unnatural emotion. We are all actors on a stage imitating our film star celebrities, who are fake down to the bone marrow, just like us.

We marinate in the warm sludge of our unnatural emotions, and are proud of our false self and our unnatural emotions, and even our parents are proud of us.

To start to discover our true self, all we need to do is to start telling the truth and having natural emotions, but telling the truth is risky. We risk social disapproval, we risk social rejection, and some of our natural emotions are painful.

At first we don't know who we are, but slowly, with every time we tell the truth, a true self is being born.