ALL ABOUT EMOTIONS

AWARENESS ABOUT LOVE AND EMOTIONS

EMOTIONS CAN BE USEFUL only if they influence the future, so it is not surprising that they are around mainly by events that change our appraisals of whether we will be able to reach our goal. Events that indicates that our effort will succeed aroused hope. Events that suggests that our efforts are futile, foster despair. We experienced hope and despair, not at the beginning or end, but in the midst of our long-term efforts. These efforts arise from the deep values of culture and their individuals, so social attitudes towards hope for their success and despair st their likely failure are not taken lightly. In fact, most cultures have norms that specify the correct attitudes towards hope and despair. Attempts such as this article, to think about hope and despair are outside of this norms, tends to arouse opposition. So we will proceed slowly at first.

FOR SEVERAL REASONS, social ideologies are biased in favor of hope. First, , and most obviously, hope can relieved suffering, so people naturally prefer it to despair just as they prefer drugs that relieve anxiety to those that cause it. Not only that we prefer hope to despair in ourselves, we have similar strong preferences for others.


CONSCIOUSNESS ABOUT HOPE AND DESPAIR

NOTHING IS MORE GRACEFUL than habitual cheerfulness, which is founded upon a peculiar relish for all the little pleasure which common occurences afford. We readily sympathize with it: it inspires us with the same joy, and makes every trifle turn to us in he same agreeable aspect which it presents itself to the person endowed with this happy disposition. It is quite otherwise with grief. Small vexation excite no sympathy, but deep affliction calls for the greatest. He or she who is made uneasy by every little disagreeable incident, who is hurt if either somebody have failed in the least article of his or her duty, who feels every defeat in the highest ceremonial of politeness, whether it be shown to himself or herself to any other person, who takes it amiss that his or her intimate friends did not bid him or her good-morrow when they meet them in the forenoon.

TO UNDERSTAND THE BENEFITS and the lost of hope and despair, requires a search for the situations in which they give benefits. This in turn, demands a deep look at how natural selection shaped the mechanisms that regulates our behavior, especially the capacities for pleasures and happiness, and pain and sufferings.


THE EVOLUTION OF EMOTIONS

THE BRAIN AND MIND ARE SHAPED by natural selection to serve a global foundation to process information in order to control behavior and physiology in ways that maximize inclusive fitness. Our capacity for enjoyment(especially happiness and pleasure) and suffering(especially pain and sadness) seems to be central components of that mechanism. Their expressions seems tightly linked to the likely effects of a situation on DARWINIAN FITNESS. But have the the capacity for enjoyment and sufferings been shaped by natural selection ?

ATTEMPTS TO ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS aroused confusion and controversy, but they are of profound philosophical and practical importance. Religious, philosophies, political ideologies, and therapeutic system all attributes human suffering to some cause or another, whether desire, social pathology, evil, original sin, economic inequity, distorted thinking, or genetic defects. What are we to make all these apparent irrationality ? The benefits of commitment strategies may explain much. An individual can strongly influence the behavior of others by convincing them that he or she will do something that is not in his or her best interests. It is one thing to experience hope or despair for oneself. But it is something else to have a sense that all life or all societies, or all people are a source for hope or despair.

DESPAIR IS USEFUL AT TIMES FOR INDIVIDUALS, BUT AT THE SOCIAL LEVEL IT PERPETUATES THE STATUS QUO. HEREIN LIES A PARADOX—- HOPE AT THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL IS FUNDAMENTALLY CONSERVATIVE, BUT HOPE AT THE SOCIAL LEVEL, DEEPLY THREATENS THOSE ON TOP.