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CopyRight @ 2006
Now here is a slippery subject if there ever was one. Still, I have to
discuss it or this section and the ending of this book just is going to
be missing important parts. The problem is that it is perhaps inherently
a bit beyond me, but that is the point. It seems likely to be the most
important potential that humans can develop. It is like developing
speech. Right now, in terms of emotion, we have only learned to grunt
back and forth. So here are a few things I have figured out or speculated
about.
I remember an essay where it was asked if a committee of chimpanzees
discussing future evolution for the specie would have chosen for reduced
strength and loss of hair while selecting for greater intelligence and
language ability. This is almost like that. In terms of artificial
selection though, it is going to be very difficult to select for
emotional potentials with such a limited knowledge of them.
Some researchers have examined the question. There is even various
descriptions of Emotional Quotient (EQ) offered. There is a lot of
disagreement over what EQ is, which makes sense for such a slippery
subject. It is generally called the ability to understand ones own
emotions and the emotions of others. It may also refer to the ability to
control ones own emotions and the emotions of others. It has been
referred to as the ability to reason with emotions.
Still, the understanding of EQ is clearly limited so I will offer what I
have observed and guessed. This is not meant to be authoritative, but it
does describe emotions enough to relate to the descriptions of emotion
used in this book.
Again, this is a situation where I had better explain my personal
position to put what I say in context. Whatever EQ is, it seems to run in
my family and especially in me. My emotions are strong, fluid and change
rapidly. Strong is going to be that hard part to usefully explain. It's
almost like voltage. People run at different natural levels. Levels can
change when a person is stimulated. When a person yells "Fire" and means
it, their emotions are picked up and replicated by all those that pick
them up.
Emotions communicate and are contagious. If a person is in an emotional
mood, they often cause others to take on that mood. This may be natural
mirror modeling of behavior, but it seems to be more. It causes people to
work as a group. It (EQ) apparently gives social leaders the ability to
get people to work together.
People can resist EQ pressure from others, probably to the degree that
they are aware of it and th the level of their own EQ. EQ seems also to
be one of those behaviors, like aggressiveness and creativity, that
responds to alpha suppression. A strong (EQ) alpha tends to suppress the
use of EQ around them, though less than it occurs with aggressiveness and
creativity.
I smile all the time. I do this because I have learned that since my
emotions are very strong, people almost always pick up on them. That is
sort of OK, but they also change very rapidly. That is not OK. It
eventually grates on people as if I am talking too loud and fast. I would
be shy if I could, but it's not possible with my physical and emotional
presence. I used to try to not effect people around me. It was useless.
They just naturally pick up on my emotions. I took to the habit of
smiling all the time and projecting humor. It seems to be the only strong
emotional state that doesn't get on peoples nerves. Unfortunately, if
they are around me for any length of time, they start to pick up that the
emotions do change rapidly and they get uncomfortable.
My emotional nature works in odd ways. Sometimes it makes me sensitive to
others emotions, sometimes it makes me oblivious. I really don't like
picking up on peoples emotions. They are very revealing and humans are so
weak, that what I sense are often unpleasant such as loneliness, fears and insecurities. No, I'm not claiming superiority here, I'm just explaining things so that perhaps an understanding can be achieved.
Now if a person makes me angry, after a time I tend to achieve a deep
understanding of them. This is where things get a bit interesting. I
don't work at an understanding. It's not conscious figuring or
calculating, but I reach a deep understanding of the person. Not too
surprisingly, when someone is angry enough to get my attention, I usually
find somewhat aberrant behavior. Now it is a bit interesting that when I
understand a person, I am usually sympathetic and tend not to be angry
with them no matter how aggravating they may be. What is very interesting
is that I strongly suspect my ability to identify with them and
understand them comes from my ability to love. This and other things make
me suspect that emotions have the potential to be a communication method
as refined and precise as words. Perhaps emotions even can make a logic
that reflects the physical or maybe just the mental world.
I have experimented with communicating with emotions, one of those
college days things and found it to be surprisingly effective. I really
haven't focused on exploring it much since then, but I do use it and it
works pretty good when I want to. It surprises people. For me at least,
it is still limited if words are not used. Also, I think this is one of
those things that tends to be a non-verbal, right brain capability.
Another interesting thing is as emotions relate to memes, whatever they
are. It only seems reasonable that memes can contain emotional messages
and content. I mention this because sometimes I pick up emotional
components from beliefs/memes that have come to us from history. Often I
can sense them better from other peoples perceptions of the messages than
from my own perceptions.
In any case, the conclusions of my views on emotions have never been
particularly articulated, partly because it is such a difficult subject.
Still, according to what I have put in the conclusions to my book, it is
of paramount importance to future human evolution. It seems that emotions
can be developed to have far more importance and utility for
communication than they even do now, as well as for analysis and perhaps
even reasoning. They certainly have powerful effects when used for
communication. They can also be contained in memes. Emotions are
important and are going to warrant a great deal more examination in the
future.
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