Emotion: Man's Greatest Fault
 

I believe that man's greatest fault is emotion.

Factor emotion out of any decision and weigh the pro's and con's based simply on logic and reason and you have an answer that is suits not only the interests of a society, but also one's self interest. Since no man is an island, his self interest is to cooperate harmoniously with society and therefore what is best for him is also best for society. As soon as we factor emotion into any equation, it becomes biased and unbalanced.

In order to further the human race as a whole, we need to stop thinking about people's emotions and more about what is best for the common good of man (or woman)

what a cold, boring, uncareing, world this would be with out emotion.
No love
No art
No music
I'd rather live with the unbalance of emotion, than a cold robotic state.

MUST...RESIST...URGE...TO...QUOTE...SPOCK...

i believe mans greatest fault was the need to become more technologically advanced. some things are good, but they in some of those, it still does some harm. i believe technology has made us stupider and lazier.

No, I don't think so.

Without emotion I'd be some ruthless robotic lunatic who'd rationalize doing anything and everything to further the end of me and my offspring.

Besides, what is the logic in existence? Or life? Too many assumptions to be made for questions we don't really know the answers to. Imagine if we knew that our lives were pointless. What would be the logic in living if we had no purpose?

Also, I don't believe man's self interest is to cooperate harmoniously with society, but to survive and pass down his genes to the next generation.

*shudders

Well, Spock, I happen to disagree on this just a touch! :)

A world without emotion...without love and hope? Without dreams...without the highs and lows? No thank you! Who would wish to live in a perfect, yet robotic world where nothing really mattered.

Humans are emotions...that's what makes us beautiful - we love, hate, cry, laugh, rage, smile....I for one would have it no other way.

I can understand why someone might say that, but....

The emotional is what allows us to connect on many levels that sheer rationality cannot, and brings depth to our experiences. i think we could no more settle for being merely rational as we could settle for being merely emotional.

I can see where you're coming from, but without some emotion, there is nothing to desire and thus nothing to rationalise towards or any reward for doing so. Also, there has been at least one study that showed that emotional reasoning turns up better answers than logical thinking, because logical thinking requires more information than can be easily gathered and processed to make an accurate analysis.

I suppose you may be right. We could advance the greater good of man, by thinking less in terms of the individual.

People with genetic diabilies, such as the handicapped and the disabled should be all sterilised, to prevent them passing on their faulty genetic material. It for the greater good of mankind.

Ohh, and all theists suffer greatly from flawed logic. The world would be better off without their influence. My vote goes to having them all herded into concentration camps.

Hrmmmm...maybe not.

Originally posted by Minx
I couldn't agree more. With out emotions the world would be mellow toned. Emotion is what makes the world go round.:thumbsup:

I posted a thread earlie about this. It was called Morals vs perfection. In the end, it made me realize that perfection is only an illusion, and not worth giving up whats human.

I don't give my emotions more than their due, which is small.
I note them, as they are a part of my ancient evolutionary mid-brain but they do not control my thoughts or behavior - which I prefer to be grounded in my forebrain.

This means I do inner work which is typically involved in rationally over-riding my emotions.

I don't "trust my gut". I don't "go with my instincts". I don't wallow in my emotions. As I said, I note them and give them their due. Then I make rational choices.

It is our human essence.

Hmm somebody is a communist. Emotion is what got us to where we are now. Emotions are a response to a situation. In most cases, emotion was a tool to ensure survival of the species. Granted, we have gotten past the need for emotions in that sense in many ways, but they are still critical to our survival as a species.

Bobaphat,
who is a communist?

human's greatest fault is their self-centeredness.

Sounds like Equilibrium, or Farenheit 451.

That's all I gotta say.

hmmmm
well without emotion, man wouldn't be man. he would simply be another simple animal. Dolphins would be more sophisticated then us if that were the case. No, i think that greed is mans greatest fault. Where emotion can go either way (meaning good or bad) greed has always led to a quasi scary state. for instance, look at donald trump, the roman empire and michael jackson

Do you have any evidence that man is not simply another animal? What makes us different? How do you know what emotions animals do or do not feel?

(Despite the fact i was arguing against emotion being the greatest fault of man)
I didn't say that we weren't animals. The fact that you thought that from my post makes me laugh. I said we would be closer to "simple" animals whose existence as simpler you cannot deny. In regards to what makes us different....duh. if you really want to take that further then feel free to. regarding emotions of animals all i can say is that humans do have the largest brains of all animals known (feel free to correct me if i that is incorrect) modern psychology has taught us that the brain is very instrumental in human emotion....maybe more brain = more distinct emotions. just a thought to ponder.

Emotions are also what makes many worlds stop entirely. It's what leads to war, crime, hate, loathing, etc etc. You eliminate emotion you of course eliminate the positives, but on the other hand you eliminate the negatives. There would be no hate, thus no crime, thus no war, thus no unnecessary death, or loss, or heartbreak, despair, etc etc.

The door does swing both ways. I realize you know this, but I'm making it clear to those that when thinking of emotion they think only for the positive ones. I wouldn't mind a simplified, mechanical world if it meant the negatives were no more... But if that were to ever come to be... What is defined as positive and negative? In a world without emotion those words have virtually no meanings. No one would know what "good" is or what "bad" is... So does that mean we're led into a state of chaos unknowingly since we've no idea of these two principles? Or do we fall into orderly "day-to-day" blahness of a seemingly "utopian" world? Or do we somehow end up back at where we are? No understanding or knowledge of emotion we're led astray and who's to say everyone will follow the same path? Some will go for the utopian direction (Unknowingly), while others would go for the chaos (Unknowingly) and we're right back at where we started. Either way it's a vicious cycle IMO.

Thank you Zips. You said it better than I could. :icare:

Well RTW ... I try... Not really, but it sounds good when people say that they "try."

People who lead their lives like they'd run a company are wrong. All you can really hope for is to have a rich, fulfilling life, and you can't have that without emotions.

There are problems with using logic alone to live one's life by. The biggest problem being that we, as human beings, are incapable of taking all variables into account. This means that we will make mistakes no matter how logically we live.

Another big problem with living your life without emotion is that it's not logical to live. If all we look at is what are the pros and cons of any given action, we're forced to ask all sorts of questions that the only answers to are emotinal ones. Like:

What are the pros and cons of living?

i guess it's true robots and vulcans, aswell as evil geniuses have proven it time and time again.

but yea this world would be "sad" and boring without emotions.

I wouldn't say that emotion is man's greatest fault. But I do think that they are over-rated by our modern society. The idea of being logical is looked on as being "cold" and "inhummane". To me, emotions are just evolutionary mechanisms, which would have preceeded rational thought and intelligence. Almost all of our emotions can be expalined in evolutionary terms.

Take for instance fear. We will use the exapmle of two primitive humans wandering the jungle, having come across a ferocious lion. The first human has the emotion of "fear", sees the roaring beast with massive teeth, and gets scared. He immediately turns around and runs for it. Our second human, decides to consider the consequences. To logically weigh up his options given the situation. He quickly comes to the conclusion, that if he doesn't run away he is going to be killed. Unfortunately for him, it is too late, as the lion has already pounced on him! :D
Also, not only does the emotion of fear, encourage our first man to run away, it makes him run away faster. When we get scared, our hear starts beating faster, we start breating lasrge gulps of oxygen, and our body fills our bloodstream with endorfuns and adrenaline, all of which is beneficial to us for running away. These endorfuns can give us quite a "buzz" which is why we love to get "scared" by horror films and rollercoasters and the like. We "logically" know that the horror film can't hurt us, but we don't emotionally know it, hence our bodygets scared, and we feel excited and feel the "buzz" from the natural drugs in our blood.
It has also been suggested that the reason that you "shit yourself" when you get really scared is so as to make your body as light as possible, again to aid you in making your get away.

Or take what is commonly described as "our most powerful emotion", love. Well consider who it is, that our love is most strongest for: our sexual partner, and our children. Both of these people are vital, in order for you to achieve your ultimate purpose in life; pass on your genetic material. So in essence, you feel a very strong need to protect these people, and ensure no harm comes to them, so you "love" them.

Or take even the emotion of disgust. Again, we have two primitive humans. this time them come across a hunk of rotting meat. The first human sees this and "knows" that it is disgusting, so turns and walk away. The second "logical" human looks at the rotten meat. This meat doesn't look the best, but he's pretty hungry. He comes to the logical conclusion that old meat is better than no meat at all. He of course knows nothing about hyegine, or bacteria, and doesn't realise that eating this rotten meat will make him ill.

So emotion is a by-product of our evolution. Like ART said, its important to ackowledge that your emotion is there, but letting it rule your life, or letting it "over-ride" the logical part of your brain is not a good thing.

Zips, I agree in some was what you are trying to say, but without emotion even if its war, crime, hate, and loathing. It futhers us in every way possible. If we didn't have bad, there would never be any good. If there was no bad, would we even know what good is? Emotion is life, whether its negative or not. :thumbsup:

not everyone's logic works the same way. Strict self-interest doesn't provide for the improvement of society, it's what compels people to seek wealth, usually at the expense of others.

without emotions, how will humanity continue to procreate? What kind of parent doesn't love their children? And if there's no love, there's no marriage. what kind generation is going to arise from these loveless single parent upbringings?

that said, you should check out Nietzsche I know you probably didn't mean parents shouldn't care about their kids, it seems like you'd agree with his brand of philosophy.

It's basically what I said. Without one you can't have the other (Going back to the tendency of man to divide between the utopian society and the chaos). It's just natural, and for all intents and purposes it's a vicious cycle. With the good must come the bad, and vice versa. If you try to play God and travel in just one direction you'll ultimately end up back where you started and thusly trying ot repeat the same cycle maybe on the same path maybe on the complete opposite path, but they still all meet back at their origins.

but to deny emotions is to deny what makes us human..

It's been said already... But really, when you think about it is that such a bad thing sometimes? Humans aren't perfect, denying emotions just means we can't find fault, can't create fault, etc etc. Nor can we create good... Hence the point of all of my posts thus far... Not going into detail for the ... what? Third time now?

That is EXACTLY what I was going to say. You guys that think emotion is our biggest flaw. Watch Equilibrium, or read Bradbury's classic, and tell me if you still think that. Emotion is absolutely vital, there's no way around it.

true the world would be a utopia with out hate or sadness or any other emotion. but where would the fun in life be. we would be nothing more than machines. that defeats the whole purpose of life. no emotion would also mean no enjoyment or fun in life. would you really give everything up to be like that robot on the old star trek shows.

hahahahahahahahah, wow, i didnt bother reading any of the posts, but you need to do some major thinking, think about emotion

All I have to say is that life without emotion isn't life, you aren't living. What you experience, and what you live through is enhanced through one's emotions. True, one shouldn't let themselves be ruled by emotion but that doesn't mean one shouldn't experience it!

earthquakes are not caused by faults in the earth, they're caused by faults in people

Ok, what's the point of living if death has no meaning to you?

No man is an island unto himself... except when he is in the bath.

Descarte's Error
 

Antonio Damasio wrote an interesting psychology book in which he postulated that emotion is what allows us to function rationally. He cited case studies such as Phineas Gage, the guy who had the emotional parts of his brain destroyed when he took a railroad tie through the head in an accident, and subsequently lost his abililty to make logical decisions. Its been awhile since I read the book, but the basic idea was that we react to decisions initially at an emotional and instinctive level, discarding options that don't appeal to us, and allowing us to focus our reason on a small subset of the available choices. Those without the capacity for emotion are unable to make that initial cut, and are overwhelmed by the options surrounding them, completely unable to make decisions. It was a pretty interesting take. His whole point was that we think of rationality as competing with emotion, when they are in reality inextricably bound together.