Sleepy thoughts on the origins of emotions.

If anxiety can be considered an emotional response with its own evolutionary purpose then surely all emotions have an evolutionary necessity. I imagine jealousy to be beneficial in order to keep others from potentially taking away our mate, thus reducing our chances of passing on our genes. I imagine that animals who fight (like so many do) over mates feel what we could call jealousy. It would seem that anger has similar origins as well. Anger is basically aggression and when we think of what makes us angry it is often centred around humiliation and potential mates again. There are more things to consider for example I am unable to explain why a child repeatedly asking “why?” as a response to a previous answer might manifest anger. I could only explain certain pet peeves as a result of upbringing and environmental factors at this point unfortunately. Humiliation is important because we are highly social animals and belonging to a group is important for our genes survival and so anything that might separate us from a group is bound to result in aggression. Potential mates are fought over continuously in nature as a result of the female of the species being often quite choosey with who fertilizes her egg. The competition is hot amongst the males who wish to mate with as many sexually mature females as possible, but the female has to carry the burden of pregnancy which may take many months, in which time the male could fertilize a very large amount of females. By being choosey, the female is giving her genes the best chance at survival and not wasting precious time on young that would not survive. In the midst of anger or jealousy, people are rarely able to consider the genetic reasoning behind the emotions. If they did, they might find that the emotion becomes drastically less intense than it was prior to the realisation. These emotions are easy enough to explain, though I may not have explained them too articulately, but as of the moment I am unable to explain emotions such as sorrow and happiness. Granted that these emotions are just labels for emotional responses but that doesn’t make them any less real. Happiness and sorrow definitely do exist. Perhaps when I experience these feelings I’m just another animal, caught up in the moment and unable to rationalise. The closest I can get to explaining happiness and sorrow would be to explain pleasure and pain. Both are opposite ends of the spectrum but we wouldn’t call them the same thing by any means. Pleasure has evolved to persuade us into doing something beneficial for our genes. It’s no secret that sex sits around the top on most peoples lists of pleasurable things. Interestingly though, people may also place eating certain foods, for example chocolate, at the top of the list too. There is a correlation here, both result in pleasure because both are (or at least were) beneficial to our genes survival. We seek to reproduce not because we want to have children but because we enjoy the pleasure of sex. We eat not because we need to fuel our bodies but because we enjoy eating. Dawkins states that the gene obviously could have had no idea (obviously) that animals might evolve to exploit these pleasures to such a degree that it stops being beneficial. I feel like I am really butchering the amazing work of Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene with my feeble attempts and so I would strongly recommend reading it yourself. Pain, rather obviously, works in exactly the opposite way and barely warrants an explanation at all. What we see as painful is also often obviously damaging to our bodies, and that remains a concern for the logical part of our brain as well as the instinctive. I am unable to explain things that make me happy, such as brilliant thunderstorms and heavy rain or amazing views of natural beauty. I would really love to read in to this more if I could find a book by a respectable scientist of sorts. Anyway, it’s quite late now and I’m rambling in a sort of half-asleep daze. I apologise for not uploading any art, this is an art blog after all, and I also apologise for my poor explanations and theories surrounding emotions. When I’m more awake I might have stood a better chance of making it clear, but for now you will just have to put up with it or read a Dawkins book. SWEET DWEEEMS.