emotion

There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours." . . Arnold Bennett (1867-1931)

When thoughts are worrying it is because of their emotions and other feelings. Thoughts alone are neutral and almost meaningless. Feelings are needed to give them enough importance to explore and commit to memory.

Without the colouring of emotions and feelings each thought has equal weight and passes through consciousness without attracting attention. Random associations collect into an encyclopedia of trivia rather than organise into concepts and theories.

Emotions are needed for purposeful thinking. Complex thinking and theories only develop when emotions weight and prioritise ideas and motivate us to make sense of them. So logic is emotional.

Thoughts and emotions can't be understood separately because they share so many pathways and locations in the body. Emotions colour thoughts and thoughts comment on emotions. And they set each other off.

communication
Emotions are the foundation of communication. They are irresistibly infectious (even between species) and take over the body and shape decisions. They are hypnotic.

awareness
Emotions can evaluate situations quicker and more comprehensively and accurately than words or other symbols but are less noticed in industrialised societies where intellect predominates.

social regulation
Emotions and similar feelings create our values by evaluating objects, people and situations.

Love, fear, rage, satisfaction, yearning, shame, humiliation and rejection shape relationships and regulate obligations, rights and intimacy. Each society cultivates awareness of just a few of the countless possible shades of these emotional states. Others go unrecorded without stories or words for them. This selection is the unique signature of a community - its temperament - the lens through which it views the world.

Communities break down when negative emotions, threats, violence and punishment replace empathy, sharing and cooperation.

survival
Emotions guide and motivate us through the maze of every day events by showing us what we like and what we don't. They alert us to the importance of incidents and memories. Nothing is important without an emotion. They detect opportunities and dangers and prepare the body and the mind to act.

Both optimism and pessimism are life saving in the right place and time but lethal if misplaced. Emotions are essential for survival. They imprint vivid memories of life threatening events and arouse us to respond instantly to anything similar that comes our way.

When emotions are dulled we don't know the importance of a thought. Drugs and relaxation exercises dull unbearable emotions but also disrupt emotional intelligence. They obscure the uncomfortable feelings that tell us what is going on, motivate us to change and get out of the path of oncoming disaster.

Mind, body, health and relationships deteriorate if they are not fine tuned by emotions. Prolonged misery, rage, despair or suffering signal that emotions are stuck or exhausted.

The exercises and links on the mind, stress and body intelligence pages show how to expand the vocabulary of feelings, sensations and emotions and also tap into their knowledge and intelligence.

copyright (C) John Brasted 2008
updated 21. Feb. 2012

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