In which Wolf explains why your emotions aren't so illogical after all. Check out these episodes on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/QL7v5KvHybc
When you play a game, and you realize that the other person, or side, team, whatever, has been cheating, what do you feel? Most people would say they get angry. But why do we get angry? It seems like an important question to me. Because my idea of a good time, of an evening, is debating. Politics, religion, or other controversial topics. Not so much online, because that's kind of a cesspool, but in person where I have the opportunity to better get to know the person I'm talking to, and to also learn something. A lot of my beliefs have been shaped by conversations I've had where I disagree with the person I'm talking to, they disagree with me, and we're searching for higher truth together. And that's truly one of the best experiences I've ever had is having my mind changed by somebody who disagrees with me because they know the topic better, they have deeper insight, and I get integrate that and make that a part of my existence.
In the past, some of the debates I've been in, even going all the way back to my childhood, and it still happens occasionally, I'll be talking with a person, and then I'll discover myself getting angry. And when I've expressed this anger the other person usually jumps on it, and essentially claims victory in the debate because I've gotten angry. It isn't because they were right or because they had a better viewpoint, it was because I was angry. It's like, aha! You're angry, right? So I had a hard time understanding why I would sometimes, not always, get angry. Until I realized that most of the time when people debate, they're not actually looking for deeper understanding. They're defending their preexisting beliefs.
Okay, so, follow this here with me.
People hold their beliefs so strongly sometimes, that they begin to identify with them. They actually feel that they are their beliefs. They're one and the same. And when people identify with their beliefs, any challenge to their beliefs is literally a challenge to them as a person. It's a challenge to their very existence. When your life is threatened you feel fear. And when you're fearful, you fight, flee or hide. The problem is that accepting that your beliefs could be different, or better, to many people who identify with their beliefs, it feels like death. And when we're threatened with imminent death, we pull all the stops to avoid that. Including cheating at the game.
In the case of a supposedly friendly debate, cheating takes a lot of forms. Like starting to talk about who your opponent is. "Well that's just how you are," you know, "That's the kind of person you are." Your gender, or your political ideology or whatever, instead of what they're actually saying, their argument. This is called "Ad Hominem," which is Latin for "arguing to the person," or, "arguing to the man," instead of arguing at what the person is actually saying. And this is something I'm going to get into a lot later on this channel, but right now, there's just a whole bunch of ways that people cheat. I often think of them as low blows. And as I mentioned at the start, when someone cheats at a game, we feel angry. I felt angry. But until we understand the proper purpose of emotions, then it's easy to misunderstand our own emotions. Or lose control of them. Or let other people use our own justified emotions against us.
The fact is that every emotion has a proper purpose. What I call a justification. That doesn't mean that every expression of emotion is justified. In fact, in our society today people are confusing emotion with truth. Often referring to their feelings as their truth. This is terribly damaging to society, and it's something that I am definitely fighting against. Am I angry? Yeah, I'm kind of angry because this is not healthy. This is actually tearing our society down. You know, and I'll talk about it another time, but I believe that anger is justified. There's a rational reason for it. And when there's a rational reason for something, then that actually means you have a cause for action.
So, emotions in and of themselves aren't the problem. In fact, properly understood, emotions give us deep insight into our deepest values and can be used as tools for effective understanding and communication. There are lots of emotions, and people disagree on the find points of what actually counts for an emotion, of quality, or state of being or whatever. So in this video I'm going to keep it really simple, I'm going to focus on five. The big five emotions that Pixar portrayed in their wonderful movie "Inside Out." These emotions are: anger, fear, sadness, disgust and joy. I'm mostly going to state each emotions purpose in this video. In future episodes I'll go more deeply into each one, and if you leave a comment on this video telling me what you're interested in, then I'll know what to go more deeply into. I've thought about this a lot, and I have some deeper thoughts on all of these. So, let's start.
So, anger. Anger is the drive to justice. Each of these emotions have a drive associated with them, and the drive associated with anger is justice. It's what we properly feel when we feel that some sort of injustice has been committed against us or those we care about. Anger, like all emotions, drives us to do something. But usually it's very effective, immediate, aggressive action that anger drives us towards. Because the scales of justice are out of balance, and we have to restore balance. That's what anger is for. There are various kinds of shades and degrees of anger, like resentment and things like that, but they're all, their source is anger. It's something's wrong or out of balance with the world, and we're angry and we want to fix it.
Okay, so now fear. Fear is the drive to defense. It's what we feel when we're experiencing an imminent threat. Either to our physical body, or even as I mentioned, to our identity. Fear is recognizing the prospect of death, and it drives us to hide, run, or fight.
Okay, now sadness. Sadness is the drive to adapt. It's what we feel when we experience a loss of some kind. And properly understood, it's a call to adapt to our new circumstances. Change is inevitable. And when we finally confront change, we naturally feel sad. Working through sadness is the successful adaptation. And there are various kinds of shades of sadness, grief, depression, hopelessness, angst. That, you know, are all based in sadness. And again, there may be a justified expression of sadness, there can also be unjustified expression of sadness. And it's very important, if you're the type of person who believes in self responsibility and personal growth, to recognize the difference between justified and unjustified forms of expressions of these emotions.
Okay, next is disgust. This is the drive to purity. And I mean purity in the sense of wholeness, of wellness. And disgust is when we recognize something toxic in our environment. Something that's contagious or offensive or distasteful or unpleasant. And of our senses, smell is probably the most primal trigger for disgust. And I probably don't need to go more deeply into that, you know exactly what I'm talking about. But like all our emotions, it ca be triggered by complex combinations of inputs. The purpose of disgust is to keep ourselves pure and healthy. By moving away from whatever it is that we find disgusting. And again, there are times where disgust is absolutely appropriate to feel and there are times were we really need to check what we're feeling disgusted about. Because it's not a dead body, it's something that maybe somebody said that maybe we find offensive. But we live in a society with free speech. And in a society with free speech, which is one of our most precious and protected liberties, people are going to say things that we find offensive, that we are disgusted by. And the fact is that we have the option of moving away from those rather than trying to quell their desire to speak these things. Alternatively, we have the ability to respond to those things. But we don't have a right to not be offended. And remember, offense is a form of disgust. And again, I'll have a lot more to say about this in future videos.
Okay finally, leaving on a positive note. Joy, is the drive to meaning. Joy is the brain's reward for achieving something we find meaningful, but also the process of achieving it. Unlike happiness, which we usually feel when something good happens, we properly experience joy when what we're doing aligns deeply with our values. And if you've ever worked in a state of flow before, you've lost track of time and you're making progress and you're being challenged, but you're not being challenged to much, you're not getting frustrated. But you're making progress, and it's effortful but rewarding, then you're probably experiencing, in that state of flow, also a state of joy. And when you sit back and look at you're accomplishments you're also feeling joy. This feeling gives you a gift, you might feel happiness. But joy is distinct. Joy is what we feel when we are acting in alignment with our deepest values.
Part of learning to think well is learning to harmonize your rational mind with your emotive mind. Understanding the rational and proper purpose of emotions is a huge step in that direction of harmony. So leave me a comment and let me know which of these, or other emotions, you'd like me to discuss more deeply. I'm on this journey of personal learning and growth, and I hope you'll continue it with me.