What Is Emotions?
Have you ever thought about emotions? What are they? Is it just something psychologycal or it is purely a neural activity?
So, in this essay i would like to address all this questions. Emotions are innate behavior that allow us to communicate without need for language.
Some may argue that the emotions are subjective experiences, shaped by personal feelings and perceptions or some may argue that is neural activity in your brain.
So, let's dive into simple definition, Imagine you are randomly roaming around a forest. Unfortunately you see a tiger looking at you! At this moment, you feel "fear" because you start thinking 'what if this tiger harms me?' and so on and this is natural as it has developed throughout the human evolution. The stimulus that causes fear in response to the tiger that is what we call emotions "an emotion of fear".
The Evolution Of Emotions.
As a result of human evolution, we developed an intrinsic language to communicate with our species and others, transcending cultural and linguistic barriers. As the human grew, they develop more and more complex behavior to their environments or surrounding's.
These behaviors can be classified into primary and secondary emotions.
Primary emotions arise from birth (they are intrinsic) can be traced back to our
evolutionary roots of human. These emotions emerged as survival mechanisms to help humans respond effectively to their environment; Fear helped early humans escape predators.
Anger enabled defense against threats.
On the other hand a secondary emotions are develop as response to primary one, secondary emotions are influcd by culture, experiences and cognition.
For instances, Take an example of John and Emily,
John meets Emily at a coffee shop and feels happy, because they haven't seen each other in a long time. As they spend more time together, John develops love for Emily.
The primary emotion, happiness, is an immediate response to meeting Emily. As John gets to know her better, his happiness evolves into a deeper emotional connection we call love.
Different Lens To See About Emotions.
Scientifically(neuroscience), emotions as the reaction triggered by stimulus as we discuss earlier. Involving neurotransmitter such as dopamine, oxytocin etc. (particularly in the limbic system).
On the other hand, Psychology classifies emotions into primary ones (like joy, sadness, fear, happiness) and secondary ones (guilt, affection, frustration, depression) as this all we dicuss earlier.
I have another perspective to see, that is philosophical. From philosophical and consciousness studies perspective, emotions are crucial for understanding subjective experiences (qualia).
Some philosophers argue that emotions are what make human experiences rich and meaningful, as they connect us deeply to art, relationships, and even our purpose in life.
Conclusion.
In conclusion, we have discussed about what is emotions in different lens ex. Psychology, scientific and philosophical.
At the end, emotions are essential for pursuing something, by the term something I mean it may be your favourite subject, music, dance and your partner.
Written By Om.Mohanty
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