Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Head VS Heart

Sometimes we find ourselves so confused to the point that we can no longer recognize even our own emotions. Those broad lines that separate love from hate, anger and fear just seem intertwined and overrun or even non-existent.

Emotions, they get in the way, who needs them?!


Emotions non the less remain the universal language of communication between people of different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, we can recognize happiness with a smile and read fear from the eyes and face. These emotions, fear, joy, distress, anger, disgust and surprise were regarded as “basic” emotions, understood universally and hardwired within use by evolution.

These basic emotions were necessary for the survival of our ancestors. The functions of fear, and anger in aiding the survival of our ancestors are very clear. For without fear we wouldn’t take care of ourselves, and we would not defend ourselves, readying our bodies for a battle.

The wisdom behind emotion such as disgust and surprise are also easily deciphered; surprise allows us to study our surroundings before preceding any further and disgust is a necessity in a prehistoric world filled with rotting food, feces and poisonous plants. It is less clear however why we feel joy, one theory has stated that joy helps induce the reward centre in our brain, aiding perhaps in the act of reproduction and the joys of progeny, yet another way to insures the survival of our species.


Emotion seem to take over our bodies machinery and will it to do its own bedding. Everything reacts within us to protect us from the sometimes overwhelming environment that surrounds us. The main course of events takes place by a stimuli in our environment, we sense this stimulus and the information of what we have sensed will be sent to the brain, the brain then breaks down, examines, assesses and replies to the stimulus. In addition, we hold a record of the stimulus as a memory so that we know how to deal with it again.

The limbic system, consisting of the amygdala, hippocampus, anterior thalamic nuclei and limbic cortex; these structures are the main directors of emotions, behavior and memory.

It exerts its effects through the endocrine system and the autonomic nervous system. These two systems cause adrenaline to pierce through our veins optimizing blood supply through increasing our heart rate and increasing energy by increasing our metabolic rate aiding us when we are angry, our pupils to dilate when we are aroused to allow light to enter. All these forms of emotions coming to life, conducting our bodies machinery. However, not all forms of emotions are fully understood, for one laughter seems to be highly useless, and tears, what is the power in tears? More over, why is do we feel relief after crying? Scientist have suggested that tears of distress remove stress hormones from the body, also one can not deny that tears are one of the most sincere forms of distress for it is hard to fake tears.


Although emotions were very useful tools for the prehistoric man, post historic man, it seems is held back by emotions. More often than not our emotions just run away from us, and reek havoc, for who can deny the loss of reason when we are overpowered by love or rage black outs. The world today despises emotions, and encourages detachment.

Emotions is perhaps the “north” that guides our moral compass, we lose our moral compass when we become irresponsive to emotions such as guilt, but then is it really advisable in this day an age to even have a moral compass? As they say, every man to himself.

Aristotle believed virtue to be the middle ground between two emotional extremes, courage for instance is the ground between too much and too little fear. Aristotles concept bares similarities to todays “emotional intelligence” in which a person maintain the balance between emotions and reasoning and in reading the emotions which others hide.


Emotions guide us, morally and has aided in the survival of pre-historic man. But post-historic man will have to learn to keep his emotions in check, and learn to manipulate his own and others emotions for his own benefit to survive in this “post historic” world shall we call it.