Great thread!
Evolution? I dunno. Emotions are much too complex in nature to be a random thing we acquired somewhere between our evolving from a chimp to a piltdown man.
Understanding emotions is the key to knowing just how important they really are, not just to our survival, but also the quality of our lives.
I really don't need an advocate of the theory of evolution to explain to me my God-given emotions.
For example; when I am angry, I just know instinctively that I had to feel hurt first. Why did I feel hurt? Maybe someone said something or did something that violated the standards I hold for myself. Anger is a secondary emotion to hurt and most people let it kick in like a drug to numb them from feeling the hurt. Anger is addicting and makes us feel powerful instead of vulnerable. Hurt or anger tells me that I need to go to the person who hurt me and ask if it was their intent, or if I might have misunderstood what they meant. If is was not intentional, I can let go of the hurt and anger, and learn something . . . ie, grow.
If I feel lonely, I know it is because I am not doing enough to reach out to other people.
When I feel frustrated, I know I am on the verge of a breakthrough, so I keep trying.
When I am happy it is because I am getting good results in my life and I should keep on doing what I am doing.
All of my emotions, positive or negative, serve as signals to my brain telling me I need to take some sort of action, make some kind of decision. The trick is listening to those emotions no matter how scarey.
It is funny that men, while completely capable of displaying a full range of natural emotions, seem to be tied to just a couple. Agression and anger is the main two I was thinking of . . . then we have the state of being drunk where we cry to our buddies and finally tell them how much we love them. How sad is it that we are not allowed to express those emotions while sober.
If our emotions were a product of evolution, it seems to me that after all this time, we would all have mastered them by now . . . we would be teaching our sons and daughters to master them . . . instead of running from them, ignoring them or denying them altogether. Speaking of men only, we are so emotionally impoverished and past due for a good psychic enema. Part of the sickness in the WTBTS is that there is not nurturing of true love and emotion.
Listen to your emotions, or atleast try to understand what they are trying to tell you. They are not just essential for survival, but they are the very life blood of our growth, the chemical urging of our brains to take positive action; emotions are the very quality of our relationships with other people, which in turn is the very quality of our lives.
