Friday 10 September 2010

Vestigial Emotions

I just woke up from apparently a fairly restless sleep. It's a tad past 5 AM and I really don't think I'll be able to sleep any more. Partially because both the dog of the neighbour is barking (audible through multiple walls) and Pieter's dogs (he himself being in Belgium at the moment) happily wailing along. I also realized something I wasn't aware of yesterday, while I was having my third and apparently last date with this girl I was dating.

Often have I commented on how strong my rational side is, and how weak my emotional side, and yesterday was an excellent demonstration of it. The thing is that before yesterday this girl and I had an email exchange in which she mentioned her doubts about the long-term prospective of our relationship, and yesterday we decided that we would just go on as hopefully good friends.

When I got her first, 'I got to tell you something' style email, emotionally I first didn't respond to it other than wanting to throw the email away largely unread and just blame this retarded body of mine for everything, as it usually is at fault anyway. How I felt about it at the time? I don't know, apparently kind of upset, because I felt quite bad and spent half an hour crying or wailing, rather. Then Pieter asked to read the email as well and deduced that I had been largely overreacting. Score one for my emotional side.

Yesterday I thought that my emotional side was present during the exchange as well, yet looking back it seems like it shut down somewhere around Wednesday afternoon, when I had a pretty bad emotional collapse and stayed in bed until dinner time feeling sick. Then after dinner I collapsed again, and had to drag myself literally upstairs to my bed, where I withdrew into myself for a bit, until I began to get this horrible feeling again of needing to escape, and suicide being the only option. It's a far too familiar feeling and its pull is incredibly strong. Only Pieter's intervention probably kept me from doing something foolish.

Anyway, yesterday this girl and I had this heavily emotional conversation, talking about relationship stuff and such. After deciding to just be friends from then on, I felt relieved inside, and I thought at the time that it was my emotional side which was feeling that, and that it was okay with it. Even suffering another bad emotional collapse during dinner didn't seem to dampen my conviction of that. This collapse was a new type; it mostly seemed to weaken my muscle control but not obliterate it while jumbling my thoughts and making it unable for me to think clearly, let alone speak.

When I woke up earlier I realized that my emotional side hadn't been involved yesterday at all, that it was my rational side which had taken over and concluded that relationship stuff is irrelevant anyway, or something. It just doesn't like anything for which it can't see any practical purpose. This morning I could notice my emotional side whining, feeling lonely and useless. It seems to have decided that relationships and sexuality are highly overrated pieces of junk anyway, meaning that apparently I'm back to square minus one-hundred on those again.

At this point I'm really not sure whether my emotional side serves any kind of useful purpose and isn't just a stupid prank or left-over thing. The only thing it's good for is getting in the way, tricking me into doing stupid things and basically standing for everything my rational side loathes. I wish I could cut it out like a diseased appendix.

To be clear, I'm not upset. At this point my rational side is in control as usual. It's just highly annoyed at this blubbering piece of emotional side which keeps messing my life up. With it out of the way there wouldn't be disrupting thoughts and worries, no pain and no frustrations. Ergo it's a cancerous element and preferably removed before it can do more damage.

Elementary, you know?


Maya

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

An interesting line of thought. I myself had had the same one about a year ago (This is 2013, so around the beginning of 2012). Oddly enough, I used the exact same words you did to describe emotions, "vestigial" and "cancerous". But I think that I've developed this thought a little bit more than you have.

So we both agree that emotions are "vestigial" and "cancerous". However, I disagree with you on your opinion that emotions should be completely removed. Keep in mind that vestigial items are items that once had a purpose but evolution forced them to no longer have to fulfill that purpose, and cancerous items are items that have fulfilled their purpose too much, to the point where they are damaging. So, emotions have a purpose. They were originally used as a defensive mechanism. Anger was used to quickly and forcefully resolve conflicts. Fear was used to keep the individual alive. Love was used to continue the species. Other emotions, such as sadness or surprise, are merely side effects or the opposite of those emotions. Due to this, when emotions developed, they began taking secondary responsibilities. They are used to drive our lives. After all, without emotions, what would you be? You would have no drive to learn, no drive to experience, and no drive to live. You would just be staring into space and telling yourself that everything you experience is meaningless.

Since you are quite clearly not doing this, you haven't cut all your emotions, which is good. For example, in your article, you wrote that you were annoyed at your " blubbering piece of emotional side". It is quite clear that you still feel disgust and annoyance. So no matter how rational you become, you will always have some emotion in you. It is incorrect to treat the emotional and rational parts of you as different sides of you. Both of them serve a purpose, driving you and balancing each other.

Your thoughts?

Anonymous said...

An interesting line of thought. I myself had had the same one about a year ago (This is 2013, so around the beginning of 2012). Oddly enough, I used the exact same words you did to describe emotions, "vestigial" and "cancerous". But I think that I've developed this thought a little bit more than you have.

So we both agree that emotions are "vestigial" and "cancerous". However, I disagree with you on your opinion that emotions should be completely removed. Keep in mind that vestigial items are items that once had a purpose but evolution forced them to no longer have to fulfill that purpose, and cancerous items are items that have fulfilled their purpose too much, to the point where they are damaging. So, emotions have a purpose. They were originally used as a defensive mechanism. Anger was used to quickly and forcefully resolve conflicts. Fear was used to keep the individual alive. Love was used to continue the species. Other emotions, such as sadness or surprise, are merely side effects or the opposite of those emotions. Due to this, when emotions developed, they began taking secondary responsibilities. They are used to drive our lives. After all, without emotions, what would you be? You would have no drive to learn, no drive to experience, and no drive to live. You would just be staring into space and telling yourself that everything you experience is meaningless.

Since you are quite clearly not doing this, you haven't cut all your emotions, which is good. For example, in your article, you wrote that you were annoyed at your " blubbering piece of emotional side". It is quite clear that you still feel disgust and annoyance. So no matter how rational you become, you will always have some emotion in you. It is incorrect to treat the emotional and rational parts of you as different sides of you. Both of them serve a purpose, driving you and balancing each other.

Maya Posch said...

While I agree that emotions and feelings serve a purpose, I maintain my position that reason should have the final say in any decision :)

Anonymous said...

Of course. But that was not my point. My point was that emotions and logic are both necessary for you to exist. Reason mostly exists to ensure that you're emotion is kept in check and properly fulfilled. For example, if there was a sparkling new diamond necklace and you were into that sort of thing, emotion would cause you to buy it. But if your last paycheck only left you with enough money to buy essentials, you can't buy it. The logical part of your brain kicks in and works out a plan for you to buy the essentials, save a little money, and when you're able, buy the necklace. Do you see? The purpose of the logical side is to fulfill the needs of the emotional side, in a controlled manner.