Fundamental Emotion

Through a combination of recognising that we can only truly eliminate the symptom of a problem by eliminating the root cause of the problem and understanding that the conflict and struggle that I regularly felt came about from attempting to override deeply ingrained survival mechanisms I began to perceive emotions as a guidance system. It was clear that if things went well then I felt good and that if things went badly then I felt bad. The emotions were triggered to demonstrate, with physiological responses, if I was on-track or off-track. Emotions act as a self-generated carrot and stick mechanism to promote and reinforce behaviours that lead to long-term survival. What I then needed to do was to determine what the guidance system was using as the input to measure on-track or off-track.

Any closed loop control system must have an input or set point to measure against and to control to and it became clear to me that the emotional guidance system uses desires as the input. Some of these desires are generated by autonomic response of the nervous system (shivering when cold and hence seeking warmth, sweating when hot and hence seeking shade) but the majority of commonly felt emotions come about from setting conscious desires or else inferring desires based upon responding to environmental conditions.

A simple mechanism for understanding all emotions became very clear. If we have a desire it becomes a set point for our emotional guidance system. If we fulfil the desire then we feel satisfied. If we exceed the desire then we feel various shades of elation dependent upon the difference between the original desire and the result obtained. If we fail to fulfil the desire then we feel various shades of sadness or annoyance dependent upon the original desire and the result actually obtained.

The exceptions are fear and fantasy, where an imagined result is compared to our real world situation and the difference between the two generates the intensity of the negative, fear induced emotions or of the positive, fantasy induced emotions.

Prior to making this discovery, I had long laboured under the conception that emotions seemed to coalesce more or less out of nowhere and that people had a predisposition to certain types of emotions dependent upon an unknown and vague mixing of genes, brain chemistry and environmental conditioning. Such assumptions suggested little conscious control over emotions, or else severe handicaps to overcome for those predisposed to constant negative thinking. Knowing the simple cause and effect mechanism, whereby the nature of the desire set versus the result gained totally influences the ensuing emotion, has enabled me to dispose of those old assumptions. Feeling good or feeling bad is now merely a matter of controlling my desires – nothing more and nothing less.

This link will take you to part 4 of this series: fundamental desires

These links are for the preceding parts of the series:
Part 1: fundamental insights
Part 2: fundamental survival

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