Requiem for Reality

So as I sit here in dispatch, I ponder the usefulness of emotions. Some would say that emotions and the accompanying response are necessary parts of the human experience. As frivoless as this who post sounds and seems, it has a point, I promise. Emotions as a cognitive function aren't necessary.

Picture the entire world void of emotion. Things would personally run a great deal smoother. There would be no wondering about where people are, what they are doing, who they are with, or how they feel about a particular sitation. Instead, logic would be the driving force behind our actions. Some say that the world would be boring, or void of interest, and perhaps this is so, but wihtout emotion we would not know that it was so it would be pointless to consider.

Buddhist philosophy teaches that in this life there will be suffering and pain, that suffering is caused by desire, and that the only way to rid ourselves of suffering is to rid ourselves of desire. Which many a buddhist will devote their life to doing. Ridding oneself of desire is not an easily accomplished task. With practice, however, it can be done.

If we consider that there are two basic levels of emotion, 1). those emotions that are inherent and instictual, and 2). Those emotions that are cognitive, then we are able to look at emotions outside of the premise that there are always necessary. Certainly many things envoke emotions. This post itself may infact raise some sort of feeling. But does this post do so in a manner that is automatic, or are the words and concepts affecting your cognition or thought process? If it is, then I propose that cognitve emotions are not only not neccessary, but have the capability to be removed in entirety.

Look at the mouse next to you. Place your hand on top of it, click a button. That right there was a cognitive function, that is, you thought about doing it. While you might not have considered that you thought about doing it, it certainly wasn't something that you had to act on as a life or death situation. This action was something that had to be thought about before it was completed. Were it not you would simply have no control over your body. But, certainly we have control over our body right?

For most functions, breathing, blinking, digestion etc...we do not consider how it is done, or even give two thought about it. Even if we did we have very little control over the action because it is natural and instinctual. However walking, speaking, chewing, singing, crying are things that we think about doing, unless of course you step on a nail, in which case you are probably not doing very many of those voluntary actions and are participating in one of them. Still though the point stands. We choose to do many of the actions we participate in. Now can we consider emotions in the same respect?

Cognitive emotions are mental responses to a certain event. Memories, pictures, situations, books, words, etc, all envoke emotional responses and are centered around specific events. This mental response to an action often results in a physical manifestation. For example (and contrary to what some philosophers say) you cry because you are sad. However, as most of us know we do not always have to have a physical response. You may feel betrayed by someone, and enraged by them on the inside, but on the outside you display pleasantness. Or imagine you are in front of a large group of people, and are deeply saddened by something you just heard in private, do you cry and risk emabarassment? Often we do not, instead we "bottle" those feelings up and neatly tuck them away.

Going back to the mouse example, place your hand on top of the mouse and do nothing. Imagine the task was to click, but you don't. If you didn't think about clicking, knew you were supposed to, and didn't. This is essentially is what would it be like if we trained ourselves to be without emotion. Being in a situation that seems like emotions would be necessary, and yet thinking through them logically. Consider the amount of time we would conserve, and how much more time we could have accopmlishing other goals.

Although I suppose if we had no emotions we would have no desire to accomplish those goals, or purpose for accomplishing them as our only real purpose would be to establish a household for our family for the sole purpose of procreation. In the end perhaps it's not useful to be completely void of all emotions after all. However I do believe that it may be advantagious to control emotions to the point that one would spend as little time as possible dwelling on them.