Only Two Emotions?

[Mydriasis]

Well I've read this all over I'm not sure who first proposed it or if it's considered fact or not. So I figured let's have a good old fashion yahookan discussion!

Topic: People only have two emotions, Love, and Fear.

It is also suggested that the feeling of these emotions changes the way our bodies access our DNA. Love accessing more components of our DNA and fear the opposite. We can get into this if this discussion get's lame fast or something.

My stance: I believe it to be true. I feel that Love is the reason why we don't go out burning down forests and killing strangers for food.

I think Fear is pretty self explanatory, I could see it coming directly from evolution as well. You have to learn to fear jumping off cliff-sides and trying to hand-to-hand combat predators(lions, bears, etc).

But where do things such as depression come from? I would say from being restrained by fear's.

What about anger? I'd say from the frustration of depression.

It seems to me like this is the 'dichotomy' of emotion, and from all other "shades of grey" come from mixes of the two or different reactions from one or the other.

What do you think?

[Waves]

List of emotions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Robert Plutchik created a wheel of emotions in 1980 which consisted of 8 basic emotions and 8 advanced emotions each composed of 2 basic ones.[1]
Basic emotion Basic opposite
Joy / Sadness
Acceptance / Disgust
Fear /Anger
Surprise /Anticipation
Sadness / Joy
Disgust / Acceptance
Anger /Fear
Anticipation /Surprise

Advanced emotion Composed of... Advanced opposite
Optimism Anticipation + Joy Disappointment
Love Joy + Acceptance Remorse
Submission Acceptance + Fear Contempt
Awe Fear + Surprise Aggressiveness
Disappointment Surprise + Sadness Optimism
Remorse Sadness + Disgust Love
Contempt Disgust + Anger Submission
Aggressiveness Anger + Anticipation Awe

ps- i dont mean this post to slam down the subject, just sharing another perspective. i think human emotion is an extremely complex topic that you do a disservice by boiling down to 2 absolute black and white catagories.

just imo.

[Mydriasis]

Hey man that's what this is all about! Don't mean to say that it's all black and white because black and white make infinite shades of grey you know what I'm trying to say?

It wasn't me who coined this idea. But I know you didn't mean to direct anything at me.

I agree in that emotions tend to be feel complex. I'm just trying the idea on for size. In a large amount of situations I see it clearly but in others it is a stretch.

But for example:
Acceptance comes from love certainly and so does disgust. With disgust we learn to find what we fear as disgusting, but is a leech really disgusting to a leech no?

I could keep going but it's weird because I really do see both sides of it.

[Waves]

Hey man that's what this is all about! Don't mean to say that it's all black and white because black and white make infinite shades of grey you know what I'm trying to say?

Word.

It wasn't me who coined this idea. But I know you didn't mean to direct anything at me.

I agree in that emotions tend to be feel complex. I'm just trying the idea on for size. In a large amount of situations I see it clearly but in others it is a stretch.

But for example:
Acceptance comes from love certainly and so does disgust. With disgust we learn to find what we fear as disgusting, but is a leech really disgusting to a leech no?

I could keep going but it's weird because I really do see both sides of it.

Cool.

My personal stance, is that emotions are all based on judgment.

So, i look at it, sort of like a battery. On one side is love, on one side is disgust. But, the actual actions taking place inside us are the same whether we are loving or hating, the similarity is that we are judging. Love requires the positive judgment, hate requires negative. Battery.

So emotions can all basically be broken down into two extremes, call it duality. And this is where i part ways with the belief that there exists only two basic emotions. TO me, there exists two basic sides of the coin: positive/negative, and all emotions can be analyzed in terms of what judgments the individual is making in the moment.

So to recap, I do think that emotions can be broken down, to two basic extremes. But the actual dynamics of whats going on with emotions are extremely complex.

Take suprise/anticipation for instance. Whats the difference between the two? When you are surprised you are judging what you are experiencing positively, when you are anticipating you are projecting futurely in a negative sense. In the sense that you are afraid that something is going to harm you, maybe not physically necessarily, but more harm your FEELINGS.


Or joy/sadness. joy is the positive judgement, sadness is the negative.

I hope that makes sense

[Mydriasis]

Makes a bunch of sense to me.

I think essentially everything could be "dumbed" down to like two things. Your right it really isn't an appropriate solution to a complex problem. Just another way to associate a situation.

The idea though that emotions can effect DNA still blows my mind. I could see how and why, but I guess I'll just need to look more into the studies done on it.
[edit]
Here's a link on that: http://www.in-vision.us/DNA_and_emotions.htm
I'm not sure if it'd really reputable but it's interesting. I'd be interested in seeing more info for and against this, and I also wonder what the real complications this could have on a person's well-being.

[Canuck Wisdom]

Only read the first two posts so far.....

I agree with waves comment, and I have read about the psychologically acknowledge 8 main emotions and then the greater range of more specific emotions, but I agree in a way with the love/fear dichotomy as well.

There may be a range of brain states that represent more than two emotions, and the feelings we get to reinforce that, but in the spiritual sense, I do believe, or at least am willing to employ the idea, that there is two basic roots of behaviour/perspective/response and those are love and fear.

IMO, fear is the opposite of love (not hate), so I appreciate where this is coming from.

[Nug_King]

In regards to DNA use being affected by Love/Fear emotions I'd agree. If it was only in a strict chemical sense the different chemicals your brain produces when at one end of that spectrum or the other could easily effect the ways a cell's rhibosomes function. Turning some on and off depending on mood, and in biological sense we are all only the proteins that our rhibosomes produce.

That link has some interesting results. Looking around online about Vladimir Poponin, it looks like a legit experiment, published and everything.
I have always noticed that happy people heal faster and get sick less than unhappy people, and Poponin's results were able to actually quantifty it....very cool.
I'd be interested though in seeing how it differs between cultures. Like if the effect is less or more, based on the importance society puts on love and community. The tribes in the Amazon come to my mind since some of them lack words to express the negative feelings so common in 1st world societys.
And what about animals, would maybe an elephant have the same effect seeing it's own family compared to finding the bones/carcass of a loved one? I would love to see more done in this area of science.

The emotion connection reminds me of the experiment done with ice crystals. Different emotions or music produce radically different crystals. Here is a link with a few pictures too. (sorry about the popup after like 10 seconds)
Masaru Emoto: Messages from Water


AND as for summing up all emotion in two extremes and their infiniate combinations. It might not be easy to apply it to every situation, but it seems just a plausable as a host of different individual emotions seperate from each other. Physics has taught me that one simple "small" of rules/particals can express themselves in 144 elements +, and 4 forces that we know fo so far, why not emotions too?

[The Rev]

Is horniness an emotion?



The Rev

[John F. Kerry]

pretty interesting but i havent really given it that much thought.

its a neat way to conceptualize emotions makes it much easier to imagine that all emotions are just subtle versions of those 2-

or maybe one is a subtle version of the other. .

[SageTree]

I like this topic, I believe at the core there is fear and love, taken broadly these two lead to other emotions. You usually like something or have aversion to it, rarely do we truely experience neutral, with out some small judgements.

[mookie]

fear and hunger.

"what's love got to do with it........got to do with it, baby ?

what's love, but a second hand emotion."

?

[Canuck Wisdom]

yea man

who needs a heart when a heart can be broken

[Mydriasis]

I don't think hunger is really an emotion. I think it can trigger an emotion, but it's an instinctual response to a bodily desire/need, much like horniness(as sir rev has previously inquired).


lolz

[wnfakind]

no one here considers what we think we know and what we built to know.. everything is an concept... a theory.. Let's stop talking in circle's. Build your own.. or die alone.

[420smokeman]

TRUE love.. is truth, reality, god, your true self.. the only real thing... everything else is an illusion an attempt to find true love ..; not emotional love that is conditional and dosent last....

"everything is an concept"

ya everything in "mind".... are you a concept?

[Silverleaf]

you know who talks a lot about this kind of thing is Herbert Marcuse. Eros and Thanatos, Love and Death as the primary motivators of the human experience. The book was Eros and Civilization, i think. he's got the heideggerian "living authentically" theme as well, he says that the desire to create and the desire to destroy are what essentially drive us to the very point of recognizing our own mortality, frailty, and humanity in those emotions.

[mookie]

ego, hunger, and aggression.

none are emotions, but all are necessary for survival in this fast paced world we live in.

In fact emotions are simply vague definitions of actual physical manifestations of perhaps a majority but not all of the members of a society.

or a forum

[flappy]

I would go more with the five passions of the mind as described by the ancient Shariyat Ki Sugmad :
[COLOR="MediumTurquoise "]anger, greed, lust, attachment and vanity.[/COLOR]