Reasons For Our Natural Emotions. Can we really control them?

[Mark T]

Please excuse the post below. I wrote this very quickly this morning and I didn’t have time to read through and check the grammer. (mods please feel free to edit)

I’ve recently been thinking about emotions that we have & whether we can control them. The feelings we have must be there to make our survival easier or to make sure that we stay alive. I want to see other people’s opinions on everything I have listed below.

Some examples

Some researchers have found that the chemical in our body only lasts for about a year. The most obvious reason for the feeling of love would be to make sure that the female is looked after by the male (vice versa) if she became pregnant. Obviously the same could be said for sex. The feeling of being (horny, randy etc) is there to make sure that we as a species keep breeding.

I may be touching on sensitive subject here but I believe the reason we have racism is due to our natural territorial behaviour. It can be seen all the over the world. Wars, gangs fighting over turf etc could be down to the fact that as a human you will protect the one thing which helps your survival. For example, a drug dealer will kill another drug on his turf because if he cannot sell his drugs then he won’t make any money which equals no money to buy food. This could also be the reason for people hating illegal immigrants. We feel threatened by an outside group who could take our resources and our land. Chimps in the wild will invade another groups territory and kill any rival chimps they find just to ensure that there particular group survives. (This could be compared to Bush fighting in Iraq to protect oil resources.)

Nature in every aspect is survival of the fittest. In nature we always see that a animal will perform a ritual (dance) to entice a partner into breeding. It’s the art of seduction. When you think about it, a woman in a strip club is using her natural ability to entice a man, except it’s for money.

I have also considered the idea that most men will always be attracted to a younger women simply because we are far more fertile in our younger years. Its just natures way of making us breed with the healthiest most fertile women. As you think of this a bit deeper, paedophilia could be a kind of mix up in our natural emotions. Some people may be attracted to under age girls because there natural emotion has gone over board.

After all, most girls begin pubity as early as 10 years old. (I know this is a sensitive subject- please keep it clean)

If we are born with these natural emotions of what we call Racism, paedophilia etc how can we control them.

There is so much more I want to add but I have to get off to work. I’ll post some more later.

Please feel free to add your own!

 

[Danoff]

I like the point, but I hate many of the examples you use. I don't think racism stems from territorial issues, but I'll agree that there is a natural propensity to pass on genes similar to yours, which cause many of us to find women of our own race more attractive than those of others (though, social engineering plays a role here as well).

Why did you bring up the Iraq war? You're begging for this thread to turn into a huge debate about the Iraq war (which always happens). At the risk of tipping that debate, I'll say that your example is off-base on a number of points, but in the interest of keeping Iraq out of this thread, I won't explain how you're wrong.

Just because dancing occurs in nature doesn't make it natural. Perhaps God instructed all of his creatures to dance. What you really want to do is analyze dancing and how it offers an advantage. Dancing is something healthy animals can do, and unhealthy animals won't do. You don't want to waste energy, or simply don't have the physical capability if you're unfit. It's a show of ability, which is meant to impress a potential mate with your genetic potential.

Your paedophilia example is partially on point and partially not. To the extent that paedophilia exists in normal people (ie: normal men like looking at young women), I'd say your example holds. For the freaks out there who like prepubescent girls, paedophilia is about self-esteem and other psychological problems. But prepubescent girls are REALLY young. Way younger than our society sets the bar for paedophilia.

Now on to the point. You control your emotions via free will and rationality. In order to control your emotions you need to understand them. Without rationality you're at the mercy of your emotions. With it, you're in control. But control is a pre-requisite for civilized society, which is why you don't offer freedom to those people who have proven they can't control themselves more than most animals.

 

[Mark T]

I like the point, but I hate many of the examples you use. I don't think racism stems from territorial issues, but I'll agree that there is a natural propensity to pass on genes similar to yours, which cause many of us to find women of our own race more attractive than those of others (though, social engineering plays a role here as well).

Why did you bring up the Iraq war? You're begging for this thread to turn into a huge debate about the Iraq war (which always happens). At the risk of tipping that debate, I'll say that your example is off-base on a number of points, but in the interest of keeping Iraq out of this thread, I won't explain how you're wrong.

Just because dancing occurs in nature doesn't make it natural. Perhaps God instructed all of his creatures to dance. What you really want to do is analyze dancing and how it offers an advantage. Dancing is something healthy animals can do, and unhealthy animals won't do. You don't want to waste energy, or simply don't have the physical capability if you're unfit. It's a show of ability, which is meant to impress a potential mate with your genetic potential.

Your paedophilia example is partially on point and partially not. To the extent that paedophilia exists in normal people (ie: normal men like looking at young women), I'd say your example holds. For the freaks out there who like prepubescent girls, paedophilia is about self-esteem and other psychological problems. But prepubescent girls are REALLY young. Way younger than our society sets the bar for paedophilia.

Now on to the point. You control your emotions via free will and rationality. In order to control your emotions you need to understand them. Without rationality you're at the mercy of your emotions. With it, you're in control. But control is a pre-requisite for civilized society, which is why you don't offer freedom to those people who have proven they can't control themselves more than most animals.

I didn't bring up the Iraq war to intentionally create a debate about it. The last thing I want is for this to be a flame fest.

I liked your point on controlling emotions. What you said about understanding your emotions in order to control them makes a lot sense to me. I also find it interesting how people can be affected by other peoples hatred. For example, how Hitler managed to brainwash millions of people into believing what he was doing was right.

 

[ledhed]

how Hitler managed to brainwash millions of people into believing what he was doing was right.

So you never bothered to consider that the people already felt that way or were leaning in that direction to begin with and it didn't take much " convincing " or "brainwashing" as you call it ?

I suggest you study history. First ask yourself what made white Europeans think themselves so superior to Africans that they could buy them and sell them and use them as slaves . Same with Japan and Koreans. Multiple cultures throughout history have thought themselves to be " divine " or " "Superior" to other races. but the relationship between Europeans and Slavery was much different than the relationship between " Romans " and slaves.
Do you know what the difference was ?