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Yes, I believe all of our emotions probably serve some evolutionary purpose. Does that mean they're useful in modern society? Not necessarily. Being anxious m
by asdfman123 8y ago
Yes, I believe all of our emotions probably serve some evolutionary purpose.
Does that mean they're useful in modern society? Not necessarily.
Being anxious might have helped my ancestors prepare for unexpected famines. Being aggressive might have helped them lock down the resources they needed to survive.
Do those emotions help me as an adult software engineer in Houston? Heck no. Anxiety and aggression just get in the way of a well-lived life.
- leeeeech 8y agoThat does sound anxious (and one could read aggression into it, too). But there are so many more emotions below and on top, that maybe they serve at least some coordination effort. Here you exaggerate the emotion for display, but you virtue signal that you are concerned and signal the concern itself, not to be anxious. So it's a reflexive emotion. Such things remind me all too often of the fix point combinator and what not. But I'm anxious to miss the point, because at some point logical reasoning doesn't work anymore and leads into a trap, e.g. in case of greed.
- adnzzzzZ 8y agoThat's a very misguided view of things. Aggression will help you fight for higher wages for yourself more often than if you weren't as aggressive. Anxiety will drive you towards actions that will decrease your anxiety, and those actions will generally be useful for you and sometimes the people employing you. I think you're not really in touch and being honest with yourself if you don't think both aggression and anxiety play a crucial role in your life. Or maybe you just have different definitions of those words than I do.
- asdfman123 8y agoYou can seek out your best interests without powerful emotions that cripple your sense of well being. For instance, rather than worry constantly about impending doom you can just calmly go about preparing for worst case circumstances. Same result -- perhaps a better result -- and far less suffering. We should all seek to calmly and rationally seek the best interests of ourselves and people around us, without having to be paralyzed by fear, anxiety and other negative emotions.
- ndiscussion 8y agoWithout emotion, why would one prepare for circumstances? All motive lies with emotion and feeling. Who gets fat without taste buds?
- marviel 8y agoTo piggy back with you on to this point -- I see your grandparent may have something I've noticed is a common misconception, not just in the analysis of the value of human traits, but also in the analysis of modules in software, and other engineering projects. This misconception boils down to believing that just because a trait/emotion/module is not being used for the "reason" it was originally intended (scare quotes to prevent implied creator relationship to evolution) that the trait/emotion/module is unusable, or bad.
- manmal 8y agoOr, what is usable/unusable or good/bad anyway? Fear may be undesirable, and aggression has major shortcomings, but the point is moot. They are here to stay, and they will be both desirable and undesirable at some point. Trying to assess the utility of something as fleeting as emotions is a silly thing to do, IMO.
- adamsea 8y agoWell its kinda both, no? Sometimes aggression is constructive or useful in situations like negotiating. Sometimes it is counterproductive and considered harmful. What I took away from the OP is that we cannot blindly act on our emotions - that having an intermediate, self-reflective and self-questioning step in how we act and think is vital in order to be happy and successful in the world in which we live. And, of course, this includes questioning the self-questioning. Sometimes it's the wrong time to question, and it is the right time to act on unfettered emotion. The question is, when? ;)
- anxiouspete 8y agoNo, it won't. Anxiety lasts long after the actions have been made and the initial threat eliminated because a lot of people with anxiety disorders will tend to ruminate on their actions and possibly even catastrophize about them, creating to a whole different kind of anxiety that are at times unactionable. This is how people end up with PTSD. I've been trying very hard to break out of this cycle and can tell you first hand it's not in anyway beneficial or pleasant and is actually very very destructive.
- hanshan 8y agoWhere the problem arises is the degree to which one is affected by these emotions. Too much anxiety can lead to paranoia, schizophrenia and anti-social behavior, too little can lead to life threatening situations. Too much aggression can lead to irrational mass murder, too little can lead to slavery.
- closeparen 8y agoDiplomacy gets you promoted. Discipline and focus make you better at interviewing when you shop around. Aggression rarely interacts with earning potential in a positive way.
- TooBrokeToBeg 8y ago> Diplomacy gets you promoted That's an interesting viewpoint, usually coming from people who believe that their world is governed by fairness. I'm not sure that's reflected in reality.
- closeparen 8y agoGetting your management chain to like you isn’t the same as being good at your job. It’s not fair. But it also isn’t aggression.
- wruza 8y agoAs always, we notice bad things and forget about good. Maybe your life wasn’t so well-lived if these emotions were turned off for you or, e.g. for entire Houston.
- koolba 8y ago> Do those emotions help me as an adult software engineer in Houston? Heck no. Anxiety and aggression just get in the way of a well-lived life. Heck yes! Anxiety instills fear in the consequences of bad code being released into the wild. Aggression allows speaking your mind when others around do not meet the standards you espouse.
- meko 8y agoYour examples still suggest a significantly decreased magnitude of need for those characteristics.
- sarkhan 8y agoYour comment reminded me saying: Hard times create strong men, Strong men create good times, Good times create weak men, Weak men create hard times. Anxiety makes you consider consequences of your choices and take action based on it. Aggression helps you fight for what you think is important.