Wednesday, July 29, 2020

“Damn those negative emotions,” she said angrily.


Emotions can be real killers, sometimes literally.  We all have them and some of us are in much better control of our emotions than others.  I’d say the level of control depends on how one is wired. Some have pretty short fuses.  Others, it takes some serious doing to get them all riled up to the point of finally reacting negatively.  It’s all in the person.

Where do emotions come from?  What is their ultimate source?  Does it go deeper than our wiring?

Just to take a trip down Philosophical Lane, according to the theists, God is the fundamental source of who we are as a species, and further that humanity was created in “His” image.  Atheists would, of course, disagree.  But no matter your religion/non-religion, we all know of the God creation narrative.  And the bigger, overarching idea of “God the Entity” is as ubiquitous and cross-cultural as the oxygen we collectively breathe.

Whether you’re a denying agnostic atheist like me, a practicing theist of whatever stripe, or somewhere in-between, the idea of God is universally known.  And the going (common) idea is that God (e.g., First Cause) made us who and what we are; whether crawling up from the evolutionary primordial slime, or as a full-blown, packaged and ready-to-go human being.  (Work with me here on this, hardcore atheists/theists. This is not yet the question. ;)

Sooo, back to our emotions, that got me fantasizing and thinking about how great it would be to be able to “play God” and wipe out all those nasty emotions.  So here it is… your opportunity to play the role of God:

For argument’s sake, you, as God, get to un-contaminate humankind with one negative emotion.  You only get to pick ONE, that’s the caveat.  So which one would it be?  Would it be, for example, greed, hatred, jealousy, anger, envy, other?  Is there one overarching negative emotion that would “take care” of the others, all in one fell swoop?

Your challenge: Play along with this hypothetical.  What emotion, as God, would you fix/undo?

Thanks for posting and recommending.

No comments:

Post a Comment