Emotion is the conscious experience of the unconscious mind. Just as reason functions to modify instinct, we are self-aware so that we may self-adjust. The ability to interpret one's own emotions is critical to this process, for it is only when feelings have been put into language that they may contribute to ideas, ideas being the dynamic structures we play with until we can describe them in words that make us feel right.
And one of the most important ideas in the history of mankind, that of the self or ego, exists in this relationship to the biological processes of our bodies, for only the basic neurochemical mechanisms of emotion shared by all mammals are necessary for the rest to have emerged naturally from external selection pressures(as I understand it, the useful complexity of our social systems is thought to be the select-for that has shaped the imagination of primates).
No comments:
Post a Comment