Emotion

What is the point of emotion? Why , for example, would we see the trace of a person or .. entity ... and be happy that this person exists? What is the point of being emotional? Emotions seem to place us in the service of a hidden master. Perhaps, it can be said - a harsh master - if anyone has ever fallen in love and been blown off, or suffers a love that cannot be fulfilled - or had a slave run away from them in second life without fulfiling her contract (um. anyone who has ever visited 'doublewide' can ignore that).

What master? The ability to predict . Emotions help us to predict the future. Emotion allows us to break a pattern of thought and head to a new direction. They give us sense, and sensibility. A sense of fulfillment. Of adventure - and also - it must be said of service. Emotions are crucial to the development of a child, or her horny mom. Or anyone. A master. A slave. A man playing a woman. A woman playing a man. Anyone. They are important. Tolerance is tested, and built - and the payoff is inevitably a greater control of our fate. We are a predator species - we seek to better ourselves constantly. Without any scientific study, for thousands of years - we have understood implicitly that those who can feel continually best those who cannot.

Then along comes jones. The experiment that was done - was with playing cards. Two types of participants - those with emotion and those who suffered either damage or a particular form of disorder that removed their ability to feel emotion. The cards were stacked in order, A, B, C , D. four stacks.

The bets were semi-randomized so that if a player draws a certain card - in any pile, that card will have either a high value win, or loss, or a corresponding low value win or loss. The pattern was cast for the outside decks, A, and D, to have the highest value wins/ losses, and the Decks B, C to have the lowest value win/loss ratio.

Players without emotion picked from all four decks at random. Statistically, the player who picks from the middle decks will fare best. Large losses destroy the margin of victory so Decks A, D will begin to be hazardous.

Players who can feel, however, began to avoid Decks A,D and pick from the two middle decks. Thus, playing a higher overall score. They felt hesitant to pick from the outside decks. They could not pin down the reason, but their feelings guided them away from disaster.

The players without emotion eventually failed. Lack of any warning - any sense that they might be making an error, without being able to fully verbalize that error - doomed their play. They could not say they had a "funny feeling" not to pick from the outside decks. They would go for larger win, and loss and quickly lose their game.

In the human voice, prosody conveys crucial information. A parent can convey something to a child, sing-song. Children squeal with delight! They love the game of learning, and also knowing they are loved. That which threatens their security or sense of love - threatens their identity.

Emotion behind the voice becomes - in the autistic child - overbearing. A child can fall down on the ground, grasping their ears - when someone simply reprimands another in the same room. There was once a child, who could not respond to her mother verbally. Calm statements never worked. She would ignore her. She noticed that she could sing songs to her, and if she simply modified the lyric - the child would respond to the encapsulated message. So the mother began to sing songs to the little one - and lo and behold, singing the instructions to her worked.

Emotion helps us to predict the future. The world would not be colorless without emotion, or love. But with it, it will be a better place to live and one in which we can explore to greater depth - and with greater vision. One , a bit more worth living in. Have you ever met someone that you could fall in love with, and had your day brightened just a little bit? Why would that be? Can love - add color to your life. Who is to say. But emotion will load the dice for you - if you are brave enough to place it on the pass line and stay away from the don't come >:). No pun intended.

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