This is the second part of a short series called "Emotion". If you have not read the first part, I recommend you to read it first. (Click here to read the introduction) You could still understand this post well without reading the first part, but I suggest to do for the sake of a better reading experience.
If an alien came to earth and ask us, “What phenomena that separates human beings with other species?”, what answer will you give? My answer : we kill ourselves, a lot. Suicide is something that I find personally interesting, and how deeply it is connected to our root and evolution in the society. Dare I say, it is the biggest unsolved puzzle in the psychology world.
The fact that we kill ourselves amuses and intrigues me at the same time. It is indeed a shame, and mental health is one of the biggest issue in the 21st century, which I am glad that finally we care more to our emotional well-being. However, this is not what I want to talk about, I will not give a counselling or anything related to your own personal health condition in this blog, but I want to talk more generally, about why I see this as an interesting topic.
There are a lot of reasons why someone commit a suicide: stress, anger, depression, family problems, pressure from the society, the list goes on forever. But, one thing that does not show up often on that list : sacrifice. There is almost no case when someone actually kill themselves to save the others; if there is a case, the percentage is extremely low.
This question leads me to learn more about the suicidal behaviour in the animal kingdom. Unsurprisingly, most of the animals who commit suicide is to protect their colony (bees are a great example of this). So, I got back to observe our own species and ask, why most of the reasons behind suicides are personal problem?
Then I went back to evolution. Something that makes us so different compared to other animals is the way we evolved: we are the most complex species walking on earth, and what I want to highlight here is not in a physical way: but the way we process information. Yes, our brain.
Feelings come from our brain, and most remarkably, feelings play a huge role in our decision-making. Every single huge decision made in our history is based on our ego. We often say that the urge to go and explore is hardwired to our brain; it is human nature. However, it does not stop right there. Most of the biggest expeditions and journeys in the history of mankind are based on the satisfaction of a party. The feeling that we conquer a new place gives us rush and sense of achievement. It is not just about exploring the world; it is more about exploring new places, where someone has never been in before.
This is just one of the examples to show that feelings actually play a much larger role than we expect. Why is this so interesting? Survival. Survival might not be the top priority in our brain. If we only want to survive as long as possible, no one would take risks such as exploring new places and conquering the world. No one wants to go to the moon and beyond, it is too dangerous. But we do it anyway. The sense of achievement gives us a personal satisfaction that is so irreplaceable and important in our short time living as a human being.
Our brain has evolved in such a way that emotion actually controls most of our decision-making process, not just the survival instinct. The fact that we commit suicide shows that we actually could give up on something because emotional reason. It is a totally different situation compared to an antelope surrounded by lions. In this case, an antelope give up when they ran out of energy to defend and realised that there is no way out. Suicide is a different concept, yes people who committed suicide almost definitely was being surrounded by negative energy and bad situations, and they might be run out of energy. However, stay still and doing nothing could actually make a difference between being physically alive and dead.
The comparison between an antelope surrounded by the lions actually and people surrounded by negative energy actually shows how great we have evolved as a living creature. We used to be like them, hunting and gathering to sustain our survival. This is not the case anymore, most of us the human civilisation somehow already find a better way (or worse) to sustain the survival of our species: by building a society.
Our society is far more advanced than we have anticipated. We actually trust a stranger to grow a food, trust another stranger to deliver the food to the supermarket, trust another one to give our money and they give the food to us. The amount of trust that we put in our society is underestimated. However that also means another thing: how we strive to reach our goals in life is also highly influenced by the society. We need to work on our ego to be able to cooperate with everyone else, and it could make a difference between life and death.
Fine, you do not want to trust anyone else to grow your food, then grow it yourself. Build your own house, sew your own clothing. Just live in a cave and be isolated from the civilisation. How low will our survival rate be?
This way of life ensures our survival, and the bonus of it: we have the chance to choose our own purpose of life. What you want to contribute to the society is your decision, since we actually unconsciously already trust the civilisation to take care of our basic needs of life: food. However, how does it make us a different species, the fact that we have a choice?
Let’s talk about fear, one of the most fundamental feeling in our spectrum of emotion. A primitive family is living in a cave, hunting for food, where they have not eaten for a couple days. It is already raining for a week, the sun has not come out. The children are starving, so the father has to go out to hunt.
He goes out, then suspects a deer running alone in the wild. He is getting closer, but then he hears a growling sound, maybe a wolf, or a lion? He does not know. Now he has two choices, go back to the cave and maybe he will not find another chance to hunt before his children die, or take a risk and kill the deer, then run.
Let’s analyse this situation, how emotions might play a role in his decision-making. He fears that his children might die, but he also fears that he might also be dead. If he goes back to the cave, he might be find another chance to hunt, but also maybe not. But he has a higher chance of survival. If we kill the deer, he might be dead, but also he may be succeed and bring food to his family. And who knows what he will do, but let’s say he took the risk to kill the deer. This short stupid story actually shows how emotions play a huge role: fear and love. He had a fear of dying, but he loves his children that he gambled and took the risk.
What we feel influences what we think, and what we think influences how we act. And most importantly, how we act shapes how we grow in the society. Emotion is the root of our decision-making process.
Let’s talk about our caveman. What if he does not feel fear? He was out in the wild and suddenly he heard the growl, but he have no fear of death. His brain is wired to feed his family, no matter what will happen. This might lead him to be able to accomplish his mission more effectively and successfully. Maybe you are familiar with a movie “Jason Bourne”, an agent that supposedly was built to be a killing machine and have no feeling. This cavemen has a similarity in this area compared to Bourne.
However, because he feel no fear, he could actually be dead in the next minutes. This shows us that fear actually could be a self-defence mechanism. An upgraded self-defence mechanism, I would say. It is like when you are playing a RPG game, then your character got an upgrade for their skills. We are actually have this upgraded skill, compared to our fellow animals. Fear, or I would like to say in a more general term as emotion, actually could come handy.
Our emotion makes us a better decision-maker, compared to a heartless hitman, as we see in a lot of situation. But it actually makes us also more vulnerable to more threats. Phobia is one of the example. Defined by Oxford dictionary as a strong unreasonable fear of something, the “unreasonable” part actually explains it all. The fact that it is unreasonable is the dangerous part, it overrides our common sense and most of the times prevent us from making a better decision.
Our brain is amusing, and we could and would not stop figuring out what actually happen when we make this small decisions along our life, which could also leads to a bigger decision, such as suicide. Our survival instinct grows together with our emotion, and with the ability to feel things, we keep standing on the top of the food chain.
We rule the world, and emotion is the underrated actor behind it. We might be thankful for our ability to fight physically and think critically, but not to feel complex emotions. However, having an upgraded self-defence mechanism actually rise a bigger responsibility to control it. When you have a better weapon, it is not just simply better, but also harder to use. Our ability to survive depends on how well we know our own weapon, and it is our own task to be the master of our emotion.
Now, the bigger question that leads from this topic is: does our ability to feel actually evolved simultaneously with the evolution of our brain, or is it actually already built-in in our brain, that we just not had time and the occasion to access it? This will be one of the discussion for next week, so see you!
Image credit : freepik.com
If an alien came to earth and ask us, “What phenomena that separates human beings with other species?”, what answer will you give? My answer : we kill ourselves, a lot. Suicide is something that I find personally interesting, and how deeply it is connected to our root and evolution in the society. Dare I say, it is the biggest unsolved puzzle in the psychology world.
The fact that we kill ourselves amuses and intrigues me at the same time. It is indeed a shame, and mental health is one of the biggest issue in the 21st century, which I am glad that finally we care more to our emotional well-being. However, this is not what I want to talk about, I will not give a counselling or anything related to your own personal health condition in this blog, but I want to talk more generally, about why I see this as an interesting topic.
There are a lot of reasons why someone commit a suicide: stress, anger, depression, family problems, pressure from the society, the list goes on forever. But, one thing that does not show up often on that list : sacrifice. There is almost no case when someone actually kill themselves to save the others; if there is a case, the percentage is extremely low.
This question leads me to learn more about the suicidal behaviour in the animal kingdom. Unsurprisingly, most of the animals who commit suicide is to protect their colony (bees are a great example of this). So, I got back to observe our own species and ask, why most of the reasons behind suicides are personal problem?
The Connection between Our Brain and Our Emotion
Then I went back to evolution. Something that makes us so different compared to other animals is the way we evolved: we are the most complex species walking on earth, and what I want to highlight here is not in a physical way: but the way we process information. Yes, our brain.
Feelings come from our brain, and most remarkably, feelings play a huge role in our decision-making. Every single huge decision made in our history is based on our ego. We often say that the urge to go and explore is hardwired to our brain; it is human nature. However, it does not stop right there. Most of the biggest expeditions and journeys in the history of mankind are based on the satisfaction of a party. The feeling that we conquer a new place gives us rush and sense of achievement. It is not just about exploring the world; it is more about exploring new places, where someone has never been in before.
This is just one of the examples to show that feelings actually play a much larger role than we expect. Why is this so interesting? Survival. Survival might not be the top priority in our brain. If we only want to survive as long as possible, no one would take risks such as exploring new places and conquering the world. No one wants to go to the moon and beyond, it is too dangerous. But we do it anyway. The sense of achievement gives us a personal satisfaction that is so irreplaceable and important in our short time living as a human being.
Our brain has evolved in such a way that emotion actually controls most of our decision-making process, not just the survival instinct. The fact that we commit suicide shows that we actually could give up on something because emotional reason. It is a totally different situation compared to an antelope surrounded by lions. In this case, an antelope give up when they ran out of energy to defend and realised that there is no way out. Suicide is a different concept, yes people who committed suicide almost definitely was being surrounded by negative energy and bad situations, and they might be run out of energy. However, stay still and doing nothing could actually make a difference between being physically alive and dead.
Life and Death
The comparison between an antelope surrounded by the lions actually and people surrounded by negative energy actually shows how great we have evolved as a living creature. We used to be like them, hunting and gathering to sustain our survival. This is not the case anymore, most of us the human civilisation somehow already find a better way (or worse) to sustain the survival of our species: by building a society.
Our society is far more advanced than we have anticipated. We actually trust a stranger to grow a food, trust another stranger to deliver the food to the supermarket, trust another one to give our money and they give the food to us. The amount of trust that we put in our society is underestimated. However that also means another thing: how we strive to reach our goals in life is also highly influenced by the society. We need to work on our ego to be able to cooperate with everyone else, and it could make a difference between life and death.
Fine, you do not want to trust anyone else to grow your food, then grow it yourself. Build your own house, sew your own clothing. Just live in a cave and be isolated from the civilisation. How low will our survival rate be?
This way of life ensures our survival, and the bonus of it: we have the chance to choose our own purpose of life. What you want to contribute to the society is your decision, since we actually unconsciously already trust the civilisation to take care of our basic needs of life: food. However, how does it make us a different species, the fact that we have a choice?
Living in A Cave
Let’s talk about fear, one of the most fundamental feeling in our spectrum of emotion. A primitive family is living in a cave, hunting for food, where they have not eaten for a couple days. It is already raining for a week, the sun has not come out. The children are starving, so the father has to go out to hunt.
He goes out, then suspects a deer running alone in the wild. He is getting closer, but then he hears a growling sound, maybe a wolf, or a lion? He does not know. Now he has two choices, go back to the cave and maybe he will not find another chance to hunt before his children die, or take a risk and kill the deer, then run.
Let’s analyse this situation, how emotions might play a role in his decision-making. He fears that his children might die, but he also fears that he might also be dead. If he goes back to the cave, he might be find another chance to hunt, but also maybe not. But he has a higher chance of survival. If we kill the deer, he might be dead, but also he may be succeed and bring food to his family. And who knows what he will do, but let’s say he took the risk to kill the deer. This short stupid story actually shows how emotions play a huge role: fear and love. He had a fear of dying, but he loves his children that he gambled and took the risk.
What we feel influences what we think, and what we think influences how we act. And most importantly, how we act shapes how we grow in the society. Emotion is the root of our decision-making process.
Emotion is A Self-Defence Mechanism
Let’s talk about our caveman. What if he does not feel fear? He was out in the wild and suddenly he heard the growl, but he have no fear of death. His brain is wired to feed his family, no matter what will happen. This might lead him to be able to accomplish his mission more effectively and successfully. Maybe you are familiar with a movie “Jason Bourne”, an agent that supposedly was built to be a killing machine and have no feeling. This cavemen has a similarity in this area compared to Bourne.
However, because he feel no fear, he could actually be dead in the next minutes. This shows us that fear actually could be a self-defence mechanism. An upgraded self-defence mechanism, I would say. It is like when you are playing a RPG game, then your character got an upgrade for their skills. We are actually have this upgraded skill, compared to our fellow animals. Fear, or I would like to say in a more general term as emotion, actually could come handy.
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| Credit : iStock |
Our emotion makes us a better decision-maker, compared to a heartless hitman, as we see in a lot of situation. But it actually makes us also more vulnerable to more threats. Phobia is one of the example. Defined by Oxford dictionary as a strong unreasonable fear of something, the “unreasonable” part actually explains it all. The fact that it is unreasonable is the dangerous part, it overrides our common sense and most of the times prevent us from making a better decision.
The Complexity of Our Brain
Our brain is amusing, and we could and would not stop figuring out what actually happen when we make this small decisions along our life, which could also leads to a bigger decision, such as suicide. Our survival instinct grows together with our emotion, and with the ability to feel things, we keep standing on the top of the food chain.
We rule the world, and emotion is the underrated actor behind it. We might be thankful for our ability to fight physically and think critically, but not to feel complex emotions. However, having an upgraded self-defence mechanism actually rise a bigger responsibility to control it. When you have a better weapon, it is not just simply better, but also harder to use. Our ability to survive depends on how well we know our own weapon, and it is our own task to be the master of our emotion.
Now, the bigger question that leads from this topic is: does our ability to feel actually evolved simultaneously with the evolution of our brain, or is it actually already built-in in our brain, that we just not had time and the occasion to access it? This will be one of the discussion for next week, so see you!
Image credit : freepik.com
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