Headline, August 29 2024/ ''' EMOTIONS. -REASONS- EMERALDS '''

 

''' EMOTIONS. -REASONS-

 EMERALDS '''

FOR ONCE - CONSIDER LOOKING AT ALL THE SADNESS AND MEANNESS

in the world and conclude that we're just not good at building healthy, lasting emotional connections. THIS IS PURE TERROR.

! YOU'RE ONLY AS SMART AS YOUR EMOTIONS ! If I were asked to list the major intellectual breakthroughs of the last half century, I would certainly include the revolution in our understanding of emotions.

For thousands of years, it was common in Western thought to imagine that there was an eternal war between reason and our emotions. In this way of thinking, reason is cool, rational and sophisticated. Emotions are primitive, impulsive and likely to lead you astray.

A wise person uses reason to override and control the primitive passions. A scientist, business executive or any good thinker should try to be objective and emotionally detached, kind of like a walking computer that cautiously weighs evidence and calculates the smartest way forward.

Modern neuroscience has delivered a body blow to this way of thinking. If people thought before that passions were primitive and destructive, now we understand that they are often wise. Most of the time emotions guide reason and make us more rational.

It's an exaggeration, but maybe a forgivable one, to say that this is a turnabout to rival the Copernican Revolution in astronomy.

The problem is that our culture and our institutions haven't caught up with our knowledge.

Today, we still live in a society overly besotted with raw brain power. Our schools sort children according to their ability to do well on standardized tests, slighting the kind of wisdom held in the body that is just as important for navigating life.

Our economic models are based on the idea that humans are rational creatures coolly calculating their self-interest, and then we are surprised when investors whip themselves into the frenzy of a stock market bubble.

A lot of people are estranged from their own inner lives because they don't know how their emotions function. I look at all the sadness and meanness in the world and conclude that we're just not good at building healthy emotional connections.

So what are some of the things modern neuroscience has taught us? Well, things really got rolling in 1994 when Antonio Damasio published his classic

'' Descartes' Error,'' Damasio had studied patients who had trouble processing emotions.

They weren't supersmart Mr. Spocks. They were unable to make decisions and their lives spiraled.

He demonstrated that emotions deftly assign value to things and without knowing what's important, or what's good or bad, the brain just spins its wheels. Emotions and reason are one system integral to good decision making.

Since then, neuroscientists have jumped into the study of emotions with both feet. We have a better understanding of how emotions form and what they do for us. To oversimplify a bit, below conscious awareness your body is constantly reacting to the events around you :

Heart speeding or slowing, breathe getting shorter or longer, your metabolism purring or groaning. Many of these reactions happen in the enteric nervous system in the gastrointestinal tract, which is sometimes called '' the second brain.''

There are upward of several hundred millions neurons in that system; 95% of the neurotransmitter serotonin is there.

Every second of every day your brain is monitoring the signal sent up from your body and rushing to assign a meaning to them. Is this set of bodily responses nervousness? Anxiety? No! This is pure terror!

The body kicks into gear and then the mind constructs an emotional experience. It feels like we get scared and start running from the bear. But as the psychologist William James brilliantly intuited over a century ago, it's more accurate to say we start running from the bear and then we get scared.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research and Great Writings on Emotions and Living continues. The World Students Society thanks David Brooks.

With respectful dedication to the Global Founder Framers of The World Students Society - the eternal and exclusive ownership of every student in the world - and then Parents, Students, Professors and Teachers.

See You all prepare for Great Global Elections on : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter X !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

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