is it best never to really get emotionally involved with anyone?
 

I fell for someone, she hasnt been in touch for ages even tho our last convo seemed good.

I did forget about her but she is suddenly back in my mind and its so annoying!

I dont know why she is back in my mind, she has not been in touch, essentially she has disappeared from any lines of communication.

Ok I have not sent a text or called only emailed.

I just dont wanna feel how I feel in this moment.
It sucks

Emotions are what makes us human.

Or do humans make emotions?

I think you mean something different while using the same term.

Watch the movie Ghost of Girlfriends Past.

It answers your questions in a far better way than I can. :)

You've lost me I'm afraid...

There are words in the English language such as "inhumane" or "humanism". That's concept of "human" that different from the concept that describes a being that has roughly 23 pairs of chromosomes with a certain content.

Edited to reflect my experience at this moment. :rolleyes:

But animals have emotions too...

Emotions are what makes us animals.

Reason is what makes us human.


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(OK I was just being poetic. In truth some animals have been shown to reason as well. So reason makes us animals. But our large prefrontal cortex that allows complex forms of reason truly is unique! Our uniquely large prefrontal cortex makes us human!)

I had the same thing happen to me as well, many years back. Someone whom I thought I got over suddenly showed up after not talking to her for a year, and all of my emotions and feelings for her came rushing back to the surface, together with the pain of heartbreak and separation. That's one messed up relationship I'm glad is over today.

This is like Platon, with the addition of contemporary science.

I remember feeling similar. It hurts..bad.

I would say time is what heals the wound it but it doesn't..not for everyone. What did it for me was understanding why I didn't get the results I wanted.

Sometimes meeting somebody else helps, all your thoughts go to them instead. Not if it's TOO soon after you've finished because that would make it more of a rebound thing, but after a good while has passed. You can't wait forever for them to leave your mind entirely, because that might just never happen! :(

An human emotion like love often includes having dreams of shared future. Animals don't do that the way we humans do.

Sartre has a nice story about a woman meeting a bear. The womans pulse goes up and she's a bit red in her face.
Did she feel fear or was it love because the bear reminded her of an especially hairy lover?
Sartre then concludes that you can't really know from the outside.

In the Scientists of the Discworld Terry Pratchett makes the point that humans are better described as the storytelling ape them as being described as the rational ape.

There an NLP person named Ross Jeffries who says he can reframe the approach anxiety (fear) that a guy who wants approach a woman feels into being charisma.
In it's nature a lot of emotions use the same physiology. A bit sympathicus activation and parasympathicus deactivation. The difference between them is the story we tell about them.

If emotions are about the stories we tell ourselves than I'm not sure whether animals have them.
What the difference between feeling anticipation of standing in front a crowd and being afraid of standing in front of a crowd in the future?
You might retake that reason 101. Especially the part about causal links ;)
We outcompeted those Neanderthals who had bigger prefontal cortexes.

To use a metaphor from the lesswrong community, if you don't have emotions what distinguishes you from the paper clip maximizer?

These days when I feel strong emotions I say to myself:
Hey, this means I'm alive.
Let's sit down and meditate.

If it's to painful I say to myself, let's explore whether I can change my representational system a bit to make it less painful. With a "broken heart" that worked to remove the pain as long as I kept my concentration. But while I was doing it I was thinking about whether I was simply coping out of the pain.
The interesting thing was that the "broken heart" emotion provided a lot of energy that could be channeled into meditation and being focused while rearranging the representations.

Getting emotionally involved with people is what happiness in life is all about! :D
But then it can be the biggest cause of misery, assuming you have basic physical needs met.

We need to try and protect our emotions, by not getting too attached to people until we are sure it is reciprocated, and we can trust them.
But even then you can always be misled. Think of people who put their self on the line in a relationship and then it goes sour. Things always change.

Basically a person needs to maintain a degree of self-definition, i.e. interests, self-value, etc, independent or irrespective of other people or circumstances.

Brutha is right on in that another v.important tool is the ability to feel emotions and not let it matter so much. This is one powerful benefit of meditation.

In my opinion a great degree of mental sanity involves being able to act regardless of how we feel emotionally. Easier said than done. Imagine last time you felt angry!

And reason and emotions cannot easily be separated. Rationality might be "feeling appropriately," as in "the right emotion, to the right degree, towards the right thing, at the right time" etc.

I'm no longer looking for someone to be emotional with. I'm looking for someone to be aligned with.

Beautifully said.

Well, obviously if it's human love, then it is likely to be unique to humans, just as dog love is unique to dogs. Love is not, however, uniquely human.

tough/sweet cookie that all of us have to taste. only few won't like it. in the end its part of evolution errr extending ourselves.

I agree that emotions mean you're alive and that emotions can be enjoyed.

I completely disagree with the contention that animals don't dream, don't imagine future positive outcomes, etc.

I agree that humans aren't defined by rationality. Like I said I was being poetic. "Human" is not a simple definition.

But neither our intellect nor our emotions are unique to humans. Of the two, however, it is far more obvious that animals emote than that they use reason. But both occur.

Our emotions perhaps can be indicators that we are alive, but they aren't indicators that we are human.