Emotion is such a complex concept. Emotions have the power to do some of the greatest good but also some of the worst evil. Positive emotions make us feel good and give our body feelings of pleasure. Negative emotions lead us to do some of the worst things imaginable. Essentially, positive emotions such as happiness and love drive us to do good things for ourselves and others, while negative emotions such as hatred and anger make us more likely to harm ourselves or others. Therefore, this begs the question: Would we be better off in a world without emotions?
Most people will instantly react to this with something along the lines of no, because it would be too boring, too dull, life would become meaningless, etc. It is true that no one would give up the ability to feel joy or happiness or love; however, could it be worth it at the expense of anger, hatred, and jealousy? A world with no emotions would mean no wars, no violence, and no killing. All decisions would be based completely off of logic and efficiency. We would make the best decisions to benefit us and those around us and achieve maximum potential as a society.
In order to ultimately determine if humans would be better off without emotions, we have to decide which situation gives us the best net result. If we consider an emotionless world neutral, or zero, then we need to find out if positive emotions and their effects outweigh the negative emotions and their consequences. I have been known to be a cynical and pessimistic person, but I can’t help thinking in today’s society that the negative emotions far outweigh the positive ones. All of the anger and hatred has caused wars and violence around the world for years and years. Even the positive emotions have led to wrong acts. People think money, drugs, and sex will make them happy and end up doing evil things to obtain them.
In the end, although most people with disagree, I would rather live in a world with no emotions than a world where emotions have led to illogical decision-making, pain suffering, corruption, and death.
Let me know what you guys think about this topic in the comments down below. Please like the post, give me some feedback, and share my blog with your friends.
Thanks,
Jeff
Pierro's Perspective 
I would much rather live in a world with emotion, experience pain and anger, love and laughter than a world of robots with no emotion!
Emotions are very messy, defy logic, and people are driven to do things they shouldn’t because of them. But emotions are not the root problem–it’s what we do with our emotions that causes problems–that’s where sin has broken this world. I just got news that a wonderful man of God just died and I feel very sad. Though we may view sad as a negative emotion, I would rather feel sad than feel nothing. Emotions help us to reach out to others in empathy–how can I minister to others in a time of need if I feel nothing? If I feel nothing, how can I have compassion? This world would be a pretty ugly (oxymoron!) place if no one had compassion. While I understand your feelings about feelings, I think you are barking up the wrong tree. Take away feelings and you take away our humanity, you take away the image of God in our lives.
You bring up an interesting point about emotions not being the root of our problems. It is in fact our actions that we are ultimately responsible for. However, strong emotions are what lead us to great or terrible things. Perhaps a compromise can be reached. We could have emotions, but there would need to limit on the degree and strength of those emotions since it is the extreme emotions that do the most damage.
We can reach a compromise but a compromise can always end. The root of trouble does lie in our actions bu it is our emotions that sway us in the movement. We fight wars because of strong emotions for an object or a belief. A person who begins a fight disregards another’s thoughts and emotions. Though you may feel sad there are others who suffer more than just sadness. They can suffer from depression which can lead to suicide. If there were no emotions, no one will suffer from that kind of situation. A world of peace, a utopian, is a place with no emotions. A world lead by logic is the most peaceful.
(just thoughts after a shower)
if there were no emotions there would be no happiness or hope and thus no point to life; you would never be able to enjoy anything which would take all meaning out of life. You say emotions kill people but no emotions could result in death as well because no one would love you and thus no one would care if you died therefore why would anyone help you if you needed it. If death happened to be more efficient for some reason, you might die and no one would care. No emotions might allow us to accomplish more work but there would be no point because we would never be able to enjoy anything.
Ok but if the world didn’t have emotions you would not care if you died the world would be more logic and with logic anythings possible you would not worry about life not being worth living because you not care you would understand if you didn’t have emotions I have emotions but my dopamine is lower then it should be.
I experienced a time without being able to feel emotions, or even dream. I never want to go back to that way of feeling. I wasn’t any more logical than I was before, I was just more “mechanical” in my actions, and just pretending to be “normal”
You sound like you would like to be a Vulcan. Vulcans think logically and try to express no emotions, which they consider an illogical weakness. Mr. Spock of the original Star Trek series often struggled with this because he was only half Vulcan–his mother was human. There were some interesting shows that explored these concepts and showed that pure logic can’t always solve certain situations. Maybe we can watch a few shows when you’re home for break.
The difference with the Vulcan though is that they are just suppressing their emotions, they still have them.
People have been fighting and killing each other since the beginning of people. Humans are animals, were inherently evil, there will never be peace on this earth as long as there are people. If you think the opposite is true, you’re very naive.That being said, i would gladly give up love, compassion, kindness etc. in order to stop the killing, murdering, war, hatred and all the horrific things people do to each other.
I had a dream like that once or twice, where people didn’t experience emotions. There was a lack of originality and creativity in people. Humans had basically found a way to subdue their emotions. It was a very strange dream world. One that was so intriguing that I wanted to dream of it again and again. It felt safe to be in that reality and yet there was this kind of nothingness that you could feel. Nothing to get excited about, perfection seemed to be a motivator in people. Perfection in all things you did. But if you failed, it didn’t really matter, you just strangely seemed different than the others. But there was a sort of judgement with no emotion behind it. Things were just a matter of fact, repetitious and very very bland. But indeed, there were no wars, no jealousy, no hatred. But it seems like souls were trapped in their bodies and minds. I dreamed this as an observer. It just seemed unnatural. Souls still had the instinct to what to survive, but they couldn’t quite embrace everything life could offer. Because they didn’t know how to really live an experience through feeling it. They could only conceptualize their experience, but they couldn’t grasp the full meaning of being alive.
Positive emotions are great yes but to those who feel deeply this means also feeling the negative emotions strongly too. Yes it’s easy to say we should control our bad emotions so that we don’t make unwise decisions however when emotions are at the forefront, logic takes a backseat. It’s really difficult to control some emotions and I’ve looked at people who are on the more logical side and experience less emotion and they seem to have life so much easier as they aren’t as easily affected by it. It appears that being more logically minded than emotional (maybe a 70/30 balance) might be better. We still need some emotion otherwise we’d just be robots. I don’t think however that they’d be no killing as a result of having no emotions. If it seemed logical to do so e.g. for the greater good of mankind, then some may ‘need’ to be killed according to logic.
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I’ve gone without truly being able to feel emotions for a while in high school I can feel real emotions again without just pretending again and I can flat out TELL YOU that I would NEVER want to go back to how I felt in high school. I would never wish such a fate on anyone, it was horrible. Just going along pretending to feel… anything really. some people seem to think “oh you must have been so much more logical” or “oh you must have been so much more calm” no, it was more like just going through the motions each day. The time I couldn’t truly feel emotions, I also couldn’t dream. Sleeping was just, lights out, then wake up without having any dreams.
And before people tell me that “oh you had dreams, you just never remember your dreams.
I remember dreams from my childhood, the only ones that ever truly faded were the ones I didn’t care to remember or ones that actually showed bits of the future(exact events) The future dreams were never anything big, just like, I’m watching a cartoon and working on something specific, then it ends at the point when I would be about to say or think “I saw this before in a dream”.
A world without emotions, is a world without dreams, without creativity, without hope. That’s not a world I would want to exist.
I’m writing a film based off Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Argument. Basically, Bostrom argues that we likely live in a simulated world that a post-human species has created to serve them in some way. In my film, the post-human species is using the simulation of our world to test the effects that emotions had on the lives of the subjects. People on here are saying that emotions give meaning to our lives but because life is almost definitely meaningless (absurdism), then would we be better off as purely rational beings? So basically, in the film, the meaning of life for the subjects (us) is to live and to serve our creators. My protagonist is a member of the post human race, and she gets trapped in the simulation. I am having a hard time writing scenes of her before she’s subjected to our world, because trying to imagine an emotionless society, and why someone without emotions would decide to enter the simulation is quite difficult. So far the rationale is that she wants to experience emotions that are impossible in her real world, but I don’t think a purely rational being would have any desires. If anyone can give some insight or ideas that’d be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Emotions are gifted to us by God. They can be used in a positive or negative way, and they can help us to find our way to paradise or hell. Without emotions life would be meaningless, therefore I could careless if I end up to paradise or hell (of course if I do believe in paradise and hell). As God has given us the freedom to choose, we have the option to use the emotions in a positive or negative way, so it’s our choice which option we want to go for.
No, it’s not. What would be the point of doing anything if you had no emotions? What would be the point of creating things and advancing life if none of us even cared? We wouldn’t care what happened to anyone or anything if we didn’t have emotions. We’d all be Anti-sues, in a way. Once again, life would be dull. Everyone would be like a robot. Nobody would have dreams, and without dreams and ideas, without emotions, nothing could really advance. We wouldn’t care about curing diseases and helping people because we would be incapable of it. We wouldn’t care about creativity, because nobody can be truly creative if they’re emotionless. Nobody would care about the animals in the world, we’d all be mercilessly slaughtering them because we would need food, and then all of the animals could slowly go extinct. We wouldn’t care. We wouldn’t care about pedophilia, or anything of the sort. And that stuff would still happen because nobody would care about ages when it comes to reproduction. The world wouldn’t be as advanced as it is now because nobody would care about advancing it. Nobody would care. People would die, children, babies, because we wouldn’t care. Even animals have emotions, they care. Nobody would do anything productive because they wouldn’t care to. We would likely still be living in caves, people dying, and nobody caring. It would be pointless. It would be the most pointless existence that anyone or anything has and ever will live. At the core, we are all just animals, and if even an ant can have simple emotions (I’ve seen some emotional stuff with ants), then why would we be better off without them?