Imagine a world in which there was suddenly no emotion — a world in
which human beings could feel no love or happiness, no terror or hate.
Try to imagine the consequences of such a transformation.
People might not be able to stay alive: knowing neither joy nor
pleasure, anxiety nor fear, they would be as likely to repeat acts that
hurt them as acts that were beneficial. They could not learn: they
could not benefit from experience because this emotionless world would
lack rewards and punishments. Society would soon disappear: people
would be as likely to harm one another as to provide help and support.
Human relationships would not exist: in a world without friends or
enemies, there co uld be no marriage, affection among companions, or
bonds among members of groups. Society’s economic underpinnings would
be destroyed: since earning $10 million would be no more pleasant than
earning $ 10, there would be no incentive to work. In fact, there would
be no incentives of any kind. For as we will see, incentives imply a
capacity to enjoy them.
In such a world, the chances that the human species would survive are
next to zero, because emotions are the basic instrument of our survival
and adaptation. Emotions structure the world for us in important ways.
As individuals, we categorize objects on the basis of our emotions.
True we consider the length, shape, size, or texture, but an object’s
physical aspects are less important than what it has done or can do to
us — hurt us, surprise us, anger us or make us joyful. We also use
categorizations colored by emotions in our families, communities, and
overall society.
Out of our emotional experiences with objects and events comes a social
feeling of agreement that certain things and actions are “good” and
others are “bad”, and we apply these categories to every aspect of
our social life — from what foods we eat and what clothes we wear to
how we keep promises and which people our group will accept.
In fact, society exploits our emotional reactions and attitudes, such
as loyalty, morality, pride, shame, guilt, fear and greed, in order to
maintain itself. It gives high rewards to individuals who perform
important tasks such as surgery, makes heroes out of individuals for
unusual or dangerous achievements such as flying fighter planes in a
war, and uses the legal penal system to make people afraid to engage in
anti-social acts.
