Origins of Emotions

In the beginning, there was nothing but darkness. Then there was light. And then, many diverse and wondrous things happened over the course of a very long period of time. To skip a few billion years worth of description, let us skip to the rise of animals. As animals began to become more complex, their needs also became more complex, as did their interactions with the world around them. Slowly, over time and with the advent of a sophisticated central nervous system, primitive sensations became what we might call emotions. These emotions were likely limited to the basic ones such as the need to defend oneself and one’s territory, the need to run away in the event of danger, and the need to not kill certain creatures without due cause. This may have led to other emotions, such as the need to socialize with others of the same species. Without this socialization, and the resulting cooperation, many species may have died out.

Let’s fast forward for another good chunk of time. By this time, creatures and interactions have gotten increasingly complex and led to animals such as primates. These basic emotions would have had to evolve to incorporate many new feelings over time, as more complex social groups formed. New emotions would have included a sense of loss when individuals died, and eventually a need to share and help the others in the group, as well as the need to be part of a group. After enough time, a crude sense of evaluation must have been developed to acknowledge the right of an individual or small group to control the larger group.

Now, let us take one final jump, reaching the last ten thousand years. Remember, as a species, we are not all that different from those early farmers. By this point, humans had become parts of groups of increasing size and complexity. As such, our emotional needs have expanded. With more emotions, there are more opportunities for variations of and combinations of these emotions. As each successive need for a basic emotion is added, entire new webs of emotions spring up around them, binding the various emotions together. This goes beyond a biological need, to fill a psychological need. This addition of new emotions both allows more effective social interaction by way of understanding and communication, and allows for easier navigation of our emotional states. When an animal has only a few emotions, it would be more difficult to slide into a non-aggressive state than when there are similar emotions which can facilitate the emotion. Similarly, it is easier to rise into a needed state without obvious signs of what is happening with emotions at varying combinations of the basic emotions.

So, what is an emotion? At its root, an emotion is a response to a stimulus. While this is true, it is not the entire truth for creatures with such complicated emotions. These emotions are all connected in various ways, and, by their innate codependence on each other, are capable of influencing our other emotions by their presence and/or severity. There are basic, more primal emotions, over which other emotions have grown and expanded, with lesser emotions connecting these.