The human mind possess amazingly wonderful powers. The ability to understand advanced mathematics, to speak multiple languages, to conceptualise that which we cannot see before us — these are complex tasks. Our brain handles many such tasks so often that we don’t bother to count or track these wonders.
Yet, with such a powerful command center built into our human wiring, why can the mind not always control our emotions? That strikes me as weird. That which is so powerful can be quickly overcome by a sudden rush of anger as to force the mind to think rashly, inundated by a sense of love as to be rendered temporarily stunned or be devastated by a sadness so severe so as to be unable to focus on anything else but the sadness itself.
The susceptibility of the mind to such emotions is not limited to the emotionally unstable or sick. Even the mentally strongest of people can fall prey to their own emotions.
That amazes me. It fills my head (there goes my brain again!) with thoughts and questions.
Read “Brain Rules”, “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers”, and “How We Decide”.
But we learn to be rational. We learn to think. We learn to analyze. But we’re born with emotions. They are there. Staring us onthe face the moment we are born.
Emotions are not addendum to the functions of the human brain. Its not a component you can remove or turn off. Emotions are integral. The brain isn’t a computer. The only similarity is that it too can calculate. Rationality is an illusion. To be truly rational, we need the crutches of math and logic.
@ Jordan
There’s definitely a connection between the mind and emotions, no question there. To me though, they don’t seem one and the same. I’m not talking biology or physiology as such, but (perhaps) more about a philosophical approach to the topic.
Oh, well carry on then. 🙂
@ Jordan,
Yeah, I guess there is no way to prove it one way or the other …