Emotions- Why Do We Have Them?

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 26th, 2010

We as human beings have a body and a mind. With the body, we move around and do work. With the mind, we think, and experience emotions. Imagine of a human being with no emotions whatsoever. Only a thinking machine who reacts to nothing emotional but makes scientific analysis. Imagine telling a joke to him/her. They will not laugh at it, but either ignore it or analyze the joke. They make life difficult for those around them.
After all what is a person without any emotions?

Why do we have emotions at all? Your computer on which you are sitting right now is a perfect machine to analyze, think and give results. It has no emotions. It is only an intelligent machine. Why are human beings not like that? Would life be better if we had no emotions? We would lose all the charm of living if there was no trace of any emotion in any of us. Let us take some situations. A death - people gather, complete the ceremonies and depart. No wet eyes, no remembering the dead soul, no sense of loss. The law of nature is simple. One who is born has to die. So only intelligent understanding of that but no feeling of loss. Can you visualize the scene?

Love, what is love, if not an emotion? So there will be no love. People will meet, produce children and get away from each other. No love, no romance. What about family? They may have a family for the children to grow up. Then the family will get separated. Coming to achievements, discoveries and inventions. Why will a person without any emotions, feel good by achievements or get excited with discoveries? So nothing great. Only minimum existence needs to be met. It is the time for us now in this discussion to imagine of everything we do in life. Practically all our actions are governed by emotions. Imagine a person winning an Olympics gold medal and walking away without any expression! Think of more situations and you will realize the role of emotions in life.

We have emotions, because we are not low-level animals. Because even dogs and cats have emotions. We have emotions because they make us enjoy life. They make us perform great things and they make us human.