Written by: Byron Athene, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
My last article explained how we could gain conscious control of our emotions. We feel bad because we entertain negative ideas. Those negative ideas can be neutralized by entertaining more truthful positive ideas. I introduced a framework that is part of an Emotions Mastery Program that I put together. The first part of the program enables clients to get better control. Another part asks the question, "if we have better control of our emotions, or better yet if we can feel good immediately after feeling bad, what’s the point of feeling bad in the first place?" This article aims to definitively answer that question.
The fact that we have more control of our emotions disproves most, if not all, of the conventional theories of bad emotions. When I say ‘bad’ or ‘negative’ emotions, I’m talking about emotions such as anger, disappointment, embarrassment, etc. – the ones that most people agree aren’t enjoyable. When I say ‘disprove,’ I mean I will demonstrate that they’re not absolute, i.e., applicable to everybody at all times.
There are too many theories to try to disprove them all in this article, so I’ll tend only to the three theories I’ve heard the most often. I’ll start with a summary of the theory and then identify an error in logic. I may use another section, ‘Considerations,’ to highlight other ideas that may support or refute. I’ll then introduce a fourth theory that will be harder to disprove. I believe that our life-view is definitely shaped by our relationship with good and bad emotions. If the fourth theory is true, it could significantly impact the way we view existence. Let’s jump in.
Theory 1: We need bad emotions to know or appreciate the good ones.
Error in logic: We don’t need one thing to know or appreciate the other.
It makes more sense that the people who believe this mean that we need at least two things to make a comparison. That is true. But, we don’t need one to know the other. With that logic, you would need to know what a car looked like to identify a bicycle. It might be easier to pick out a bike if it was in a line-up of cars, but you wouldn’t need to know what cars looked like.
Some people say they’re able to appreciate something more because they’re able to compare it to another. For example, you could appreciate the taste of a flavored drink after drinking water. Someone could drink coke twice and apply values to the experiences. The first sip could taste like a +3. The person could have some water, and then when they tasted coke again, it could taste like a +4 because they’re comparing it to the water. If this is true, it’s the taste equivalent of an optical illusion: one thing might seem different when seen within the context of another thing, but the attributes haven’t changed.
Considerations: Even if it were true that you needed one thing to know another, if there was one reason for the existence of bad emotions, could it be this? Also, if we needed negative emotions to identify certain things, we would only need to experience that thing once. After the first time, we could use our memory. For example, we only need to feel the pain of fire once to know touching fire isn’t a good idea, but every time you touch fire, it’s going to hurt.
Theory 2: We need bad emotions to stop us from doing bad things and have empathy.
Error in logic: Although bad feelings like guilt and shame prevent some of us from doing certain acts some of the time, we are still able to do bad things despite those feelings.
It’s also possible that some people do just good things without feeling guilt or shame. Also, we don’t need bad emotions to have empathy. All we need is understanding. Some might say, how can you understand someone else’s bad emotion if you don’t feel bad? In the same way, you could understand how someone could feel if their partner of 40 years died and you haven’t gone through the same experience.
The argument that bad emotions can be useful in certain scenarios can be addressed by saying it’s true they can be useful outside of the original purpose, but that’s like using a hammer as a paperweight. In fact, it’s like using a hammer as a paperweight when you’ve got lots of nails and pictures that need putting up, but you don’t know how.
Considerations: How could we possibly know if this was true because we live in a world where bad emotions are ever-present? We wouldn’t actually know what would happen if they were removed. We would need to remove them and observe what happened. Someone could say a psychopath can ngage in psychopathic acts because they don’t feel guilt or remorse. This is true in that specific case, but that psychopath could experience other negative emotions like anger, depression, or anxiety. What is the positive purpose of depression – what does it prevent us from doing that would be harmful?
Theory 3: Having negative emotions is just a part of being human / If you try to suppress bad emotions at the time, they’ll leak out on another occasion.
Error in logic: Because two things are together doesn’t mean that they must be together.
No matter what we did, we would still be human. We’re logical and emotional creatures. The negative emotion is there originally for a specific and logical reason. Saying it’s there just because it must be is flawed logic. However, I do believe displacement exists. Some people have difficulty expressing anger at an intended target so express anger at a safer outlet. But not all people feel the need to defer the expression of anger or other emotions. Also, some people wouldn’t get angry at that same incident, so there’s nothing to defer or displace.
Theory 4: The Baby Theory
We have negative emotions only because babies need them to alert someone that something is wrong in their external or internal environment. A baby is ideally in a state of equilibrium. When there’s something wrong internally (hunger) or externally (temperature), this doesn't feel good. The baby cries because of this bad feeling so that a caregiver could then problem-solve and change the internal or external environment. Hence, the baby returns to the normal state of equilibrium. Let’s call this the ‘BAND,’ which is an acronym for ‘block against needs/desires.’ This is one of the most important functions our brains perform.
It’s vital for a baby because it ensures the baby’s needs are met. After a baby’s needs are successfully met, the baby notices a connection between bad feelings and equilibrium restoration. At this stage, we could call it the BAN function because a baby may not have desires yet, just needs. When desires are introduced into the baby’s world, and the baby perceives a block to those attractions, it uses the BAN function to get these desires met in the same way as its needs. At that moment, BAN becomes BAND. This means the baby makes itself feel bad and starts crying so that an adult gives the baby what it wants, in the same way it used to cry so that an adult gives the baby what it needed.
This tactic works more times than fails, so an ironclad association is made between feeling bad and getting what you want. When we grow up, we’re not taught about this function, and those other theories take precedence in terms of explaining why bad emotions exist. If this theory is true, the baby could’ve stopped using the function as soon as it was able to communicate its needs and desires or when it becomes independent.
After language acquisition and independence are achieved, the only negative emotions that adults still need are fear and pain. These emotions have the continued purpose of letting us know our body is being harmed or at risk of being harmed. The BAND function should’ve been superseded by language as early as possible. Instead, it’s left to unknowingly run in the background so much that it becomes woven into the fabric of our experience. Its misinterpretation means we potentially look at life in a completely different way than we otherwise may have. This is due to bad emotions seeming to play such a big part in our lives. It can be argued that bad emotions are actually the main cause of life’s perceived struggles because of the negative behavior that often ensues negative emotions.
Error in logic: I haven’t found one. Some people have asked what about the babies who aren’t tended to when they cry? Those babies have their needs met enough, or they wouldn’t have survived.
All the other theories aren’t absolute because they don’t cover every incident of bad feeling for every person. This theory can be disproved by feeling bad and not perceiving anything in your environment that you want to be changed. I have been trying to disprove the idea since my first exposure in 1992 actively and have not been able to. In terms of theory 3: bad emotions are just a part of being human. This is true, being human involves having desires, and we're going to do what we can to meet those desires. For the first few years of our lives, feeling bad is a tried and tested tactic. So almost every time we have a desire above a threshold that's not being met, we're going to feel at least a little bad.
Considerations: One of the things that makes this harder to believe might be the fact that more people haven't seen it already. That's due to the subjective nature of reality: those other less sensible theories are being made concrete. Due to confirmation bias, we seek out evidence that proves our current beliefs instead of evidence that refutes it. This often happens to the extent of immediately ruling out everything else.
Some people will accept this truthfulness, i.e., acknowledge this makes more sense than its alternatives but still wonder now what? We can acknowledge this is a conditioned response, and the best way to condition another response is awareness and repetition. Every time you feel bad, you can use an acronym to remind yourself of what’s happening. That acronym is PEACE. PE stands for Programming Enlightenment. The ‘ACE’ stands for the ACE framework of my last article. That article identified four steps you can use to neutralize bad feelings.
So if this really is true – and experience and logic can indicate within a fine degree of certainty that it is – we can use awareness to gain a higher level of appreciation of what we are as organisms. Instead of viewing this once essential biological process as one of the inescapable things that makes life sometimes feel like a trial, we could use it to prove that we are committed to trying to create a better world for ourselves every single moment of our lives.
Also, the bad feeling is an indication that you want reality to be different or there’s a problem to be resolved. If you’re feeling bad, you’re less likely to be in a resourceful state, so the odds of changing reality or resolving the problem have been further reduced. That’s if the situation can be fixed at all. Often, the healthier and more helpful thing to do is to accept the situation and focus on positive, truthful ideas to feel better. This will often be difficult to do, particularly at the bigger life events like experiencing grief or loss. There is a direct correlation between the intensity and duration of the feeling with how big we think the event is. At those bigger events, a part of us acknowledges that we have to accept the situation, but we continue to feel bad because a part of us still wants that aspect of reality to be different.
Can you disprove this theory? Can you think of a time when you felt bad about something and weren’t able to identify something you wanted to be changed?
Byron Athene, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
After fully immersing himself in philosophy and psychology for 30 years, Byron Athene is truly an innovative force. His 'Generative Mindset' and 'Emotions Mastery' packages vastly extend the boundaries of conventional thinking. He encourages clients to change their current perspectives. This often results in them immediately tapping into the infinite source of the mind's creativity and power, which will have significant emotional, psychological, and behavioral benefits.
