Emotions

Don't worry. It's normal. And chances are you've been having them since the day you were born (or more likely before.)

Whether you're furiously spewing profanities at the bar tender who misheard your order, leering suggestively at the waitress who is nervously avoiding your gaze, or sobbing uncontrollably at the feet of the police officer who is arresting you, emotional expression is a normal and healthy character trait.

But where do these emotions come from? Alcohol? Your stepdad? Your alcoholic stepdad? Well, that may be true, but it also turns out that your burning desire to punch a parking attendant is an integral part of your biological evolution.

In practical terms, emotions are suspected to be related to brain activity that determines the significance of events happening around us, and prepares us to respond accordingly. In more general terms, the significance of emotion in humans is still a widely debated topic. Theories range from the somatic theory, that suggests emotions happen directly because of the perceptions of bodily changes, to more cognitive theories, that suggest subconsciously calculated evaluations cause emotional response as a 'short-cut' to influence and prepare the body for certain situations.

To put the above into a more Cracked-Friendly context, consider the following:

Somatic: You are angry because you are in the process of kicking the mailman.

Cognitive: The mailman infuriates you, so you kick him.

Yeeeeeeearrrrrrrrrrgh!

Evidence from neurobiological studies suggests that emotional responses in the mammalian brain predate language capability by millions of years. Which means we went a long time without having to "talk about our feelings" to "caring professionals" who "just don't want us to hurt ourselves anymore." However, articulating our emotions is what separates humans from monkeys. While monkeys merely throw shit, humans get to throw verbal shit, which opens up whole new related avenues of social connection.

To throw or not to throw?

In fact, many medical professionals (and a healthy number of worthless charlatans) make a very good living by encouraging people to discuss their emotions, and in doing so better understand themselves in an attempt to modify their behavior and make them stop kicking the mailman. These days, such professionals are called "Analysts", just like in that hilarious Billy Crystal movie.

Hilarious

It is theorized that there are several integral emotions that are essential to the development of the mammal. Without these emotions, we would be a very different species indeed. In fact, we may not have survived, and we certainly may not have evolved to the point where we have mailmen.

But what are these integral emotions? And how many of them can be attributed to our stepdad's position in the post office?

Lust is the coveting of an attractive member of the opposite sex. Considering that mammals once co-existed with the dinosaurs, having lots of sex was probably the best way to relieve stress (remember that cigarettes would not be invented for a long time,) and ensure that the population was kept as high as possible. This urge to have a great deal of sex could have even helped us mammals recover from extinction level events. Therefore, the emotion of lust would be a useful 'shortcut' for weighing up the suitability of a potential mate.

In modern climes, with a large population and no natural predators, lust is only really beneficial to divorce lawyers and pornographers.

The greatest emotion of them all? Most of our songs are about it, and most of our movies and books. If you ask anybody what the emotion that defines humanities greatest quality is, they'll likely say love. The reason we put such a high value on love is very simple; it is the emotion that binds families.

Now, I know what you're thinking; "Wah! I hate my family and my family hate me! They won't even buy me an x-box and I like eyeliner and shit music! Wah!"

Well, the very fact that you have the luxury of sticking around and hating your family says a lot about love. The emotion that lets your mother put up with all your crap, and in turn will let you put up with all your kid's crap, is love. Its what keeps us in a family unit far longer than any creature in the animal kingdom.

Why is that important? Well, recent studies suggest that the development of the human's intelligence may be correlated to the amount of time we spend developing and being educated. We remain infants longer than it could ever be practical in the wild, and the reason we are able to remain infants and children so long is that we are protected and nurtured by very patient, very loving family units.

Sure there are various, horrible exceptions to this rule, but on the whole, most of us are raised in safe and loving environments, which is why we can sit around in our underwear playing warcraft 'till we're thirty instead of getting a job.

Perhaps the most primal of all emotions. Rage allows us the option to fight, and more importantly gives us the drive to pick fights we may not win. Why is this important? Because without it we'd be sitting in a tree saying "Man, that tiger's a dick. I wish Rambo was invented."

Does Rage have a place in modern society? Would we be better off without it? After all, we don't need to head-butt tigers to death anymore, and we have movies and video games to enact all our terrible violent fantasies. Surely rage is an outdated, neanderthalic emotion that we have no further need of in a civilized world? Well, no, actually. Why? Well, what stops big businesses dumping waste where ever they feel like it? What stops politicians telling outright lies? What stops bullies from imposing their will on everyone else? If you answered "absolutely nothing" to the above questions then... yeah, you've actually got a point...But the real answer is RAGE! Righteous indignation! Justified fury! This is the catalyst of revolution, and without your anger you can never truly arm yourself against oppression.

Of course, most of us just use our anger to come up with new insults in the comments section of blameless articles. So think about the complex biochemical reaction that takes place next time you call someone a "fagsplosion in a cock factory".

Conversely, Fear is almost the polar opposite of Rage, flooding the body with adrenalin for the purposes of running the hell away. After all; he who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day. Or, lives to run away another day.

In the natural world cowardice is the exact correct cause of action for nearly every even slightly threatening situation. However, countless generations of peer pressure and cavemen calling other cavemen cave-pussies have exacted a shame response in those of us who run away crying from dangerous confrontations or buzzing insects. While this has proven useful for forcibly expanding mankind's personal and territorial horizons, it's not such good news for the pigeon-chested weaklings among us who just don't want to confront dangerous buzzing insects.

Now, this one must be a mistake right? Anyone who's ever experienced true grief will tell you that, surely the world would be a better place if sadness wasn't programmed into us?

And maybe they've got a point. Grief, response to negative change, the yearning for something lost that cannot be replaced. These are all, horrible, horrible things, but like every emotion, sadness has a purpose.

Emotional pain, like physical pain, is a warning system. It is a 'retract/cover up' response to a situation the body/subconscious does not want to be in, teaching us to avoid or better cope with situations like it in the future. And, if you wanted to get poetic about it, you could argue that without the existence of sadness, you could never really know joy.

There is even a school of thought that suggests the embracing and expression of grief is cathartic, something that helps us deal with stress, like when you hit your thumb with a hammer and scream 'FUCKNUTS!' until the pain goes away.

If sadness is a deterrent warning system, then happiness is the opposite; the 'green light' that tells you everything is A-OK and that, incidentally, wouldn't it be nice if things were like this more often?

Here we have the carrot to the stick in the evolution of mammal priorities. Life need not be merely the avoidance of pain, but can also be the seeking of reward. When you think about it, this drive for satisfaction would have been a key motivational force in the various innovations of human history. It feels good to be warm, so we invent clothes and tame fire. It feels good to eat fatty foods, so our diet becomes richer in fatty acids and protein. It feels good to look good, so we invent body waxing and posing pouches.

However, this drive for satisfaction can also point to some of the more destructive flaws in the human character. A man who is dangerously overweight still finds satisfaction in eating fatty foods, even though he's eating his way to a volkswagen-sized grave. It feels good to be secure, so we hoard what we don't need, even in the face of the crippling poverty of our neighbors. It feels good to look good, so we invent body waxing and posing pouches.

Remember that time your room mate took a dump on the coffee table? Chances are that most of you (with some frightening exceptions) felt uncomfortable and repulsed when this happened. There is a very good reason for this- your room mate's fecal matter is filled with harmful bacteria that may make you ill. Your revulsion is understandable. As part of the evolutionary process, the feeling of disgust helps us to avoid things that may be harmful to us, and also grants us the wisdom to choose better room mates.

This is what anxiety looks like

Like rum and breakfast cereal, emotions can be mixed to make new, exciting and sometimes vomit-inducing flavors. For example:

Rage + Disgust= Contempt

Rage + Sadness= Despair

Rage + Rage= Super Rage

Rage + Happiness= That power-up you get in Doom 2

Rage + Love= Your feelings for your step dad

The general consensus seems to be that women are more in touch with their emotions than men. That they are better able to express them, and handle them. Anybody who's been to a sporting event will know that this isn't strictly true.

Pictured: emotion

Men are just as capable of having emotions as women, and if you don't believe us, pay close attention to your man the next time you watch the end of Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

Why is my face leaking!?