A04 Foundational Principle

Which do you think is more likely?

Emotions only exist as subjective experiences.

OR

Emotions become subjective only after objectively triggered by some need independent of awareness.

Anankelogy

While each emotion conveys subjective matter for how to interpret and perhaps respond to the stimuli, it's the same emotion that predictably follows an evoked objectively occurring need. Fear, for example, objectively occurs when faced with an overwhelming threat.

After an overwhelming threat, you never feel aware of it by feeling disappointed or exhausted or lonely. Other needs predicate each of those emotions.

How we respond to such emotions remains rich with subjectivity. We can never choose to "unfeel" the objectively occurring need. Survival relies on the predictability of need-alerting emotions, occurring objectively.

Need-response

Need-response values each emotion as a conveyer of a particular need. Each emotion reliably alerts us to a particular need. Which need-response recognizes as an objective fact.

Sure, subjective poor choices may have triggered the need. But once evoked, the need and accompanying emotion occur as objective facts. They cannot be stuffed down by reasoning or compliance to laws.

Reactive Problem

Unpleasant emotions compel us to do something, to remove such displeasure. Pain prompts us to remove a threat, or move away from the threat. Obsessive cravings compel us to replenish what's missing with whatever we find accessible that will make the cravings go away.

Without prosocial options readily available, we either react offensively toward others or suffer in self-suppressed silence. Wellness then predictably declines.

Responsive Solution

Need-response improves respect for each other's emotions, no matter how intense they are. The more intense, the more urgent to resolve the underlying need or needs.

Instead of resorting to rationality or norms to restrain emotions, need-response goes to the heart of the matter: the unresolved need or needs at the core. Then incentivizes each other to recognize the underlying need. Then explore all impediments to resolve such needs.

The aim is to resolve needs to remove cause for pain or cravings. Resolving each need predictably removes, or at least reduces, cause for pain. As the objectively occurring need objectively resolves, there is no more objective reason for the emotion to alert what is no longer there.

Responding to your needs

How does this principle speak to your experience of needs?

• Subjective perception plays a huge role in what emotion gets experienced.

• This objective aspect seems miniscule compared to the bulk of emotion's subjectivity.

• Even if true, we still need rules and rationality to keep emotions in check.

• Without its subjective elements, there'd be no emotions.

Instead of selecting one of these, post your own.