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Of Emotions, Babies & Spilt Food

60604608am

Blogland,

Are human emotions so complex that it can lead people to:

a) make irrational decisions?
b) not being able to make decisions?

35 years ago, whenever I feel hungry I'd cry and hey presto... next minute I'm sucking a teat. The decision I made? Cry.

So can we say that human emotions are not complex? Well, I guess when you're a baby incapable of doing lots of things yourself, things are a lot less complex than if you were 35 years old and hungry. I'll get back to why being hungry at 35 can be complex in a little while.

First, are things really less complex when you're younger. My guess is hell no!

You cry when you're a hungry baby and in effect what you are doing is transferring the complex decision making process (which includes emotional assessment) to the adults.

Is the baby crying because he is hungry? Is he in pain? If he is in pain, why? Is it colic? Why? Is he in need of a diaper change? If yes and I just changed him 5 minutes ago, is he suffering from diarrhea? If yes, why?

And the emotional decision making process goes on and on. For the baby, he'll just pass the complexity to the adult. This supports my other theory that we actually were born smart, but then get too smart for our own good as we grow older. But that's a topic for a different forum on a different day.

So we can say with conviction then that the human emotion is indeed a complex issue.

But why would being hungry at 35 years of age be a complex issue?

First off, since we have established that the human emotion is indeed complex, and we have suggested that we get too smart (read: dumber) as we grow older, then at 35 anything would be complex! At 53 it would be a catastrophe!

Here, listen.

You're 35, at the office. It's 10:27am and you're hungry. At the same time, you know the cafe is open, and on the menu today are two of your favourite meals.

You are working on an assignment which is due by noon, and the only reason why it's not even half ready yet is because trying to do it meant dealing with a totally different set of complex emotions!

So if you go and have lunch at 10:27am, you could end up:

a) eating alone because everyone else is not hungry
b) running the risk of not completing your assignment, which could affect your promotion and increment
c) having to decide on one of the two meals that is one the menu
d) falling on the way there and break a leg or worse, die
e) choking on the food that you took the time to decide on, and end up a vegetable all your life or worse, choke in front of the girl that you've been trying to impress since the beginning of the year
f) spilling food on your new suit
g) doing the opposite of all of the above

Ho man! Life's tough!

Comments

Sheahnee Iman Lee said…
LOL.
y'know, you're totally right.
often,it's the easiest, most obvious decisions that seem the hardest to make.
why?
because men (and especially women) were born too damn complicated for their own good.
from a religious point of view, we might see that when adam partook of God's forbidden fruit, he achieved knowledge, and by that count, lost his innocence forever.
having knowledge, being smart, being principled and upholding values, heck, even knowing the simple difference between good and bad, has made human beings too damn complex for their own good.
makes you sometimes wish adam had never eaten that apple, and left us ignorant and simplistic, always thinking the best of everything and everybody, and never having to know, or do, wrong.
but..sigh..since it didnt happen that way, i guess that means we must just do what we must do.
Monday, June 07, 2004 9:41:00 am
AMIR MAHMOOD RAZAK said…
Actually, from the Islamic point of view, Adam AS was a means to an end. Many still view that if Adam AS did not eat the fruit, we'd be in heaven. But Allah SWT did say thay Adam AS was made to be placed on earth. Either way, we would have ended up on earth.
Wallahualam.

Amir Mahmood Razak
Thursday, May 01, 2014 8:40:00 pm
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