IsaiahX
Ape That Loves
From an evolutionary perspective, are emotions useful? For the purposes of this post, I will define the goal of evolution as creating the maximum amount of offspring. Are emotions a valuable tool for reaching this goal?
In my opinion, the extent of emotion's usefulness is obtained with a basic system: attraction to positive stimuli and repulsion from negative stimuli. Advanced systems of emotion involving feelings such as anger, sadness, and empathy do not seem to enhance the completion of the goal of all biological life: reproduction.
Consider ants. They do not experience advanced emotions as humans do, their feeling being limited to avoiding negative stimuli and nearing positive stimuli. Scientists theorize that they may only be able to feel emotions from a collective standpoint.
However, ants are extremely successful from an evolutionary point of view. They number in the thousands of trillions, have advanced social structures and nest, and live on every continent in the world outside of Antartica. Considering all of this information, emotion and individualism seem essentially useless.
In my opinion, the extent of emotion's usefulness is obtained with a basic system: attraction to positive stimuli and repulsion from negative stimuli. Advanced systems of emotion involving feelings such as anger, sadness, and empathy do not seem to enhance the completion of the goal of all biological life: reproduction.
Consider ants. They do not experience advanced emotions as humans do, their feeling being limited to avoiding negative stimuli and nearing positive stimuli. Scientists theorize that they may only be able to feel emotions from a collective standpoint.
However, ants are extremely successful from an evolutionary point of view. They number in the thousands of trillions, have advanced social structures and nest, and live on every continent in the world outside of Antartica. Considering all of this information, emotion and individualism seem essentially useless.