IUBio

evolutionary significance of emotions !!

Robin Allen rwa at ecs.soton.ac.uk
Tue Feb 15 11:30:06 EST 2000


In <38A89C6A.6E59 at le.ac.uk> "A.F. Simpson" <AFS7 at le.ac.uk> writes:

>ashwin kelkar wrote:
>> 
>> what is so good about feeling bad ??
>> i believe that all thoughts originate either consciously or sub-
>> consciouly to make the conscious mind happy so why did bad emotions get
>> selected for ?

>Imagine some hypothetical human ancestors.

>Male Hypothetical Human Ancestor A (MHHA-A) follows the same woman,
>Female Hypothetical Human Ancetor A (FHHA-A) around all his life trying
>to persuade her to mate with him.  Every time HHAA turns up outside her
>cave clutching a dead rabbit, FHHA-A tells him that she's already
>happily mated to MHHA-B and even if MHHA-A were the last male anthropoid
>in the caves she would be more likely to form a loving relatioship with
>a sabre-toothed tigre.

>However, MHHA-A has no bad emotions.  He never feels hurt, or
>frustrated, or depressed by constant rejection.  So every day he turns
>up with a new dead rabbit and tries again.  Eventually the festering
>pile of dead rabbits by the cave causes an outbreak of disease and the
>entire human sepcies is wiped out before it even gets going.


Oh dear. Should I try chocolates instead?





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