Where do human feelings come from? Where does the sense of beauty come from?

24.04.2021

All people and other living beings are capable of experiencing in one form or another joy, fear or sadness. Although scientists have already managed to determine which areas of the brain generate emotions, the mechanism of their occurrence is not yet completely clear, and it is also not clear what is common between them. Today, there are many theories trying to explain the phenomenon of emotions.

Also in late XIX century famous psychologists William James and Carl Lange independently proposed a hypothesis that emotions are associated with our physical state: the excitation of nerve endings leads to emotional experiences. That is, we tremble not because we are afraid, but we are afraid precisely because we are trembling.

It is clear that this theory does not stand up to scrutiny. Speaking scientific language, it does not take into account the cognitive aspect. For example, if a student has a stomach ache before an exam and hamstrings are shaking, then this is because he is afraid of the exam. That is, there is a completely objective external reason for such well-being. The student knows perfectly well that it is important for him to pass the exam, and considers himself insufficiently prepared for him, hence the fear.

Later, another theory of the origin of emotions was proposed - this time cognitive. It just connects the emotional response with the processes taking place in our minds. So, a person should be afraid of a dog when he sees how she bares her fangs, supporters of this theory argue. However, they, in turn, do not take into account the subjective factor: not all people are afraid of dogs, even with bared fangs. For example, a person can himself be a dog trainer, and of course, then there can be no talk of any fear.

Recently, philosophers Albert Neven and Luca Barlassina from the Ruhr University in Bochum (Germany) outlined a new philosophical and psychological concept of emotions, publishing an article in the journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. According to new theory, emotions are a combination of bodily sensations and our idea of a particular object. So, having met a bull terrier, we remember everything negative that we know about representatives of this breed, or we remember our meeting with another dog, which ended in unpleasant consequences. That is, the appearance of a dog gives the process an emotional coloring, and we experience fear in conjunction with the corresponding physical reactions: trembling, palpitations, increased sweating, etc.

The same theory explains the phenomenon when emotions are directed to the missing object. Let's say a passer-by is walking down the street and someone is throwing slop on his head. He raises his head, sees a woman in the window and immediately bursts into abuse against her, although he has no direct evidence that it was she who threw out the slop ... And how often do we take out our bad mood on loved ones? For example, we are “fed up” with our bosses or colleagues at work, and when we come home, we begin to find fault with our spouse and children, since we cannot afford to express our “fi” to our boss or colleagues for one reason or another ... In general, there is an emotion , and to which object to direct it is already the tenth thing.

People also tend to react in certain ways to various fantasy characters such as aliens, vampires, or ghosts. Even if a person has never encountered such entities, he may assume that when meeting with them "should" experience horror or fall into a stupor. Specialists in the paranormal even have the term "contact stupor". Faced with something unusual, the contactee falls into a kind of temporary paralysis: the limbs stop moving, and the tongue is unable to utter a word ... Sometimes this state disappears during the contact, and sometimes only after it.

True, it is not entirely clear what this is connected with - whether this phenomenon is an individual natural reaction to contact with an object that a person refers to the sphere of "supernatural", or is it the result of "otherworldly" influence. By the way, a similar, but weaker in intensity reaction can occur in people prone to impressionability while watching horror films where these creatures appear.

Where do feelings come from

Most of us live with the idiotic feeling that life is ruled by chance. But in fact, each of us from birth has a companion who loves us tenderly and deeply, a partner whom we usually do not want to notice. Call it the Inner Being, the Higher Self (I personally don't like this name very much), the Expanded Self, the Divine Self - or at least Mickey Mouse! Call it what you want, but know that this is the greatest part of ourselves, without which we could not exist in the physical body. This is the Source of our life on earth, the purest positive energy of the Universe, of which we are a part; it is the purest positive energy of Life, and we are life.

Have you at least once thought that there is some secret part of ourselves that knows everything there is to know, but is deeply hidden? This is it - the widest, oldest, wisest part of your essence, knowing no boundaries, but able to contact consciousness in only one way - through feelings!

The expanded part of our "I", with which we came into this world, is in a place that many of us would call "nirvana" - at the very top of the vibrational scale. The expanded self does not know what vibrations of stress or need are. For him, all negative vibrations are just a black hole that does not emit a single ray.

But we cannot vibrate at such a high frequency and still remain in our physical body. All we can do is to approach this source as close as possible, experiencing joy, delight, admiration, gratitude - feelings as old as the world, meaning “happiness”. That is why we feel so good when we are happy - because the frequency of our vibrations has approached our true self! When you are happy, you are in sync with your immaterial self, connected to its high frequency vibrations and all that they can give you.

When we feel good, the frequency of our vibrations rises and approaches the “design” one. We stop chewing, like chewing gum, low-frequency vibrations of fear, alien to us by nature, but familiar from childhood. We find ourselves in a space where we can receive Instructions and answers to our questions. And all because at such moments we walk hand in hand with our true Essence.

In the same way, when we radiate the vibrations of need, excitement and anxiety - that is, we experience any emotion that is not joy - we disconnect from our inner partner, and everything starts to fall out of our hands. We feel like a child who has had their favorite teddy bear taken away.

So, when we feel good, we are connected to our Expanded Self. When we feel bad or not at all, when we are in a depressed mood, we disconnect from the source of happiness and plunge into low frequency waves.

In other words: everything that is not joy is negative. If we don't feel joy, we swallow broken glass.

Luckily, we don't have to watch our thoughts every second to get our stuck lives out on the high road, otherwise we'd just go crazy. All we need to do is to be aware of our emotional well-being, both good and bad, to be aware of our emotional ups and downs.

This text is an introductory piece. From the book This Mad, Mad World Through the Eyes of Animal Psychologists author Labas Julius Alexandrovich

4.3. Where do leaders come from? Animals do not hold popular elections, and "from above" they do not lower their bosses. Who is in charge of the pack anyway? Where do leaders come from? Has a predisposition to leadership of a hereditary nature or is a product of learning, life

From the book The Language of the Human Face author Lange Fritz

Where do the "foreheads of thinkers" come from? The prerequisite for their appearance is the disappearance of hair above the forehead. Why spiritual workers show this baldness more often than physical workers, science does not know; but there is no doubt about the fact

From the book Your Personal Psychologist. 44 practical tips for all occasions author Shabshin Ilya

Where do objections come from? In both professional and personal life, each of us has to deal with objections - when our colleague, boss, subordinate, close person, relative, friend does not agree with us. Different people in such situations have different

From the book Psychological Color and Drawing Tests for Adults and Children author Shevchenko Margarita Alexandrovna

Chapter 4 Where Disease Comes From Our Emotions and Diseases Investigating your inner world is another step towards health, positive change, and a better life. With the help of color, imagination and drawing, you will be able to cope with your personal problems and

From the book The Secret of Attraction. How to get what you really want by Vitale Joe

Where does the money come from I had a client who was very lucky in life - he became famous very quickly. It's about about a twenty-five-year-old stockbroker who wrote a book on how to become rich. A cursory glance at the manuscript, I realized that the book would become a bestseller, while her

From the book Happiness to be a woman author Svetlova Marusya

Chapter 5 negative consequences this in a woman's life, - there was someone who said: - No, these were the rules before. It may have been like this before

From the book 1000 men's secrets that a real woman should know, or Journey through Bluebeard's castle author Lifshits Galina Markovna

Where do jealousies come from Where do jealousies come from? Hard to say. Some are born with it. From childhood, someone is sorely lacking in the most essential thing - love, and for the rest of their lives they are looking for it, and when they find it, they are afraid to lose it. Some, being the only children in

From the book Focus. About attention, absent-mindedness and success in life by Daniel Goleman

Where do strategies come from? Kobun Chino, a master of kyūdō - Zen archery, was once invited to demonstrate his skills at the Esalen Institute, the famous Training Center for adults in Big Sur, California located near Tassahara Zen Center

author Sheremetiev Konstantin

Where Wizards and Witches Come From Diffuse concepts underlie magical thinking. Diffuse thinking supplies any events that occur simultaneously with a mental connection. This is where omens and superstitions come from. After all, it's so simple. I put on a yellow jersey - and my favorite team

From the book Intelligence: instructions for use author Sheremetiev Konstantin

Where talents come from In this section, we will talk about where our talents for something come from. First, the raw numbers. 72 people signed up for the training, 58 reached the final. According to the results of the training: 15

From the book Manage your dream [How to realize any idea, project, plan] author Cobb Bridget

Where beliefs come from The source of our views and ideas is personal life experience. They are formed on the basis of what you have seen and experienced. For example, a child from a disadvantaged neighborhood may grow up with the belief that the people around them are dangerous. To the person who goes

From the book Reasonable World [How to live without unnecessary worries] author Sviyash Alexander Grigorievich

Chapter 7 Where idealizations come from Everything has been said for a long time, but since no one is listening, one has to constantly go back and repeat everything from the beginning. Gide Andre We already know what idealizations are. But where do they come from in our consciousness and subconscious? If you know

From the book Brain and Soul [How nervous activity shapes our inner world] by Frith Chris

From the book How great it is to be with parents. Illustrated psychology for children the author Surkova Larisa

Story 11 Where babies come from When my mother was pregnant with our Dunya, I wondered how the baby ended up in her stomach. I asked my mom about it, she told me interesting story and bought several books. Do you want me to tell you where babies come from? Mum

From the book How to make a child friends with soap author Lyubimova Elena Vladimirovna

From the book How to talk to your son. The most difficult questions. Most Important Answers author Fadeeva Valeria Vyacheslavovna

What are pimples and where do they come from? IT IS INTERESTING! Pimples, acne, comedones, milia - these are all names for common or vulgar acne (Latin acnae vulgaris). Acne is probably the most unpleasant "gift" that the skin can give to a teenage boy. Those nasty pimples

When we see something beautiful, our brain neurons release endorphins, and we experience pleasure. But why? Alexander Markov, a well-known Russian biologist and popularizer of science, argues about this in his book “Human Evolution: Monkeys, Bones and Genes”.

Our sense of beauty is a very complex phenomenon, which consists of many different factors. For instance, human body we consider it beautiful if on an instinctive level it testifies to us about the qualitative gene pool of a given individual: “ Beautiful woman give birth to strong and healthy children. Those who did not like "beautiful" external signs chose "ugly" (read - sick, not strong enough, not fertile, weak, not hardy, etc.) partners for themselves, their offspring were weaker or not born at all, and therefore such people were eliminated by sexual selection, and with them the genes of "misunderstanding of beauty" and "bad taste".

A very reliable "indicator of fitness" for both humans and other animals is symmetry. The more symmetrical the body and face, the healthier and stronger the individual, as a rule, and the fewer harmful mutations in his genome. Symmetry is generally the most important factor that determines whether a person is beautiful or not, numerous experiments testify to this. This is probably why we like well-shaped objects and find them beautiful, and especially if their symmetry is quite clever, complex and a little imperfect - for example, snowflakes. And it is symmetry, of course, that is one of the main motives of fine art.

Interestingly, the love for everything symmetrical probably goes back to time immemorial. You can think about this by looking at the shape of the Acheulean axes - bifaces. Paleolithic people spent so much effort and time to give them the correct, symmetrical shape! For what? After all, a knife can be anything - there would be a sharp tip and a cutting edge. The shape of the bifaces is similar to the fangs of predators, maybe they were their prototype? However, fangs tend to be usually curved. The ancient masters made them straight, with the correct bilateral symmetry. Some researchers suggest that the symmetrical forms of the Acheulean axes once served as a kind of “fitness indicator” for erectus and Heidelbergers, and therefore could even be supported by sexual selection.

There is another concept in the theory of evolution, which helps to understand why we have a sense of beauty. It is called the idea of "sensory displacement" or "sensory drive". A living being, first of all, needs to survive and leave offspring, so our perception should be selective - most quickly it should isolate from the surrounding world the information that we need for survival and reproduction. If our perception were all-encompassing, objective and not selective, this would require very large resources of our body and, in the end, would be ineffective.

Alexander Markov: “Reaction energy” is based on motivation, and motivation in animals is inseparable from emotions. If we want to manipulate the emotions of some animal (for example, a person), we should present him with such stimuli to which his brain has adapted to react most violently in the course of evolution. So, perhaps that is why the wings of diurnal butterflies are painted in such bright colors - after all, the eyes of butterflies for millions of years have been “tuned” to perceive bright colors - a source of food, so if a potential marriage partner has dull wings, he simply will not notice it.

Interestingly, in order to influence someone to the maximum, it is enough to present him with a so-called super-stimulus. To understand this, imagine that you are picking berries in the forest. After you have spent the whole day gathering a good bucket of lingonberries - what will you see first thing when you come home, lie down on the sofa with rapture and close your eyes? Of course, the same cranberries! Moreover, the largest bush, with the largest and red berries, which in fact, probably, does not exist. This bush is the perfect image of the goal that your eyes have been looking for all day. "And he (the bush - NS) seems so real, so real, that the psychological roots of idealism cease to look so incomprehensible," writes Markov. Therefore, if someone suddenly wants to make the strongest impression on you at this moment, he should present you with this lingonberry bush sprinkled with large berries.

Venus of Willendorf - a small figurine of a female figure, discovered in one of the ancient burials

That is why the “Paleolithic Venuses” – a lot of prehistoric figurines of women with common features (many are depicted as obese, incredibly busty or pregnant), dating from the Upper Paleolithic (about 40-12 thousand years ago) – these are also “super-stimuli”. When an Upper Paleolithic man looked at these figurines, his brain released endorphins, oxytocin, and other hormones. Of course, these same figures could also serve some other role, they could, for example, be a symbol of fertility, but this did not stop them from being super-stimuli.

Endorphins are also released when we are stressed or slightly frightened. “Perhaps that is why Paleolithic artists seemed beautiful (and they seem to us) not only large herbivores — potential prey, a reminder of exciting hunting scenes — but also the silhouettes of dangerous predators,” Alexander Markov concludes.

Have you ever wondered where people's sense of humor comes from? And everyone has their own. Someone easily improvises, immediately "giving out" very funny sayings in any situation. And someone has to spend hours pondering witty answers. Some even accept negative situations with humor. And others can not always joke in a relaxed atmosphere. Someone understands other people's jokes, someone does not, and at the same time he knows how to joke perfectly. Why is this happening?

Is a sense of humor an innate quality or can it be learned, like reading or writing? Or maybe this quality is divided into innate and acquired, like intelligence? In general, to put it simply, where does a sense of humor come from?

Everyone has a predisposition to a sense of humor from birth. And there are no people in whom this “function” is not provided at all. But the presence of this feeling itself and its quality depends on several factors. And above all, as scientists believe, on the level of intelligence.

The fact is that the “responsibility” for a sense of humor lies with the lower parts of the frontal lobes of the brain, they are also considered the “center of intelligence”. These areas of the brain are responsible for voluntary attention, the organization of thoughts and actions, the ability to identify inconsistencies in them and eliminate them. Thus, intellectual development contributes to the development of a sense of humor. The higher the level of intelligence, the better the person's sense of humor. Perhaps this is precisely due to the fact that not everyone understands each other's jokes, because the level of intelligence in people can be very different.

And who is laughing at whom here?

Indeed, many smart and educated people great jokes and relate to life with humor! According to the research results of the scientist Ziv, most of professional comedians have a very high IQ. However, for example, French psychologists refute the "theory of intelligence and humor", arguing that these two indicators are not related. Yes, and examples from real life show that not all highly intelligent people have a good sense of humor. Perhaps this is due to the following factor.

A number of studies show that a sense of humor is an indicator of unwavering mental health. For example, scientists Taylor and Brown conducted a study in which they wanted to understand what trait unites people with the strongest mental health and distinguishes them from people with less stable mentality. It turned out that this is an incredible sense of humor! Although, on the other hand, examples are not rare when professional comedians, striking everyone with sparkling jokes from the stage, fall into depression and anxiety in real life.

And, finally, it is believed that the environment in which a person grows up is largely responsible for the development of a sense of humor. For example, if the baby's parents are cheerful, like to joke, watch comedies, tell jokes, then in a toddler a sense of humor develops from an early age. If the whole family is distinguished by a serious and strict disposition, in kindergarten and the school is also a "gloomy" environment, then the child will grow up not very prone to jokes. However, these hypotheses also do not always work. A gloomy child can grow up in a cheerful family, and, conversely, in a “serious” environment, a great humorist. However, exceptions only prove the rule, don't they?

Summing up all of the above, we can draw the following conclusion: a sense of humor is more of an acquired quality than an innate one. Therefore, if desired, at any stage of life, a person can develop it, since everyone has a predisposition to a sense of humor.

If you told a joke and no one laughed, then you...

Resentment is not an incorrigible, pathological character trait, it can and should be corrected. Resentment is a person's reaction to a discrepancy with his expectations. It can be anything: a word, an act, or a sharp glance. Frequent grievances lead to bodily illnesses, psychological problems and the inability to build harmonious relationships with others. Do you want to stop being offended and learn to understand your grievances? Then let's look at how this can be done.

How to raise cheerful children while maintaining parental resilience?

Everyone, as parents, wants their children to be emotionally stable - able to cope with life's ups and downs. But the ability of parents to increase the resilience of children depends largely on the emotional resilience of adults themselves.

Most of us constantly ask ourselves the question: “How can I break out of this constant routine of daily problems?”. And, indeed, this task is not easy. After all, every day we wake up, go to work, perform a certain sequence of actions, come home and go to bed! Of course, this constancy sooner or later bothers and you want to break out of this vicious circle.

We live in an extremely intense time. And probably everyone modern man familiar feeling of exhaustion. It can occur for many reasons. to fatigue and chronic fatigue can lead to poor organization of the workplace, monotonous work without rest. Prolonged overwork often leads to the development of chronic fatigue, which can be even in healthy people.

We often do not understand other people, their motives, actions, words, and someone does not understand us. And it's not about what people say different languages, but in the facts that affect the perception of what was said. The article contains the most common reasons why people cannot reach mutual understanding. Familiarity with this list, of course, will not make you a communication guru, but it may lead to changes. What prevents us from understanding each other?

Forgiveness is different from reconciliation. If reconciliation is aimed at a mutual “deal”, which is achieved through bilateral interest, then forgiveness is achieved only through the interest of the one who asks for forgiveness or forgives.

Many have seen from their own experience that the power of positive thinking is great. Positive thinking allows you to achieve success in any business, even the most hopeless. Why doesn't everyone have positive thinking, since it is a direct path to success?

If someone calls you selfish, it's definitely not a compliment. This makes it clear that you are paying too much attention to your own needs. Selfish behavior is unacceptable to most people and is considered immoral.

There are times when a series of problems falls upon a person and a black streak begins in life. There is a feeling that the whole world has rebelled against him. How to get out of a losing streak and start enjoying life again?