I just want to mention again that I think about my philosophy on things a lot, but I’m not a philosopher. The definition of philosophy is “love of wisdom” and I do love it as well as the pursuit of it, but I don’t dig deep into many of the classics and that can make me bad at referencing them. I kind of look for their central themes and classify them into buckets I like or don’t like. I like philosophical schools that promote openness & curiosity, expansion of knowledge & wisdom, and don’t claim to have the human condition completely figured out.
The deeper I go into most classics and even modern/contemporary schools the more questions without answers start to multiply and that’s not where I want to go. I want to figure out what can be figured out (for me) and leave the rest in a bucket called unfigureoutable. The line between the two is hotly debated and I guess if I thought more about things that I don’t think I can figure out maybe I’d figure out some new things. And this is my torture.
One area of thought that I don’t see a lot of analysis about, in philosophy, is emotion. Some schools, like Stoicism or threads of Buddhism, treat emotions as things to overcome. Others like Romanticism, Existentialism, and maybe Pragmatism see emotion as the very material that makes up life, and they let it be. But everyone seems to think our own emotions are just that, our own.
What if they’re more than obstacles, more than part of life? What if they’re also signals and the language of the Collective Puzzle. I think our lexicon for emotions is deficient. Not too many people can actually describe what, specifically, emotions are beyond mad/sad/glad. We don’t talk about these things. We talk about why we are feeling an emotion. We don’t often stop to observe the emotion, how they can wash over us and vanish or fade away. We share what the emotion is making us want to do (like throw things) but not what’s happening in our body as the emotion waxes or wanes. Without observation we can’t then recall details of them. We’re left with just the strongest of the signals we receive from them because we don’t catalog the intricacies. You can’t speak well about wine until you learn what words are associated with what sensations.
From a brain structure and neurochemistry perspective our brains are wired to use emotions to give depth to experiences. Neuron firing goes through the amygdala before the frontal cortex, then back and forth. Sometimes we don’t even remember an event, just the emotion that’s left from it. That indicates emotions are substantial enough themselves to be what you might consider reserved for actual thoughts. If we think of emotions as more than “our lizard brain” saying “this make me feel bad, that make me feel good” I think the subtleties start to emerge.
The other day I was driving out of my neighborhood, as usual, and I was struck by an emotion. Just slapped in the face with it. My practices in The Puzzle have helped me slow down when that happens and be curious. I kinda paused (do not recommend, I was not likely a safe driver) and let the emotion talk to me. The emotion itself then created a visual in my mind, something in the future that hasn’t happened yet, and poured details into my brain.
I found that experience both novel and very exciting. Was this my brain doing it’s prediction thing and telling me high probability ideas about what’s to come? Wait, was it the Collective Puzzle showing me some pieces in the future? Pieces I could now grab and throw in my bag as a part of a vision I want to work towards. Was it just some hormones and neurotransmitters interacting at the wrong time? Even if that thing does come true in the future it will only eliminate one of the above options. And maybe not because what if a random firing of neurons through the amygdala showing me a story in the future is all it takes to drive me to that future?
So I was left with more questions than answers, yet again. After my Puzzle vision I have had to revisit the question of whether all of our thoughts are created by our brain/body or not. I just can’t reconcile the vision with a “creative burst” or other explanation confined to my body. It was coming from outside of me. This has led me to be more curious and pay closer attention to signals that don’t feel as “me” as the others. The best way, I have found, to try and make sense of these signals, to piece the signals together into coherent thoughts, is to use emotions as the flashlight. To sit inside of the emotion that comes with the signal and let it bring the disparate pieces together.
I don’t know how it works, but it feels smarter than my thoughts or analysis. Kinda like how we still don’t know how ant mounds exhibit complex behaviors-. Emergence is the word we use to describe this. Ants only have 10-20 pheromones they use as their language of communication. But ant mounds, the collection of all of the ants, exhibit behaviors far too complex to be any combination of pheromones. The mound itself is exhibiting the behavior, not the ants. Things like optimizing a route to food, building a mound in the right shape & position to create stable temperatures and CO2 levels are done without any architects or blueprints. We even know that mounds can become less aggressive and smarter about competition as they age.
Perhaps emotions are one language of the Collective Puzzle. Our alignment with those around us allow the signal to get stronger. We just gotta pay attention to the subtle signals beneath the louder self-preservation and procreation ones.