Ok, I think I've spotted where I bogged down in the discussion about grief vis-a-vis evolution.

The main argumet for it is that is has survival value through "bringing people closer together".

But as I stated a few times, I have never observed it actually doing that. In my experience, it actually has the opposite effect.

This is a little strange – replying to my own post. But I wanted to add something and didn’t want two different posts to be separated by a lot of other discussion that might dilute the connection.

I can see this scenario…

All emotions are grounds for “bringing people together” by the simple fact of being something they have in common. Thus the whole range of emotions has some survival value in that respect.

However, that doesn’t answer the question of how so many different one’s evolved and why they are so diverse – especially the one’s that are so obviously contra-survival on an individual basis.

I see what you're saying....what value is there to have jealousy and hate? What do they bring to the table in order for the species to propogate?

Maybe an answer for the diversity is that Nature likes to be balanced. almost everything has it's opposites and maybe emotions stem from that, you can't have one without the other?

I just wanted to take this time to say Thank You to all the people who posted....so many different ideas and viewpoints. I've got alot to read!

If this is so scientifically accurate, why can't they simply diagnose psychopathy via a test of this activity?

Reference to psychopathy in accordance with Dr. Hare and others, NOT to the DMV description of anti-social disorder.

Ok All, I've skimmed and there have been many good points but he strongest ones are those related to our being a social animal. We NEED each other and we form bonds to others, beginning with our closest caretakers. We first learn about caring in that way, and later we witness how others are cared for - especiall those 'others' outside our nuclear family group.

We also learn from others and what we learn is even in our own language. We learn the characteristics that are desirable according to the role we are suppose to play. This is most predominant in gender. This is why women tend to be more emotional, because this is a characteristic that is considered desireable by society.

Believe it or not, women are enculturated to be the care givers, to think emotionally, while men learn to think in fact and figures.

Emotions are learned, we are born only with a personality predisposition which makes us prone to be more or less emotional, in accordance with what we learn. We are born in need of care and in that respect we "learn" to bond with our caregivers, but we are not helpless, even babies learn how to get the attention they need and emotion has nothing to do with that.

Hey Di...



Behavior is dependent upon individual translation which falls into the totality of experience, not what is being translated.

There is no comparison to be had, is there?

I have recently been reading about new scanning interpretations which show evidence of the activity in certain brain area(s) in conjuction with certain 'disorders'.

Perhaps they are moving more in that direction?

I think that may quite possibly be the best explanation offered so far.

Must be the difference in the author.

Fusion, this is a great topic!

There are many angles on this question, and I believe that "the role that evolution may have played" would be just one small part of a comprehensive discussion.

I think I failed, earlier at achieving clarity and connecting my own dots:

While its clear that high level of mental/physical alertness/ability would help in dealing with predator threats, I was trying to suggest that being continuously in a state of maximum mental and physical readiness/alertness/whatever could be counter-survival during lean times simply on the basis of burning more calories. Its more efficient to have one's degree of readiness/alertness vary with the circumstances.

I think I was the one putting forward that argument, and I admit I may be completely wrong. Like you said, there is a lot of conjecture going on here.

Right now, I favor Bushido's explanation. My take on it is: if we become wired to feel negatively/unpleasantly after the loss of 'one of our group', then we are incentivised to look after each other.

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Emotions and their implications can be beautiful, wonderful, powerful, frightening, mysterious - I feel that we can examine potential 'materialistic explanations' for them without losing our appreciation for their meaning in our lives.

It saddens me when people come to a sterile and less-feeling view of the world and their relationships after investigating the materialistic underpinnings to our emotional experiences. Its not necessary. Love still moves you, even if know the science behind it.

Very well put. That is a chain of logic I can agree with.

But note that it is then a matter of “avoidance of pain” and not one of “bringing closer together”.

In other words, the bringing closer together must happen before the sense of loss (i.e. grief) can be considered a motivating factor. That is, one must already be close in order for a “fear of not being close” to be a factor. I interpreted Bushi’s viewpoint as a proposal that the sense of loss was what motivated the coming together. Which is (in terms of one thing causing the other) the exact opposite of what you proposed.

I would think that as individuals first a sense of value would arise and with it negative and positive emotions to influence behavior, this would have been a random mutation that was then selected against as the animal got better at gathering resources based on value.

Then it could be associated with social interactions. After all most people use other people . . hehe.

So probably first an association with resources and food.
Then a social association, but who knows what came first.

Thanks massage, I thought there would be simple answers but I was happily mistaken. And you are right, there are more salient points then "Nature made it so". See ya around!

Yeah, I would agree with that sequence.

First the individual experiences emotion in relationship to personal survival. ("Eating food makes me happy.")

Following that would be an association of increased quality/quantity of food (increased personal survival) with social interaction.

Then, an association of larger/stronger groups with higher quantity/quality of food (again, increased personal survival).

Then an "negative" emotional response to the reduction in the size of one's group, with the resulting desire to avoid that negative emotion.

Makes sense to me.

About time I chimed in on this.

We seem to think that negative emotions, seemingly counter-productive to survival, must have been helping survival at one point or another.

I beg to differ.

Some negative emotions and other stuff certainly survived because of strong survival traits, such as worrying, fear of death, vengefulness, and being angry.

Their presence in the entire population seems to indicate that those who lacked these emotions were not so well equipped to survive or to bring offspring to this world who also reached reproductive age.

But some others survived not because they are at all helpers of survival. These counter-productive emotions COULD (please notice the subjunctive mood) have survived pervasively in every individual if the individual in whom the original mutation occured that brought these emotions to existence were THE original man / woman. It all started with one random mutation, becoming a human homo soapiens soapiens. So if this original guy or gal had some some mutations occur, also randomly, at some time in his formation, that his parents did not have, and were not good stuff, they would still survive and survive in every individual because the other stuff he or she had produced in his or her mutating as an undifferentiated cell or in the father's sperm or mother's egg was very-very good.

It's like every silver lining has a cloud. You can't buy a mansion without at least one leaky faucet or rat (read, leaky rat) in the basemet. Or you can't marry a girl who's blonde, blue eyed, will do everything in bed for you, and comes not with a hot-to-trot mother-in-law for you that will make you sweat bricks as you try to resist her as a temptation. Or you can't buy a Camaro and drive it and not have at least one pointy prick on the driver's seat. (Sorry, Camaro owners. I am looking for a place to live, and my wonderings took me to Little Italy today and a guy with a moving boombox to the tunes of an ocean-liner's horn almost ran over me, though when I started to cross the 10-feet wide street he was still half a mile away from me.) (Oh, and the boombox said "Camaro" on its trunk.) (I am not being racist; I am nationalist.)