I will publish shortly an email I received from a Chinese-American friend on the recent posts here under the above title. The email refers to a hierarchy of values and that reminded me of some research I had done a year or so ago. When I began writing on "seeking the soul" I thought of what the basic human emotions were...love, happiness, fear...but was love, for example, an emotion or did it involve "too much" cognition for my purposes? I wanted to hew close to the Western distinction in philosophy between the mind (Descartes, Socrates) and emotion (Homer, Nietzsche). The inchoate idea I had at the time for "soul" was closer to an emotion. It seemed to me that "soul" could be reasonably considered a constellation of emotions. So what did the professionals, psychologists and psychiatrists, consider to be the basic human emotions. That's what I researched and this is what I found:
I'm sure there was a "methodology" that went into the compilation of the different lists (they were after all professionals) but I don't remember what; for my purposes it was enough that reasonably serious people gave some thought to it and used whatever methods occurred to them to use.
Joy(5)+Happiness(3)+Elation(1)+Pleasure(1)+Love(3) 14
+Tender-emotion(1)
Anger(7)+Rage/rage&terror (4) 11
Surprise (5)+Interest(3)+Wonder(2) 10
Disgust(6)+Contempt(2)+Aversion(1)+Hate(1) 10
Fear 9
Grief (1)+Sadness(5)+Sorrow(1) 7
Distress(2)+Pain(1) 3
Anxiety(2)+Panic(1) 3
Hope(1)+Expectancy(1)+Anticipation(1) 3
Desire 2
Shame 2
_______________________________________________________
Acceptance 1
Courage 1
Courage 1
Dejection 1
Despair 1
Guilt 1
Subjection 1
This is a "frequency of appearance" list based on different lists. There was a URL on the saved document I had,
http://changingminds.org/explanations/emotions/basic%20emotions.htm. It may be that the different lists appear there or at least links to them.
I'm sure there was a "methodology" that went into the compilation of the different lists (they were after all professionals) but I don't remember what; for my purposes it was enough that reasonably serious people gave some thought to it and used whatever methods occurred to them to use.
The grouping of some emotions into one category is my own, partly owing, I own, to my despair (only one appearance) at having fear as the most frequently listed emotion and other negative emotions, anger, disgust, sadness, dominating the top of the list, partly also because I did think that the same idea was being expressed near synonymously by different professionals. That is to say, the groupings are the product of my own (non-professional) subjectivity. The happy (three) result is that a group of similar positive emotions is number one.
The list is still despairing. Eight of the eleven entries are clearly "negative;" there's no getting around that; there just isn't any reasonable understanding of anger, disgust, fear, grief, sorrow, etc. that would put a happy face on them.
Maybe I didn't post this before because it was too depressing.
Is this really who we are? The only ringer on the list (to me) is "desire," and that sounds "positive" but not clearly so. Like sexual desire? That seems too glandular to be a basic human emotion. Desire in an obsessive-compulsive sense? That's a chemical imbalance or something. One could question "love" on the grounds mentioned above. "Pain" too, as a sensation, not an emotion but these lists were compiled by shrinks not biologists and there is a psychic pain that we are all familiar with. Anyway, the point is, aside from desire, the rest of the entries ring reasonably true to me; I can't think of any others and some, like the "surprise" grouping, are insightful.
This is painful to write.
I think I wrote one time here that every Chinese I know is in pain. That is not a scientific sample of the population. More broadly than my personal contacts, the reading I've done is consistent with my personal observations. I know I wrote that in my opinion fear is at the center of China's soul. I believe that that is true.
I cannot go on.
