Why do I feel so sad? What good does it do me?
What can be the possible evolutionary purpose be of experiencing grief?
How does feeling a broken heart help us reproduce/evolve?
How does missing others help me be a better organism?
What is Nature's purpose with inventing embarrassment? And why - oh WHY- can turning red when embarrassed possibly help the survival of a species?
Pain is supposed to help me keep my body from harm. So why does pain last and linger for so very VERY long past its 'useful by' date?
So much of life doesnt seem to fit the scientific rules of 'how to be an animal'.

Try asking yourself the question...

If I didn't understand sadness how could I know happiness?

You might as well ask the question why should we experience any emotion at all... from which you then ask questions of motivation, etc...

... which then begs the question... why aren't you doing a philosophy course?

thing that make me happy help me,
food makes me happyand healthy.
fun makes me relaxed and healthy.
sex/love makes me try to reproduce and 'rear'.


the bad stuff doesnt do anything useful as far as I can tell.
how does grief for a parent help the offspring of the parent?
how does 'broken-heartedness' help future reproduction.
there are numerous programmed emotional responses which seem to have no purpose.

To me this seems to be an anthropological question rather than a philosophical one.

ok, from experience. i believe that the hardest, most painful things that have happened in my life have made me a better person. i think that we need pain to develop into the people that we become. as much as it hurts sometimes, without pain i think we'd all be very shallow and emotionally useless. As previously mentioned, what is happiness without grief? I'm not sure where this fits into evolution, and quite frankly. i don't care. evoltion has nothing to do with my experience of my life. I believe that am who i am today, because of the experiences i've been through, good and bad. and I wouldn't change any of it. As hard as it may sound,I wouldn't bring back the ones that I have lost, because I think they have played a great part in who i am, as it stands.
I apologise if this makes no sense. i am a bit tipsy.
Also, I don't believe that we, as humans, are purely evolutionary puppets. Unlike most animals that operate purely to reproduce, we have evolved into a much mure complex state, that doesn't consist of (on my opinion) purely reproduction. though it may still be a major drive within us, there's so much more to life than just producing kids. For example, why do we enjoy sports or the arts? It has no bearing on reproduction. As humans, we are much more complex than just machines built to reproduce.
Ok, sorry if i went off on one there, but this happens to be my opinion.
good night

Originally posted by rain
that's easy...
Actually... you missed my first point...

If you didn't have the opposite to happiness, ie: sadness... how would you know you were happy...

You have to experience a really crap situation to appreciate how good an otherwise mundane experience can be...

I like to think of it as the theory of relativity... ie: everything is relative... the harder your life has been, the easier it is for you to take pleasure in things that others might take for granted (like a roof over our heads, a job, etc...)


Anyway... that was my original point... :)

ok.
well I guess all that I was asking is whether, when I feel sad, I can cheer myself up by remembering 'its all for the good'. I dont particularly like brussel sprouts but I eat them for 'the greater good'. It would be nice when Im feeling down to feel like it has a particular positive purpose.

Eww, i can never eat sprouts, just the smell makes me feel ill.

I wouldn't eat sprouts for the greater good, never mind my own good. Eeew.

Deep sadness reminds us that we can feel deeply... so can also feel deep happiness.

And of course it all helps to shape your character, and make you a stronger more empathetic person.

But when you're feeling it, none of those truths is particularly helpful. They're just another cliche like 'time heals all wounds', prob'ly true, but generally pretty unhelpful when you're truly upset.

Cosy:P

Originally posted by rain
Why do I feel so sad? What good does it do me?
What can be the possible evolutionary purpose be of experiencing grief?
How does feeling a broken heart help us reproduce/evolve?
How does missing others help me be a better organism?
What is Nature's purpose with inventing embarrassment? And why - oh WHY- can turning red when embarrassed possibly help the survival of a species?
Pain is supposed to help me keep my body from harm. So why does pain last and linger for so very VERY long past its 'useful by' date?
So much of life doesnt seem to fit the scientific rules of 'how to be an animal'.

Instead of moaning about everthing wrong in your life, you should be thinking how lucky you are, write down what is good and how fortunate you are compared to some poor souls in the world.

Be gratefull for the things you have and be happy, don't grumble because of things you cannot change, you are experiencing what we all have to face in life,so, you have to rise above it and cope.

I took Rain as meaning finding the positive in the negative rather than moaning.

Personally I see the hard /painful things as ways to 'grow', you don't learn so quickly from things being easy.

Then again I love brussel sprouts so my way of looking at things may not work for you...

Originally posted by halevan
Instead of moaning about everthing wrong in your life, you should be thinking how lucky you are, write down what is good and how fortunate you are compared to some poor souls in the world.

Be gratefull for the things you have and be happy, don't grumble because of things you cannot change, you are experiencing what we all have to face in life,so, you have to rise above it and cope.
A good try, but it doesn't always work like that.

Rain were you thinking that because there doesn't seem to be any benefit in experiencing grief, a broken heart, missing someone etc then evolution of man should have slowly eradicated these things?

I think Martin_S's point goes some way to explaining it, how would know happiness if you didn't know sadness?

I think that to live a "full" life unfortunately that means accepting that at times there will be pain. Whenever we care about anyone or anything there is always the risk that we will experience pain. But if you never care about anyone or anything then you will never experience the pleasure and joy that these people/events can bring to your life either. This probably sounds like a cliche but I think it's true!

Fear of disappointment and pain stops people doing things all the time. I don't think you can let this stop you. We have to find ways to live with pain and disappointment. Although of course that's much easier said than done.

So unfortunately I don't think we can have happiness without experiencing sadness.

Rain

Go see yout GP and ask for a referral to your local Adult Mental Health Dept.

Some good ideas on here about viewing positives. You seem very resistive and hold on a lot. You ask a lot about the functionality of your feelings/responses (from an evolutionary perspective) yet it's you that's apparently trying your hardest to cling on to these 'useless' traits...

Originally posted by Love Doctor
Rain

Go see yout GP and ask for a referral to your local Adult Mental Health Dept.

Some good ideas on here about viewing positives. You seem very resistive and hold on a lot. You ask a lot about the functionality of your feelings/responses (from an evolutionary perspective) yet it's you that's apparently trying your hardest to cling on to these 'useless' traits...