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People say love is the strongest emotion of all.

Do you agree? or disagree? Which emotion do you feel is the strongest and why?

Discuss.

(Props to inimalist for giving me the idea for this thread)

Love (or maybe adoration).

It's stronger than desire, and can last forever.

Originally posted by Aster Phoenix
People say love is the strongest emotion of all.

Do you agree? or disagree? Which emotion do you feel is the strongest and why?

Discuss.

(Props to inimalist for giving me the idea for this thread)

Hate is the strongest emotion because it cannot be controlled.

HATE, muahahaha!


no really, love is truly the strongest emotion.

Since love and hate are opposites, can't it be both?

Hate.

One reason - you can't control it.
Another reason - After love sours, it usually degrades into hate/anger.
Third reason - As memories fade, so does love. Hate, under the right circumstances, can last much longer.

but love can trump hate. while hate, cant truly conquer love, not completely.

Fail.

Depends on your personality.

raging libido conquers love hate

Originally posted by Enyalus
Hate.

One reason - you can't control it. Desire, envy, love and anger are others that one "can't control"

Originally posted by Enyalus
Another reason - After love sours, it usually degrades into hate/anger. And hate can (ugh) sweeten.

Originally posted by Enyalus
Third reason - As memories fade, so does love. Hate, under the right circumstances, can last much longer. Neg.

I'd say it's guilt, hands down.

When someone is guilt-stricken, it's really obvious because its so hard to hide. It affects your entire day and dominates every thought. It's also a main cause of suicide.

Roid induced rage.

lol, I'm in the first post, how can I resist

glib neuroscience answer: wtf is an emotion?

less glib everyday people answer:

Originally posted by Quiero Mota
I'd say it's guilt, hands down.

When someone is guilt-stricken, it's really obvious because its so hard to hide. It affects your entire day and dominates every thought. It's also a main cause of suicide.

I agree, with the possible exception of anxiety or disgust, although those are more immediate (as in, panic attacks )

Ecstacy is along the terms of anxiety, I guess.

I'd call it mania, and yes, if we include it as emotion, it is very powerful. Depression then, and potentially lack of motivation would be up there as well.

This is why the scientist in me needs a definition of emotion

im surprised it has not come up yet, but there is fear

distress, fear, lust and delight are the supposed 4 basic emotions, so it might be best to find out which out of those are strongest.

Id have to say Embarrassment.

Love/Hate

People kill in the name of love
People kill in the name of hate.

The opposite of Love/Hate is indifference. So Love/Hate are in the same polar catagory and are the strongest.

Originally posted by inimalist
im surprised it has not come up yet, but there is fear

By far, IMO.

IMO,
there are only two emotions:
Love & fear.
All other emotions are just sub-categories of these two.

Love is the most powerful,
but usually requires patience in order to utilize it's strength.
Fear, while not as powerful as love, can seem so because utilized with the opposite of patience, impatience, can manifest itself more explosively & therefore , many times, seems to even surpass Love in it's strength.

Well fear is pretty strong, but you can learn to ignore it. Many fears are not real fears, imo. They are just fear of the unknown. There are fears that we place on ourselves. A real fear, imo is one that is more primitive and we need it to survive.

before i can answer is lust an emotion or an instinct?..lol

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
By far, IMO. What about Fright? Fright can kill you.

lol, fear vs fright

see, this is why the question is dumb, we need to actually define what an emotion is, and then understand how they are all expressed in the brain.

For instance, disgust has its own system. Fear/anxiety and disgust would be my best bets, but by no means do I think that is an accurate way of answering the question.

like, what features make one emotion stronger than another?

Originally posted by inimalist
im surprised it has not come up yet, but there is fear Certainly this must be the most deeply hard-wired, shared by every living thing (ie, those organisms which didn't know fear likely didn't flee and got et). But would this make it the "strongest" emotion? Hard to say since love can override fear.

Originally posted by MightyCelestial
IMO,
there are only two emotions:
Love & fear.
All other emotions are just sub-categories of these two.
I would go with fear and anger, as these are the two most deeply hard-wired. But again, does that necessarily mean they're the "strongest"?

I'd definitely say that fear is the strongest emotion and most occurring for the majority of people. It's present from birth in its most primitive form and I think it'd be safe to say that it persists throughout life as a dominant emotion. I can't think of a stronger feeling than say, a fatally wounded soldier fearing certain death. That's just an example, but you guys can probably see what I'm getting at. I also agree with what chill said, it does vary from person to person.

I would say both hate and love. Hate for the reason, as Shaky said, it cannot be controlled. It can fuel a person to do things they never thought they'd be able or willing to do. Love for the reason that it is unconditional if you truly love a person. When you love someone, nothing in the world could hinder that feeling. Also, quite similarly to hate, it can make a person do things they never imagined themselves doing.

Originally posted by SnakeEyes
I'd definitely say that fear is the strongest emotion and most occurring for the majority of people. It's present from birth in its most primitive form and I think it'd be safe to say that it persists throughout life as a dominant emotion. I can't think of a stronger feeling than say, a fatally wounded soldier fearing certain death. That's just an example, but you guys can probably see what I'm getting at. I also agree with what chill said, it does vary from person to person.

I would think a fatally wounded soldier would not fear death but welcome it.

Originally posted by lord xyz
What about Fright? Fright can kill you.

Fright is contained in fear.

But I'm with inimalist, we need to define the boundaries between emotions, what an emotion is and what makes an emotion strong to have a meaningful answer.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Fright is contained in fear.

But I'm with inimalist, we need to define the boundaries between emotions, what an emotion is and what makes an emotion strong to have a meaningful answer. Fright is a part of fear yes, but the two are different emotions, like love and lust.

I also agree with inimalist.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
...and what makes an emotion strong to have a meaningful answer.

How about: Which emotion has most shaped human civilization?

Originally posted by Mindship
How about: Which emotion has most shaped human civilization?

Goin' with fear.

You explore so you no long fear the unknown.
You form civilization to protect you from the people/things you fear.
You create weapons to fight off the things you fear.
You build governments because you fear chaos.
You work together because you fear being destroyed on your own.

How about this:

Love can = fear, anger and hate. But in saying that, I mean displaced love, not real love.

Originally posted by Ladyluck
I would think a fatally wounded soldier would not fear death but welcome it.

Could be; I think it depends on the person. Me, being an atheist, would be scared as hell. Obviously I don't know this for sure, but if I were lying there in my own blood with my guts hanging out, I don't think I'd welcome my life being cut short.

Originally posted by Deja~vu
How about this:

Love can = fear, anger and hate. But in saying that, I mean displaced love, not real love.

Actually it's much easier to argue that most emotions are ways of dealing with fear.

You feel "love" so that you don't have to fear being alone.
You feel "anger" typically because of fear that you have lost control.
You feel "envy" because you fear you've fallen behind.
and so on

You don't love out of fear...

sometimes you just do...

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Actually it's much easier to argue that most emotions are ways of dealing with fear.

You feel "love" so that you don't have to fear being alone.
You feel "anger" typically because of fear that you have lost control.
You feel "envy" because you fear you've fallen behind.
and so on How about this?

You fear because you feel rejected by love
You hate because you feel you were rejected by love.
You are angry because you feel rejected.

Hmm, I never said anything about envy, but to me envy is a kind of hate for what you lost or do not have...i.e. a lack of love to your own self or a happiness towards others.

Fear is a worthless view. It is self impossed...at least most times. It is a self worth view..

Edit...........golly my golly.

Originally posted by Deja~vu
How about this?

You fear because you feel rejected by love
You hate because you feel you were rejected by love.
You are angry because you feel rejected.

Also possible, but considering that love is a fundamentally more complex emotion it seems far less likely. Not to mention people will feel those emotions even when they have not yet been in love, so love cannot be the root cause.

Originally posted by Deja~vu
Hmm, I never said anything about envy, but to me envy is a kind of hate for what you lost or do not have...i.e. a lack of love to your own self or a happiness towards others.

Wanted a round three.

Originally posted by Deja~vu
Fear is a worthless view. It is self impossed...at least most times. It is a self worth view..

Originally posted by Mindship
Certainly this must be the most deeply hard-wired, shared by every living thing (ie, those organisms which didn't know fear likely didn't flee and got et). But would this make it the "strongest" emotion? Hard to say since love can override fear.

I would go with fear and anger, as these are the two most deeply hard-wired. But again, does that necessarily mean they're the "strongest"?
To me, anger is a subcatercory of fear.
Anger in any form, results from fear (IMO).

Originally posted by MightyCelestial
To me, anger is a subcatercory of fear.
Anger in any form, results from fear (IMO). Biologically, I don't know if, in the fight-or-flight mechanism, one is secondary to the other. But psychologically, I would agree. I'm inclined to agree with this as well...
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
...most emotions are ways of dealing with fear. More to the point: Death Terror.

to emphasize how complex a question like this is, let me give an example.

Piet Mondrian is an artist who made vibrant paintings of large square blocks of colour. I personally find them incredibly beautiful, though this is unimportant.

There are experimental tasks that researchers can do in order to occupy a person's attention. This is actually not all that hard. Say you have a display of red C's and green Os, like 10 of each. Then, there is a target, a red O (the idea being that you must attend to both the colour and the shape of the object in order to find the target, and it occupies your visual system, because it can't find the target by only looking for red things or O shaped things, it has to mix the info together).

So, here is the task. Subjects look through the search display of Os and Cs for the red O target. as they do this, a Mondrian-esque picture is displayed below the search display.

After finding the target in a number of searches, subjects are shown various mondrian-esque pictures, which they have to give a subjective evaluation of. By selecting abstract colour based pictures, it reduces the chance that a subject will remember an exact piece shown during the display (obviously display pictures were randomized, lest one thinks only the less beautiful ones were presented, and yes, there is a chance that, for each observer, the pictures displayed would have been subjectively less beautiful, though with statistical analysis the probability of this is far less than of the conclusions I'm discussing).

Subjects would rank the pictures that had been present during the search as less beautiful and inspiring than those that had not been. This shows that an emotional response to stimuli is based largely on the context that stimuli was presented in.

So, with relation to this thread, defining what constitutes and emotion or emotional power is going to be a difficult hurdle to begin with. Adding the fact that attentional prioritization and immediate context have an affect on emotional processing gives yet another layer of complexity to the issue.

People say you can't control hate but i've never known a time when you could control love and if you can, it's not love at all

I say Fear

Originally posted by Deja~vu
Love/Hate

People kill in the name of love
People kill in the name of hate.

The opposite of Love/Hate is indifference. So Love/Hate are in the same polar catagory and are the strongest.

People kill over a bag of skittles and a pair of tennis shoe's too. People kill for all types of reasons.

does anyone actually kill in the name of love? I've never thought someone can kill another with love in their heart. Maybe, it's a conflict of emotions taking place but i don't think people actually kill entirely out of love.

Fear is one of the more common cases of killing

it also can dominate any other emotion

Is fear really an emotion? When cockroaches run when you hit the lights, is that fear? Because most people would say that insects are incapable of emotion, but they run for the hills when a predator is after them.

Originally posted by Quiero Mota
Is fear really an emotion?

Yes. Fear is a very basic emotion.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Yes. Fear is a very basic emotion.

So can a cricket be happy?

^I'm not being a dick, that's a real question. They run...hop for their lives, so why can't they experience the polar opposite?

Originally posted by Quiero Mota
So can a cricket be happy?

^I'm not being a dick, that's a real question. They run...hop for their lives, so why can't they experience the polar opposite?

I don't see what that has to do with fear/happiness being real emotions.

mmm greed tops the list as most "POWERFUL" ask any ceo of oil or pharmaceutical companies..lol

Originally posted by Quiero Mota
So can a cricket be happy?

^I'm not being a dick, that's a real question. They run...hop for their lives, so why can't they experience the polar opposite?
I don't think insects have the gray matter for "happiness." For a roach, the polar opposite of fear is simply its absence.

suprised noone has mention jealously/envy

Originally posted by Quiero Mota
So can a cricket be happy?

^I'm not being a dick, that's a real question. They run...hop for their lives, so why can't they experience the polar opposite?

one would assume, yes, a cricket can be content. As in, they have all their immediate needs satiated and any predictive ability (a property of all nervous systems, to at least a small degree) they have shows no threat.

If that doesn't satisfy your definition of happiness, I totally understand. However, a similar description would accompany a cockroach's experience of fear.

A cockroach likely doesn't have much subjective experience of these things, so it wouldn't experience the "emotion" of fear, if you want to describe it like that.

My argument might be something like, all human emotions are based off of similar neural circuits, only interpreted by way more frontal lobe, but I know next to nothing about emotions.

Originally posted by Mindship
For a roach, the polar opposite of fear is simply its absence.

This is potentially the case in humans as well. Fight or flight reactions and anxiety have unique cortical representations, and affect the body differently than other emotions.

There is also the idea that emotions are more representative of our narrative description for a state of arousal, or even just our physical posture. Studies have concluded that people who force the muscles in their face to form a smile report more positive feeling.

Originally posted by inimalist
This is potentially the case in humans as well. Fight or flight reactions and anxiety have unique cortical representations, and affect the body differently than other emotions.

There is also the idea that emotions are more representative of our narrative description for a state of arousal, or even just our physical posture. Studies have concluded that people who force the muscles in their face to form a smile report more positive feeling.

There may be some truth to this. As is often said, eg, the opposite of love is not hate, but apathy. Put more bluntly: the opposite of any emotional state (ie, its physiological correlates) is its absence. However, in terms of human subjective experience, most people I think tend to polarize one emotion against another, rather than pair an emotion with its absence.

there is no strongest emtion. they are all balanced perfectly.

Hate.

If it counts, Obsession.
Then, Rage
Guilt
Hate etc

I don't know about love, as I have never truely felt it, or what it is descibed as, thus it's absense. I've felt plenty of hate though.

Hate is probably a bit stronger than love. Love can easily turn into hate.

You will pay the price for your lack of vision.

Rage, because you can't control yourself...

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
Hate is the strongest emotion because it cannot be controlled.

Neither can love.

Hate is self distructive, however.

I believe love is the strongest emotion for its ability to bring people together even through the darkest of times.

Hate and Love are polars of the same emotion, IMO, and both very strong. Too strong.

Fear.

/thread.

Sad to say hate is. Just look at the Muslims and the Jews. With hate all reasoning goes out the window.

Fear is the strongest-think about it

I believe fear is more a primordial instinct. There are rational(primal) fears and irrational(learned) fears. Emotions are a little different, I believe.

Hate can cause fears though, just as love can also cause fears.

Originally posted by Deja~vu
Hate can cause fears though, just as love can also cause fears.

Actually hate is often a cover for fear and love can be the same thing.

I think horniness is. IMO people think about sex way more than anything.

hmm after seeing wifeys breasts for the 8th time 2nite I agree hiker

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Actually hate is often a cover for fear and love can be the same thing.

So?

Doesn't necessarily mean that fear is stronger.