Emotions and Animals

The way animals and non-rational humans deal with our surroundings is based upon emotions. There are simple rules: pain, sickness, tiredness, lust, happiness… when we feel these things we act upon them.

In a rational world, however, emotions cause us problems. They don’t make sense. My favorite example is when we owe someone. That person did us a favor, we should be grateful, we should estime that person, treat them well. However, we don’t. We avoid them, we don’t want to pay them back, we want to stop thinking about them.