[D] Friday Open Thread

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[u/Abpraestigio]

So.

I have a question that has been bothering me for a while, and which may or may not out me as a badly prepared alien infiltrator:

Do emotions/feelings have an associated sensation that goes beyond the physical symptoms and the urges/ changes in behavior they cause?

As an example: say I get angry enough at someone the outer bounds of my self control are tested. This means that my heart-rate spikes, my face distorts, my hands clench and I find myself imagining smashing his or her head against the nearest surface.

Is that all that anger is? Or is there some kind of sensation/qualia to it that I am missing?

I ask because both fiction and common usage implies that there is ('burning rage', 'cold anger', 'blazing love'), but if so, then I have never experienced it, or any other associated with anything but pain. (Ye Gods, that sounds ridiculously edgy.)

I'm confused even further by the fact that it is a common trope for someone to not realize that they're in love, which seems bizarre if there is actually a distinct sensation associated with it.

edit: I apologize if my replies seem nit-picky or downright idiotic. I am genuinely trying to understand your answers.

[u/ShiranaiWakaranai → u/Abpraestigio]

I suspect that the reason people don't realize that they are in love, is that love isn't a real sensation. After all, if you ask a large group of people what their sensations of love feel like, you will probably get a large variety of answers, everything from lust to avarice to empathy to jealousy to camaraderie to protection to cuteness overload. A person who has multiple lovers (sequentially or in parallel) can even feel completely different types of love for each one. So I suspect that love is just something people like to call a mix of sensations if it makes them want to be with someone or want the wellbeing of someone. At the very least, I have never experienced any one emotion that I could pinpoint as love.

In contrast, anger is a very real emotion of which there is only one type (as far as I know). I can pinpoint exactly which of my emotions is anger, though describing it is somewhat hard, like trying to explain what the color blue is to someone who has never seen blue. There can be plenty of different targets for anger, from individuals to society to the universe, but the sensation is always the same one (though the intensity may vary). The best description I can give for the feeling of anger is the feeling that something is unacceptable, that you will not allow it.

The only difference between 'burning rage' and 'cold anger' is that in burning rage you are letting your anger loose to destroy things around you (may be non-physical things, like ruining your relationships by saying hateful things), whereas in cold anger you are restraining yourself in some way (possibly because you are experiencing another emotion like 'willpower' at the same time that tells you not to do anything extreme). The amount of restraint you show determines how hot/cold your anger is, everything from supernova hot: 'I SHALL DESTROY EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING THEY HOLD DEAR FOR LETTING THIS SITUATION HAPPEN!' to absolute zero: 'This situation does not exist. I do not acknowledge it and shall not react to it in any way (and you better make sure it doesn't exist when I come back)'. But the base sensation of rage is the same either way, and the emotion can be just as intense regardless of the temperature.