What are emotions, and why do we have them? ( Archived) (23)

An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man’s value premises. An effect, not a cause. There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between man’s reason and his emotions—provided he observes their proper relationship. A rational man knows—or makes it a point to discover—the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come; if his premises are wrong, he corrects them. He never acts on emotions for which he cannot account, the meaning of which he does not understand. In appraising a situation, he knows why he reacts as he does and whether he is right. He has no inner conflicts, his mind and his emotions are integrated, his consciousness is in perfect harmony. His emotions are not his enemies, they are his means of enjoying life. But they are not his guide; the guide is his mind. This relationship cannot be reversed, however. If a man takes his emotions as the cause and his mind as their passive effect, if he is guided by his emotions and uses his mind only to rationalize or justify them somehow—then he is acting immorally, he is condemning himself to misery, failure, defeat, and he will achieve nothing but destruction—his own and that of others.

What would be the point of being alive without any emotions?

Even autists, narcissists and sociopaths which, for differing reasons, seek to repress emotion to the upmost extent have been shown to have very active parts of the brain attributed to emotion. To be very emotional underneath their disguise. And the problem they have is that they lack a social ability and so these people often become extremely cerebrally inventive and lean towards life views, religion and philosophy that rationalises what they lack and acts as a means to bury the depthless void within through sheer force of self-obsession. They're almost too cognisent of themselves and therefore they cannot simply live and feel.