This is a popular one. To be honest, it does remind a little of Donnie Darko.
However, while I don't believe there are two emotions, I think you can say that on the emotional playing field, there are two extremes: embracing growth (and all the messy life processes that lead to it) and retreated from the messy life processes to protect ourselves.
It's not that all emotions are joy and fear, but joy and fear are an overlay that give meaning to our emotions. We might be experiencing genuine sorrow from the difficulties that come with trying hard things and failing, and yet, because we know we are on the path to greater growth, that sadness is softened and eventually transformed (in hindsight) to this life peace, pride, and joy.
And on the flip side, we can do things that do make us happy... and yet, if they are a means of putting of the parts of life we know we need to engage in, they are cheapened and cut with fear. The same activity that could be joy (if it were in the service of growth) becomes merely distraction. And of course, all the tragedies that befall us when we are hiding from the world and ourselves are all heavier because of the attendant fear.
I did say at the beginning that I was being facetious! Gotta bait those clicks.
But I do think the more accurate representation is that there are two *categories* of emotion, and that the two are, in some sense, diametrically opposed, based primarily upon the condition of the heart: open (joyful) and closed (fearful).
This does of course require a definition of joy that is expansive enough to embrace sorrow and grief, but I don't think that is at all philosophically unsound.
What about sorrow or grief? That is generally avoided by anger or fear, and it isn't joy--it's real and poignant and the more we know of life and the trials of those we care about, the less we cover up our reactions to these with lesser emotions, the more sorrow we undeniably feel or we are dead inside. I know I tend to choose fear and anger over sorrow because they hurt less. I counter your 2 emotion finding with sorrow--or grief--as the other true raw emotion, not fear. Fear is a mask. Anger can mask sorrow. All sorrow is not, in my opinion, part of joy. Part of love, yes, but not of happiness. Grieving over someone failing in ways that hurt themselves and/or others; being forgotten and lonely; the sufferings and/or death of a beloved friend, family member or pet; watching individuals, families, societies implode...to care is to hurt sometimes,--often, even. No, I can't see deep, heartrending grief as a part of joy. It's joy's shadow, maybe. It makes us more aware of joy. It's genuine.
I think there's an LDS doctrinal foundation for the role of grief and sorrow in the alchemy of joy. And C.S. Lewis suggested heaven would reach back to turn all of life's experience heavenly. I'm more and more convinced that this isn't something we're meant to wait for. Not that there is no pain, but there are kinds of pain that stretch the boundaries of joy in ways that we can be conscious of even in the experience of the pain itself. Fear, on the other hand, shuts out all the joy along with all of its pain.
Here's a great example -- I'm feeling upset that you came into my comments, misunderstood what I was driving at, and then accused me of being "asinine rather than clever."
But me being upset is a reaction to the fear of looking stupid, or being misunderstood. And what's the risk of looking stupid or being misunderstood than the fear of social rejection of some kind? I want people to like me and think I'm smart. Etc. Etc.
So instead of reacting to your comment from that place of fear-based anger, I've decided to do my best to take my own counsel, and respond with a sincere and open heart.
First off, I'm not at all trying to dumb down the human experience. Being accused of this is pretty startling, since I'm usually the one who gets offended at reductionism. What I'm trying to do is create a robust emotional taxonomy that's rooted in a simple dichotomy. I love dichotomies not because they oversimplify, but because they provide powerful frameworks for complicated experiences. Sort of like masculine vs feminine, light vs dark, chaos vs order -- yin and yang.
"Only somoene whose life has never been at risk would assert that fear is an expression of anger."
As for your comment about joy and happiness, once again I'm not sure what you're responding to. On the one hand, I believe I very clearly indicated my effort to define happiness, so-called, as something much less substantial and meaningful than joy. On the other hand, what better goal can there be than true joy, or what better indicator of an open heart? It's certainly been my experience that the most consistently joyful people I know (not one of them unacquainted with suffering) are also the most open-hearted. I couldn't agree more that "happiness" is a bad goal. But joy, if we define it as the totality of deep human fulfillment -- I think there's a pretty good argument to make that there is no better goal.
And your last point seems to be a strange non sequitur, since what you're describing is fear of social rejection. In fact, it seems like your whole problem with this post is that I'm calling everything anger, which...I'm not. At all. At the very top, I drew the dichotomy between fear and joy.
I started writing this very essay some time ago. Never finished it.
My two emotions were fear and love. I remember my arguments being pretty solid. Considering I was basing them in nothing but my own experience. 😁
Love is a pretty good synonym for joy. Or, rather, joy may be the fruit of love as a verb.
This is a popular one. To be honest, it does remind a little of Donnie Darko.
However, while I don't believe there are two emotions, I think you can say that on the emotional playing field, there are two extremes: embracing growth (and all the messy life processes that lead to it) and retreated from the messy life processes to protect ourselves.
It's not that all emotions are joy and fear, but joy and fear are an overlay that give meaning to our emotions. We might be experiencing genuine sorrow from the difficulties that come with trying hard things and failing, and yet, because we know we are on the path to greater growth, that sadness is softened and eventually transformed (in hindsight) to this life peace, pride, and joy.
And on the flip side, we can do things that do make us happy... and yet, if they are a means of putting of the parts of life we know we need to engage in, they are cheapened and cut with fear. The same activity that could be joy (if it were in the service of growth) becomes merely distraction. And of course, all the tragedies that befall us when we are hiding from the world and ourselves are all heavier because of the attendant fear.
I did say at the beginning that I was being facetious! Gotta bait those clicks.
But I do think the more accurate representation is that there are two *categories* of emotion, and that the two are, in some sense, diametrically opposed, based primarily upon the condition of the heart: open (joyful) and closed (fearful).
This does of course require a definition of joy that is expansive enough to embrace sorrow and grief, but I don't think that is at all philosophically unsound.
What about sorrow or grief? That is generally avoided by anger or fear, and it isn't joy--it's real and poignant and the more we know of life and the trials of those we care about, the less we cover up our reactions to these with lesser emotions, the more sorrow we undeniably feel or we are dead inside. I know I tend to choose fear and anger over sorrow because they hurt less. I counter your 2 emotion finding with sorrow--or grief--as the other true raw emotion, not fear. Fear is a mask. Anger can mask sorrow. All sorrow is not, in my opinion, part of joy. Part of love, yes, but not of happiness. Grieving over someone failing in ways that hurt themselves and/or others; being forgotten and lonely; the sufferings and/or death of a beloved friend, family member or pet; watching individuals, families, societies implode...to care is to hurt sometimes,--often, even. No, I can't see deep, heartrending grief as a part of joy. It's joy's shadow, maybe. It makes us more aware of joy. It's genuine.
I think there's an LDS doctrinal foundation for the role of grief and sorrow in the alchemy of joy. And C.S. Lewis suggested heaven would reach back to turn all of life's experience heavenly. I'm more and more convinced that this isn't something we're meant to wait for. Not that there is no pain, but there are kinds of pain that stretch the boundaries of joy in ways that we can be conscious of even in the experience of the pain itself. Fear, on the other hand, shuts out all the joy along with all of its pain.
Very interesting. I like simplicity. I remember in college people postulating that anger is just some sort of response to Fear, Pain, or Shame
You could argue under your framework Pain and Shame are just flavors of Fear
Depends on the kind of pain, but I think the idea that shame is just a flavor of fear is pretty self-evident.
Dumbing down the human experience is asinine rather than clever.
Only someone whose life has never been at risk would assert that fear is an expression of anger.
Joy or happiness are fleeting punctuations, not goals or indicators of an open or closed heart.
Shame is a tool used for enforcing endless societal norms, hard to confuse or conflate with anger.
Etc. Etc.
Here's a great example -- I'm feeling upset that you came into my comments, misunderstood what I was driving at, and then accused me of being "asinine rather than clever."
But me being upset is a reaction to the fear of looking stupid, or being misunderstood. And what's the risk of looking stupid or being misunderstood than the fear of social rejection of some kind? I want people to like me and think I'm smart. Etc. Etc.
So instead of reacting to your comment from that place of fear-based anger, I've decided to do my best to take my own counsel, and respond with a sincere and open heart.
First off, I'm not at all trying to dumb down the human experience. Being accused of this is pretty startling, since I'm usually the one who gets offended at reductionism. What I'm trying to do is create a robust emotional taxonomy that's rooted in a simple dichotomy. I love dichotomies not because they oversimplify, but because they provide powerful frameworks for complicated experiences. Sort of like masculine vs feminine, light vs dark, chaos vs order -- yin and yang.
"Only somoene whose life has never been at risk would assert that fear is an expression of anger."
That's literally the opposite of what I argued. Just as in an earlier post, I'm suggesting that anger is an expression of fear, a point which you yourself defended in the comments back then ( https://open.substack.com/pub/thedispatches/p/feelings-are-scary?r=1eziso&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=57559404 )
As for your comment about joy and happiness, once again I'm not sure what you're responding to. On the one hand, I believe I very clearly indicated my effort to define happiness, so-called, as something much less substantial and meaningful than joy. On the other hand, what better goal can there be than true joy, or what better indicator of an open heart? It's certainly been my experience that the most consistently joyful people I know (not one of them unacquainted with suffering) are also the most open-hearted. I couldn't agree more that "happiness" is a bad goal. But joy, if we define it as the totality of deep human fulfillment -- I think there's a pretty good argument to make that there is no better goal.
And your last point seems to be a strange non sequitur, since what you're describing is fear of social rejection. In fact, it seems like your whole problem with this post is that I'm calling everything anger, which...I'm not. At all. At the very top, I drew the dichotomy between fear and joy.
Simplicity can be wrong. Dichotomies can be wrong and not at all robust.
Upset can be vanity and ego.
It's difficult to know what you're trying to achieve, because it has little foundation, other than being simple.