This is a question I've been pondering for a while since we had a discussion in English about existentialism. There are so many different thoughts jumbling around in my head, I'm going to try and present all possible views I can think of on the subject.
For the purpose of comparison, I'll use the example of love. An undoubtedly strong feeling, prevalent in almost all aspects of life, some stronger than others. But why do we love?
According to (my understanding of) existentialism, the reasoning behind emotions and feelings is always selfish in nature. For example, we might love someone because we are similar to them, and therefore have a higher chance of getting together, which means a higher chance of procreating, which means a higher chance of passing on our genes to future generations. Another selfish aspect of this emotion is the fact or evidence of its reciprocation in the object on our feelings. This might seem like a bit of a stretch, but, when you think about it, pretty much all human actions can be boiled down to selfishisness. But, it's important to note that in Existentialism, selfishness is not an inherently negative thing. In fact, being selfless and acting completely unselfishly results in the literal loss of one's self, or one's identity. So love is felt due to selfish motives, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
One idea that scared me for a while was that everything that defines us, everything that we feel, everything that we think, is all just a specific interaction of neurons in our brains. We love the people we do because certain chemicals were triggered in the right ratios in our brains at the right time. This is quite a depressing thought for me. This idea gave me the impression that I have absolutely no control over my feelings. Loving someone, which feels so definite and absolute in my mind, is really caused by reasons outside my control. But then, after a while, I realized that yes, our feelings are dictated by physical interactions. But that makes them no less real, and no less our own. Sure, I only love you because of a specific combination of chemicals in my brain at the right time. But imagine the complexity of such interactions. The math points to the statistical impossibility that all of these triggers would align perfectly for me to love you. And yet they did. The infinitesimally small chance that the physical events would happen for me to feel the way I do is so astounding that, in my mind, it in no way diminishes the reality of the emotion.
I guess I believe in a bit of a combination of these two ideas. The existentialist approach teaches me that I love the people I do because I want to benefit myself in the long run. And there's nothing wrong with that. The second idea teaches me to not pass off the things I feel as trivial or meaningless. The fact that I feel the way I do is incredible and unique, and there's nothing dehumanizing about it.
Of course, these are only two theories of hundreds. And they are by no means exclusive or closed off to different interpretations. These are just a couple of thoughts I've been having on the subject. They may not make any sense, but I have found that writing your ideas down and sharing them helps you come to terms with what's hard to put into words.
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