Have your emotions mellowed with age?

[Philosophaster]

I've noticed that as I've gotten older I haven't experienced emotional extremes (either extreme sadness or extreme happiness) nearly as often as I used to. Things seem to affect me a lot less, even things that always used to be able to provoke a big emotional response in me, like certain songs or books.

Any of you guys noticed a similar trend in yourselves?

Is what many people call "emotional maturity" simply another name for a gradual decrease in the intensity of our emotional responses?

[Steven Coyle]

Yeah, its like with wisdom, all emotive responses become integral, neutralized through transference.

[Nick]

I think I was 19 when things started to lose the magic. It amazes me when I look back and see how absolutely excited and giddy I would get over something that wouldn't cause me to think twice now. I'm 24 now and in just 6 years I feel like I've matured 1000 years relative to the average human. It seems most of the people around me, no matter how old, have never fully left the teenage mindset of emotional and hormonal unrest.

[Ryan Rudolph]

yeah, Nick is right. Emotions vanish with wisdom, not necessarily age. Most of the senior citizens I know of are quite irresponsible, They gain emotional satisfaction out of bizarre things such as buying scratch gambling tickets, bad mouthing politicians regardless of what is happening, complaining about the weather regardless of season, gaining pleasure off of driving around outdated oversized luxury cars (buicks, lincolns and so on), going out to dine at expensive restaurants frequently, and so on.

Seniors are the worst slaves to the addictive nature of the emotions/hormones because they've had an entire lifetime to perfect their conditioned irrationality. At least a child has a little hope.

[Dan Rowden]

The mellowing of emotional highs and lows with age can be the result of a number of different things - a simple loss of passion being one of them. The more cynical, apathetic or indifferent or just plain laconic one becomes, the less likely emotional extremes become. I'm not sure it can be said that such an absence indicates anything positive, however. Absence of emotion isn't a good thing in itself if the cause isn't the presence of greater reason.

[Matt Gregory]

My emotions have mellowed with age. I think it's a combination of things: philosophy, hormone changes, apathy, etc.

[Nick]

I think in my case it is a direct result of becoming more conscious.

[Matt Gregory]

I'm not even sure the overall level of emotions can be measured in any reliable way. I think we probably don't experience emotions, but changes in emotions, since there needs to be some kind of contrast in order to experience something. But how are we to define the word "emotion" anyway? Dan once defined it for me as "irrational reaction to stimuli", which I think is pretty good, but what exactly are we talking about on this thread?

[Carl G]

When I was, like, 18 I was quite emotional, but as the years passed and I matured and reached my early twenties and became enlightened my emotions did become much more mellow.

[Nick]

I'm essentially comparing my present self to my younger self and seeing how much more susceptible I used to be to losing sight of consequences, foresight, and sound reasoning due to more intense and frequent emotional highs/lows. My mind would literally become a slave to whatever it was I that I believed held the keys to happiness and joy, just like being on drugs, nothing else could enter the scope of my mind. I believe that as the structure of my mind changed in a way that I became more conscious, I was able view the world from a more logical perspective as opposed to a more emotional perspective. An example would be how excited I used to get about sports cars, girls, and partying due to the emotional value I projected on to them. As I became more conscious I began to see these things have no value except for what we project on to them and they naturally lost the mystique they once had, leading to less excitement at the thought of such things. Basically as one becomes more conscious they are less likely to be tricked by appearances into believing they have inherent worth, which naturally leads to a less emotional reaction to the appearances.

[Matt Gregory]

Yeah, my story is similar. But by my thinking, if an emotion is an irrational reaction to stimuli, and most people start off irrational and slowly develop over the course of their lives and become (hopefully) more rational, then they're going to have all these pockets of emotion that they're totally unaware of until they get rid of them, (a) because the contrast is not there to detect them, and (b) the irrationality itself is blinding. So I think it's impossible to judge whether one is completely free of emotion or not.

I guess I'm kind of getting off topic, though, since the question wasn't whether anyone has become absolutely free of emotions, but I've always been interested in this question.

[Tomas]

No. Same issues, and depends on the circumstance at that time frame.

Play it cool, it all works out in the end.

Stay hungry.

One will have plenty of time to sleep when one is dead.

PS - good topic, Philo.


.

[sue hindmarsh]

Dan wrote:

Absence of emotion isn't a good thing in itself if the cause isn't the presence of greater reason.

Dead people are a good example of that fact. And by 'dead' I don’t just mean the ones that are rotting in the ground; I'm talking about those who lack all passion for thought; leaving their lives completely passionless. What I call: The Living Dead. You wrote of them, Dan, as the “cynical, apathetic or indifferent or just plain laconic”. I’ll add to that list married people (because they have clearly given up all hope of finding emotional fulfilment); the religious are equally lacking the same passion (having adopted the mentality of a vegetable); women (because though emotions support their existence, they have no individual connection with any emotion); car salesmen, psychiatrists, university lecturers, pop-video producers, real estate agents, most fiction writers, most computer-game writers, politicians, game show hosts,…(for none could do what they do if passion still surged through their blood).

Thankfully, we still have suicidal-male-teenagers around, and even more thankfully a small number of passionate lovers of reason - otherwise you’d be drawn to conclude that passion was completely absent from this planet.

[Nick]

I think it depends on why a person's emotions become less volatile. If it's simply because as one gets older and their emotions become more dull as a result of repetitive stimulation of the same kind over and over again then there is definitely going to be some "pockets of emotion" that they are unaware of because they never actually understood the illusory nature of the world around them. On the other hand, if it's because a person has genuinely become more conscious about the nature of existence then there should be no surprises when it comes to their emotions. This is not to say one never reacts emotionally to something, but that they have the ability to reflect on themselves while they are experiencing emotion and understand the falseness of it all, or they can actually choose when they want to surrender themselves to emotion knowing that the prospect of them rebounding back after they get their emotional fix is very likely. The former individual I described does not have these abilities.

As for whether there has ever been someone who was completely free of emotion, there is actually a mental disorder that prevents certain people from experiencing the emotions. Although whether this has ever been achieved due to increased consciousness, I think that in theory it is definitely possible, but not very probable.

[brokenhead]

Seniors are the worst slaves to the addictive nature of the emotions/hormones because they've had an entire lifetime to perfect their conditioned irrationality. At least a child has a little hope

A little hope? What bleak-scape did you crawl out of, Ryan? Seniors are the "worst slaves" and all a kid has is a little hope? Aren't you just the life of the party. What happened, did a bird shit on your windshield this morning or something?

[brokenhead]

Absence of emotion isn't a good thing in itself if the cause isn't the presence of greater reason.

Spoken like a gentleman.

[brokenhead]

Dan wrote:

Absence of emotion isn't a good thing in itself if the cause isn't the presence of greater reason.

Dead people are a good example of that fact. And by 'dead' I don’t just mean the ones that are rotting in the ground; I'm talking about those who lack all passion for thought; leaving their lives completely passionless. What I call: The Living Dead. You wrote of them, Dan, as the “cynical, apathetic or indifferent or just plain laconic”. I’ll add to that list married people (because they have clearly given up all hope of finding emotional fulfilment); the religious are equally lacking the same passion (having adopted the mentality of a vegetable); women (because though emotions support their existence, they have no individual connection with any emotion); car salesmen, psychiatrists, university lecturers, pop-video producers, real estate agents, most fiction writers, most computer-game writers, politicians, game show hosts,…(for none could do what they do if passion still surged through their blood).

Thankfully, we still have suicidal-male-teenagers around, and even more thankfully a small number of passionate lovers of reason - otherwise you’d be drawn to conclude that passion was completely absent from this planet.

Is this a joke? Sue, you should probably be locked up somewhere. Do you have friends? How could somebody want to be you friend? I believe you must be having us on, Sue, with your lead-brick contempt for people who actually do anything with their lives.

[sue hindmarsh]

Brokenhead,

What most people call "their lives", is what I correctly described as death. It cannot be described as anything other, for they lack all passion to understand life.

[sue hindmarsh]

Brokenhead wrote:

Ryan: Seniors are the worst slaves to the addictive nature of the emotions/hormones because they've had an entire lifetime to perfect their conditioned irrationality. At least a child has a little hope

A little hope? What bleak-scape did you crawl out of, Ryan? Seniors are the "worst slaves" and all a kid has is a little hope? Aren't you just the life of the party. What happened, did a bird shit on your windshield this morning or something?

Ryan is actually showing himself to be quite optimistic. Children are usually so traumatized by their irrational upbringing that by the time they are young adults they haven't the strength of mind do much other than to grasp hold of death (the average life). Only once and a while does a child grow to maturity with their passion for life still intact.

[Dan Rowden]

Dan wrote:

Absence of emotion isn't a good thing in itself if the cause isn't the presence of greater reason.

Dead people are a good example of that fact. And by 'dead' I don’t just mean the ones that are rotting in the ground; I'm talking about those who lack all passion for thought; leaving their lives completely passionless. What I call: The Living Dead. You wrote of them, Dan, as the “cynical, apathetic or indifferent or just plain laconic”.

I was actually searching for a word in that post that I frankly ought not have been searching for; namely: "content".

[sue hindmarsh]

Content.

[Fujaro]

Dan wrote:

Absence of emotion isn't a good thing in itself if the cause isn't the presence of greater reason.

Dead people are a good example of that fact. And by 'dead' I don’t just mean the ones that are rotting in the ground; I'm talking about those who lack all passion for thought; leaving their lives completely passionless. What I call: The Living Dead. You wrote of them, Dan, as the “cynical, apathetic or indifferent or just plain laconic”. I’ll add to that list married people (because they have clearly given up all hope of finding emotional fulfilment); the religious are equally lacking the same passion (having adopted the mentality of a vegetable); women (because though emotions support their existence, they have no individual connection with any emotion); car salesmen, psychiatrists, university lecturers, pop-video producers, real estate agents, most fiction writers, most computer-game writers, politicians, game show hosts,…(for none could do what they do if passion still surged through their blood).

Thankfully, we still have suicidal-male-teenagers around, and even more thankfully a small number of passionate lovers of reason - otherwise you’d be drawn to conclude that passion was completely absent from this planet.

Is this a joke? Sue, you should probably be locked up somewhere. Do you have friends? How could somebody want to be you friend? I believe you must be having us on, Sue, with your lead-brick contempt for people who actually do anything with their lives.

Seems like a passionate plea for passion to me.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Mellowing with age has nothing to do with philosophical progress in my view. It might even fool one to think progress has been made. The peak of energy, learning and adapting just lies around the age of 20 and by the age of 30 decline already sets in to reach a very common rut at 40, sometime accompanied with symptoms of depression.

Emotional response might be lessened or flattened but it's almost impossible to say this is due to some philosophical victory over our delusion.

This is why I believe any genius sets in well before 20, even is present under the surface before becoming a teenager, and is bound to manifest not long after. If anything, ones emotional response gets stronger or at least more distinct at first as the philosopher might delve into changing his repression, coping mechanisms and taboos. While others around are mellowing with age - settling in, the philosopher unsettles and increases his passion and his resistance.

There are subtle differences in my opinion between passions and emotions and in this post I have not made this distinction on purpose. The reason the average mature person appears less emotional is not because he mastered any of them but only because he settled, defined his place in society, feels less threatened and less doubtful. So the calmer response doesn't have to say anything about increased insight into the situation at hand - its wholly circumstantial and can change easily. A bit of crisis, a bit of taking away of some of the fundamentals and the ugly beast rears its head and bites off the nearest one.

In society nothing is what it appears like after all.