Another adaptation is learning what emotions we are going to express, and how. This is a longer term process, and an interesting one. I think we all need to be able to express anger, horror, shock, sadness and even violence. If you are not allowed to do so within your social field openly, they come to be expressed in ways which disguise their true nature. They become lies, in other words, and all lies are degradations by definition of the truth, and hence of accurate perception.
Out of an understandable need to avoid emotional pain, I think most of develop views of ourselves as largely lacking in the so-called negative emotions. When we feel anger, it is RIGHTEOUS anger. When we feel hate, it is RIGHTEOUS hate. Given that framing, it is obvious why cognitive activities, intellectual activities, would serve the purpose of emotional lying so well.
But lying is lying. Anyone who has not read Paul Johnson’s excellent book Intellectuals should. Ayn Rand calls the sorts of people he describes “altruists”, but of course they are nothing of the sort, outside of their rhetoric. They are vicious thieves, with talents for rhetoric.
It has long been a staple belief of mine that people let their true selves out when drinking. Personally, it has been my practice for the last year or so to let emotions out relatively unmolested, and see what flows out. More often than I would like, anger–petulent anger–comes out, cowardice, self deceptiveness, aggression, and other negatives. I let them go, say CRAP, and try to remember what their genesis felt like, so I can predict those waves in the future.
My goal is an unconscious that perfectly supports my goals, which is ALWAYS on the lookout for more and better perceptions, more and better ways of doing things, and absolute resolution. As things stand, it often plays tricks on me. I have a great deal of work to do.
I will point out, though, that it is generally precisely those people who think they have NO work to do who are most clueless, and most in the thrall of primal and ugly emotions. For those who self describe as “intellectual” I would argue it is virtually ALL of them.
And this applies even for people who are “nice”. Being nice is a negative attribute of not causing offense, and being relatively aware socially. What you will find, in pushing people who are “nice”, is that they get VERY angry, VERY easily, since they are used to a world devoid of conflict. People who have been through the ringer are hard to offend, and thus much easier to do useful work with.