Ｑ30.What role in evolution do emotions play?

Ａ.The conflict of emotions created intellect.<br>
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　　Why did emotions develop in evolution? Let's examine from the viewpoint of evolution.<br>
　　Are there living things which have emotions but don't move? How about living things which move but don't have emotions?<br>
　　If living things which don't move have emotions, it is completely useless. Useless things will never advance in evolution.<br>
　　Therefore we can assume that plants don't have emotions. Some people believe that cacti have telepathy, or some people talk to plants. They think plants have emotions, but they are only projecting their own feelings onto plants. It is not the plant's own emotion.<br>
　　Some viruses jump back when they receive a harmful stimulus. We can see the prototype of fear and aversion in viruses, although it is made of little more than DNA and a shell. This is not an emotion but an action which is its origin. Even primitive life forms can react to their environment, but they don't have nerve cells because they are unicellular organisms. We can assume that there is a reaction to the environment before emotion emerges.<br>
　　Therefore action appears earlier than emotion. The action accompanying an emotion also exists as a mechanical reaction without emotion.<br>
　　Why is it better to have a reaction with emotion than a reaction without emotion? What advantage does this have?<br>
　　A possible advantage is that it will be aware of its own actions from now on.<br>
　　If you feel strong anger, you can notice that you will behave violently now. Awareness of anger means you can decide whether to control the action or not by reason.<br>
　　In a quarrel between a husband and wife one may attempt to throw something. If one of them notices that the thing is a piece of pottery with a value of several million yen, the person would decide not to throw it. If you walk in the street and someone bumps into you, you may feel angry, but if you notice that person is a large rugged man, you would endure with silence. This is the role of emotions.<br>
　　Since there is emotion, we can act rationally. We can say that emotion brought forth intellect.<br>
　　An important point about emotion is that we can recognize the quantity of emotion.<br>
　　Emotion has quantity such as being a little happy, or very happy. If the quantity of an emotion is too small, you cannot recognize the emotion. If the quantity of an emotion is too large, you will act before you recognize the emotion. In other words emotions have a maximum and a minimum. If a person's maximum limit of emotion is very low the person will act emotionally, but if a person's minimum limit of emotion is very high the person acts insensibly, or inhumanly. The person who has rich emotion is the person whose emotional range is wide the minimum is low and the maximum is high.<br>
　　For example when one makes a mistake at work and the boss makes a cynical, insinuating remark. If the anger caused by the situation is lower than the minimum threshold, one feels nothing and pays no attention to it. If the anger caused by the situation is higher than the maximum threshold, one will turn upon the boss in a fury saying something like, "That's hardly the way to talk."We can feel anger when it is between these limits.<br>
　　 We sometimes say, "don't get emotional, be reasonable!" We understand that reason, in other words intellect, are the opposite of emotion as this phrase suggests. However, as I said, emotion is necessary for intellect. Intellect is a product of emotion.