i have been thinking about this for quite sometime, that is emotions......now i have heard that emotions may simply be a sub-category to the mind, or perhaps the sub-category to the body, but in either case becase i believe somewhat in substance dualism i tend to think that emotions themselves may be something very defining within us.....

now, i was thinking of what it is that defines us, humans, and i am led to believe that other than the view that our level of consciousness is the ultimately defining characteristic, i believe this is also may be said of emotions, and particulary the emotion of HATRED.....

think about it, what are the most defining emotions: Love, Hate, Fear, Anger, Jealousy, etc........yet most of these emotions can be discovered in other species, except for Hate.....

some species find love and stay with a mate for life, a vast amount of species have fear, but a select few have anger and jeoulosy, such as Apes......a case i read about where Monkey B was injected with something (like a masculine overdrive) cause the rest of the group to hold Monkey B as leader rather than Monkey A (original leader), Monkey A killed Monkey B......and although this has some undertones of hatred, it truly is not fully hatred......

yet humans have the ability to Hate, although such an emotion may be the result of a cause, it is nonethless a defining characteristic of human nature.......therefore, i think Hate is the emotion which makes us who we are.....

your thoughts? am i wrong?

But isnt hatred just a combination of all those emotions- Love, Fear, Anger, Jealousy etc?

I dont think we can judge the emotional states of animals by their actions alone.I`ve hated people and not killed them, outwardly it just looks like I get angry now and then but its a hatred focused on that person.

If I hated people I would feel it, I have before, but I dont at the moment.
My friend's hamster hates me, im sure of it.

It sounds to me like Monkey A killed Monkey B to regain his status of leader within his group. Hating the monkey would have produced more of a stalking, throwing feces and stones type of situation.

Some people don't go through life with such a negative attitude either. Some people are content and don't experience jealousy or much anger. Example...

I work in a grocery store. Obviously I am not too happy to be there and I get pissy with everyone. My favorite game is to see how stupid I can make people feel before they get pissed. I argued with a woman once for fifteen minutes over a buy one get one free special. Anyways...This one woman put up with all my shitty comments and then did something which completely surprised me. She started complimenting me and talking to me. She was not obnoxiously nice either...She was just a really fucking happy person. I felt like an ass after we talked because she cheered me up for the rest of the day.

I don't know. Working with the public you meet some really odd fucking people.

I love odd people. I think I'm often one of those annoyingly nice people. Someone who is trying to piss me off or being particularly unpleasant I see as a challenge. My first thought when someone is being obnoxious etc. is that they are having a really hard time with life. It often comes down to humour for me. Do other animals have a sense of humour?? hmmm.

I have a haiku about this:

Love misleads us all
But it's to grandiose ends
Hate, to loneliness.

I forget who said it, but, "Men love in haste but hate at their leisure."

Cats hate water...well most of them. Emotions are simply more complex mixes of learned responce and instinct..most of the complexity is an illusion..hence why it's so hard to define love beyond simple general terms.

i kind of miss the grocery lifestyle, i always enjoyed the face to face scenarios much more than miles of phone line, anywhoo on topic...

I don't think hate defines us, thinking defines us...animals don't have emotion..they have basic instinct, an animal stays with a mate out of nature, not all animals have that nature, a male lion for example, he's got a harem, versus swans that are maters for life, now in the spring when they have their little swanlings and are big mean birds, is it because they are angry stressed parents or just a natural defense to protect their young? Animals don't think about what they are doing or why, the just do it...

humanity is the only animal capable of conscience thought! it's a thought process that makes a person react in situations, being a happy person i tend to want to make the less happy people smile, seeing that one smile can make my whole day"i did something good"mentallity...so my thinking goes along that line of..defense...it's all because of how i think, i have very little hate in my life, a lot of anger and frustration, but that's because i can't control the world...but than i stop and think about it, i don't know if i would want to...it's more exciting not having control...that thought there eases my frustration and mellowing my anger by realizing a majority of people probably react negatively for the same reasons i do, i'm just able to realize, i can't control the world...so why make my life miserable over it? if only more people were as enlightened as i

So you`ve never heard a dog whimper sadly, get lonely when shut in out for days, be happy to see you back or even admit that they are able to feel pain?

y'see i've never seen any evidence humans think...they just do...if einstien had thought about his theories before giving them to anyone he'd have easily known they'd be used as weapons...thought..actual self aware thought, is rare..hence why so many thearapists... ppl often confuse intelligence with thought...a lot of intelligent ppl are very stupid.

That can also be chopped up to learned behavior and logical thinking. The dog would whine when locked out for days because it is domesticated. It knows being inside means food and warmth. It also realizes what feels good to it (i.e. petting it or playing games) and knows that certain people give that to it. Example: Our dog hates me. The feeling is mutual. But...It loves Pyrric. It will jump around and yelp when it cannot be near him. It knows he feeds it and pays attention to it, not that Pyrric likes it and I don't. It is just as simplistic as any animal; and, probably more disgusting.
Pain is a natural reaction for any creature with nerves. It realizes that whatever just happened to it caused that area to hurt and not feel "normal". The brain reacts. It yelps because that is it's way of expressing this pain. It's brain doesn't register what the pain is for...only that the body has experienced some truama. Natural survival skills.

they are social creatures...it has nothing to do with conscience thought...a bad dog doesn't hate, it was trained to be aggressive, a beaten dog is not afraid of people, it has been trained to equate people with pain, just like wild animals losing a fear of humanity...it doesn't know that we or they can hurt each other, they just equate us with food!...anything with a brain can feel pain...even as insignificant as a worm...that does not mean they have feelings...just sensation. Is the dog doing that because it love you or as beauty said, knows you have food?

How could petting feel good without a emotion playing a part in things?
In my experiance I`ve seen a animal be fed and looked after by other people yet still be much happier in the presance of their master.
Pretty much all of what you have said can be equated to humans as well. If you take a dispassionate stance on people then killers arent evil they just are just self serving and desensitised to death, racists often have bad experiances with those they hate etc.
Now if I feel superior to these people I could say that they dont really feel like me, like with animals I cant communicate with them and dont feel like empathizing with them so as far as I`m concerned they just learn and adapt like a simple toy robot.
Only by examining brain activity, trusting what others say or empathizing could I accept that anyone else has emotions besdies myself.

Nerve endings are picking up a sensation that is pleasurable. How do you know that receiving oral sex feels good without nerves? If you take away your logical thought process you would only know it felt good...not what the actions meant.

I don't think it was necessarily happier. If you are looking after someone's animal you will more than likely not show it the same kind of attention you show your own. Aside from that...was the dog left in the house by itself or put in the other home? Dogs realize where there food normally is and associate that with 'home'.

Speaking of dogs...does anyone want one. I will FedEx it to your house with some food....

first off, we are animals! secondly, other species have shown emotion.....certain species of apes are capable of love, during a study of a certain species they noticed that when the male leader left, a female would often venture with another male (and always that male) to mate......also, it is now known that it is a genetic trait for dogs to desire human compassion, that might be a nature characteristic, but emotin is involved......

this is not tru either, what is true is that humans possess the highest level of this type of thought.......what this idea can really be labelled down to is that you realize your action will affect someone, or in other words, you recognize that other people have their own thoughts, which is also found on certain species of apes

man, i need to learn these species' names!

who has denied we are an offshoot of mammals, however next time i see a wolf or a wild dog...i'll remind him of that...and i'm sure the divorce rate amongst the selective class of apes is quite high when he's wandering around impregnating the rest of his tribe...(maybe he his just like the "typical" male!)and of course a female ape will wander off with another male, is that love or just the instinct to breed with a strong provider? But will she cry, fuss and writing in a journal about the lonely pain she's feeling?


i'll sit down and ask an ape for advice on romance while playing go fish with him...i'm sure how he feels about his harem of girls will help out emmensely...and are those wild apes or apes that have been trained in a scientific environment...but i would like to see proof that it's conscience thought(right vs. wrong, hate vs. love, 5+5=10, and that red m&m's are better than green!)and not just more trained behavior with a higher level of thinking than a dog...even horses can count if trained properly...are they as intelligent as humanity?

The fact that some animals can count does not make them more like us..it makes us more like them..humans and animals can count (those that can such as parrots and mostly pack animals) because they have a use for that skill...the only reason a dog doesn't catch the number 7 bus to London to check his stock figures is because evolutionarily speaking his species have survived perfectly well without this skill. Humans become increasingly more complex as our own evolutionary niche becomes more complex with us (because we create our own niche) creating what may be a disastrous upwards spiral of complexity that we may not be able to sustain because we are incapable of understanding how all our actions may effect our survival.