Origins of Genuine Emotion

Last night, my brain was very busy pondering the nature of emotion and what differentiates artificial emotion from real emotion. This thinking has come up before out of my impression from seeing fellow men who fake their emotions and are fine with it. Looking at such an act, I used to be comfortable with it, as it used to be the way that I saw that emotions could be expressed; by forcing what wasn't there and so to somehow create an emotional base out of nothing. But it seems according to my recent thoughts and impressions from seeing so many other people do it, that it doesn't work and that over the long term, it is still not genuine.

To try and communicate the impression I've been receiving, I'll give some examples. Usually when I'm in a crowd of people that are younger than me and who are engaged in something most of them attribute to high emotion, this impression is received. The only situation I've seen much of this occur in has been in faith settings, where fellow believers are trying with all their emotional heart to reach to God. In some congregations, the people seem genuine in their emotions, in many others; particularly Gen-Y groups, the people seem to be trying to force something that doesn't exist. In those settings, the impression is strongest.

Anyways, not to dwell on impressions that much; there's plenty of rational arguments as to nature of the problem I've described other than my personal experiential impression (but that is important). One idea that I'm becoming more convinced in, is the idea that emotions attributed to certain actions / places / people are created after having long-term experience with those actions / places / people. If this is true, then genuine emotions cannot come from experiences that are temporal. This of course seems incorrect because dramatic experiences clearly emotionally imprint everyone, but to me that seems because dramatic experiences are typically dwelt upon. Another supporting reason to this concept of emotion is that for the most part, emotions have their biological origins in being little more than strong neural pathways in the brain. Positive and negative emotions come from either going with or going against these hardened paths to some degrees. Other expressions that have mixed emotions could be a combination of going both with and against (or having some other kind of way of associating good and bad value to the emotions; I'm not sure, I'm not a cognitive scientist).

And so, the less experience one has with certain actions / places / people, but with a variety of actions / places / people, the less that person is likely to have genuine emotions. The more that one focuses one's time, thoughts, and energy into these actions / places / people, the more one will gain emotional attribution to them, and hence emotion will come forth while putting further time, thoughts, and energy into these actions / places / people (now, I've only defined emotions that are experiential; its quite possible there are other forms, but they are the ones I've been able to identify most easily).

So, in order to facilitate the creation of emotions, one must not look to take action in "being emotional;" that is, to say to oneself: "It is time to act in the emotion of happiness, so as to practice it, so that it will be genuine some day." To believe that emotions can be done, just like tasks can accomplished, is a misunderstanding of the very nature of emotions. To be emotional, one must put time, experience, and energy into what one desires to grow emotional in; and then emotions will grow from that. Again, emotions cannot be the focus of one's actions, otherwise they will not truly grow (if anything, the artificial concept of what one thinks emotions are will grow, but not truly the emotions themselves).

So, in order to promote the creation of emotion, one must give experience, time, and energy to certain pursuits over other. Neither a jack of all trades, nor a task-centric perspective will bring about the change desired.