Emotion Project (2017/06/10)

Dear Reader-

How are you?

That’s the most commonly asked in the world, and yet it demands so much as an answer. It asks for your emotions, for your state of mind and being. Most of the time, we brush it off with a “good” or “fine,” but is that really it? When choosing a topic for my multigenre project, I knew I wanted to do something about emotions, something that has such a dominant hand in our lives but are still a mystery. This project doesn’t so much convey a theme as it does explain a concept- emotions as a whole, including their causes and effects. My genres are diverse- a short story, explanatory essay, an illustration, a poem, a vignette, and a business letter- but are still organized so that they build off each other to explain, describe, and convey emotions as irrationally powerful but scientifically simple.

Each of my genres are important to the whole project. One of my longer pieces is an explanatory essay, which serves to expose and explain the scientific side of emotions, another aspect of emotions other than the vague philosophies and descriptions that most of us are accustomed to. Next, there’s a business letter and short story that tell a tale set in the future where the science of emotions has been clarified and mastered, resulting in an experiment that dilutes people’s feelings. Through this story, the importance and power of emotions in our everyday lives is shown, as well their potential effect in marketing and sciences. Another aspect of emotion is its influence in the arts, where I both created my own art and explained the art of someone else, demonstrating how emotions can be conveyed through mediums as versatile as shapes and colors. In addition to using critical thinking to explain the artwork, I also wrote a poem that showed the raw, more powerful side of emotion- the effects of the simple chemistry that was described and explained earlier. The final pieces, a vignette and the transcript from a podcast both tie into each other, showing an extreme case of emotional trauma on both parties and how they dealt with it- a lawsuit that changed the court’s perspectives on emotion. Each genre demonstrates a different side of emotion- their scientific roots, their potential impact in marketing and society, their role in day to day life, their presence in the arts, and their ability to motivate and shape us.

All in all, I hope this project gives you insight as to what emotions are as a whole; I have definitely missed several other aspects to this concept, but the ones I have included are the strongest and most applicable to who I imagine you, reader, to be.



Sincerely,


May Zheng


The Science of Emotion

Life is full of decisions, which are derived from a balance of emotion and logic, which most people consider to be opposite sides of the rationality spectrum. However, emotion is purely based on science, which is rooted in logic. Our emotions are derived from a chemical reaction in our brains in response to our experiences. As human beings, we sort things into good and bad, and our brains react differently to good and bad things, in terms of emotions. In fact, we seem to be programmed to automatically categorize things, even concepts as complex and vague as emotions. We’ve managed to differentiate emotions so that they fall under five main classes: joy, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear.



Humans tend to divide their experiences into two categories: positive and negative, based on our emotions during and after them. Our minds and bodies work through sending signals (synapses) using cells called neurons. At the ends of these neurons are chemical substances called neurotransmitters, which are produced and released in the limbic (emotional) system determine our reaction to a stimulus and send it as a signal to the brain. Neurotransmitters that result in a “positive” signal include dopamine and serotonin. Both these neurotransmitters have other roles but are most known for their influence on emotions. Dopamine is released when our pleasure centers are triggered and helps to reinforce certain actions/behaviors that we associate with pleasure. More recently, in addition to being dubbed the “reward chemical,” dopamine has also become known as the chemical of desire, because of its release when we get something we want or crave.

Serotonin has a similar role in the human brain, released when something pleasurable happens. Also like dopamine, serotonin levels rise when drugs are abused, and cause depression and other mental and physical diseases when their levels fall, sadness and despair are the result of lower levels of these neurotransmitters and are not caused by another chemical. Dopamine and serotonin are released in response to different sets of stimuli for each person. In addition, natural selection ensures that what we need to survive (food, reproduction, relationships) have a positive connotation, and whatever is detrimental to our survival have a negative connotation.

It is surprising that out of the five main human emotions, four are negative. Anger, disgust, and fear are, along with sadness and joy, derived from survival instinct; anger came from a competition of our primal ancestors for food and mates, disgust determined what we ate and did and how we acted and also form culture, and fear kept us alive from predators. Anger results in the amygdala, the part of the brain which stores emotional memories and neurotransmitters, becoming triggered into irrationality through a heavy influx of emotional stimuli; if it’s strong enough, it will override the signals of the cerebral cortex (logical) and go straight to the limbic system, more specifically the amygdala, which triggers the fight/flight instinct (in a different area of the brain), causing the body to tense up with energy and drive one to action faster and often more recklessly.

On the other hand, disgust has no correlated neurotransmitter or brain chemistry- the emotion is rooted in primal instinct. We feel disgusted towards things that either threaten our survival- suspicious foods, contact with human waste and other contaminated substances, and exposure to signs of death (boils, corpses, etc)., as well as anything that seems inhumane or uncivilized, such as cannibalism and incest. Both of these concepts remind us of how frail humans are, both physically and identity-wise; we humans struggle to define and separate ourselves from other animals and hold those principles of humanity dearly. Disgust has also played a role in building mores in different cultures to create opinions and standards.

Finally, fear is one of the oldest and most essential instincts and emotions to the survival of the human race. Fear starts off as the receiving of a signal through one of our five senses, which is then relayed to the thalamus- a “station” in the brain that translates this signal into an emotion/instinct that gets sent to the amygdala, which then releases glutamate, the main neurotransmitter of fear. Glutamate’s release then the fight/flight response. The adrenal glands then release cortisol and adrenaline, which increase the heart rate and make the muscles tense up. This entire process happens within one or two seconds. Of course, fear is a basic survival instinct from our evolutionary days and has kept us alive until now through avoiding predators and determining which risks we took in order to learn, live, and evolve.

Each emotion we have learned to experience has derived from science but their effects and outcomes couldn’t stray further from logic- although each person experiences the same emotions that are rooted in science, their outer and inner responses to them are unique to them because of their upbringing and DNA and culture. In life, emotions often determine what we and others do and say and has the upper hand in determining what happens in our individual microcosms. Understanding them, at least on a scientific level, can help us learn how to handle them.



Date: March 13, 2021

1004 Taggert Dr, Belle Mead, New Jersey, 08502

@mayzhengrocks@gmail.com


Mr. Arnav Dashaputra
CEO of the Human and Scientific Experiment Corporation


Dear Mr. Dashaputra;

I understand our previous partnerships have not yielded the results we’d hoped for, but I believe my new idea has ample merit to be carried out and, once again, requires your company’s assistance in order to have hope for success.

As Head of the Human Advancement Society, I believe our combined efforts would be highly revered and successful. I propose the idea of experimenting on a test group of no more than 100 people each of different races, social standing, genders, mental diseases, and ages. The experiment would consist of removing or diluting the emotion-correlated neurotransmitters: dopamine, serotonin, glutamate, epinephrine, and norepinephrine to 90% of their original concentration or volume.

These test subjects would then return to their normal, daily lives for a month and give reports about any changes they’ve noticed; whether weakening their scientific emotional triggers has benefited or dulled or affected their lives in any way. I believe we both know that the reason why this world war that we’re stuck in presently is because of the tender emotions and spirit of our countries; our easily wounded patriotic pride has led us to commence mass murder of our own race. Civil conflicts within nations have also been on the rise both in number and intensity. By toning down the extremity and potentness of human emotion, we would be able to test if doing so would be able to resolve everyday conflicts more easily and occur less frequently. Then, of course, (I trust your intellect has been able to predict my train of thought), depending on the results, we could perform this alteration on a much larger scale, go global and potentially end the wars.

I understand that finding a way to perform this procedure and finding volunteers may prove to be a challenge, but I believe the potential outcome is worth taking on the endeavor. I am willing to fund the recording/reporting portion, but it would be foolish for my organization to attempt to cover the scientific and actual procedure considering how much more access and money your company has reserved for this sort of situation.

Mr. Dashaputra, you are free to reject this idea. I will simply find another company, but of course, you are the most optimal partner for this endeavor and I hope you find this offer as a compliment, if not anything more. You must be aware of my organization’s subtle monopoly over all other businesses in the field of humanitarian activity- our charities and movements dictate half of the media. Accepting this offer will, no doubt, boost your company fully into the spotlight.

I hope you take my proposal into consideration before making your decision. Our companies could do great things together.


Sincerely,


May Zheng

Chief of the Human Advancement Society

Diluted

“Ever Wanted to Turn Off Your Emotions? Now You Can Get Paid To!” The headline stares me in the face, accusing me of considering it.

“Mom?” I call my voice tentative.

‘Yes honey?” is the response, sweet and raw with caring. At the sound of it, the guilt of years of white lies and fake smiles and stories wells up in me, reminding me again of the headline, the offer of a solution.

“Have you seen the news?” I ask, forcing my legs to uncurl and carry me down the stairs into the kitchen where she’s making my favorite snack: homemade cookies. I can see the veins bulging in her arms and hands as she kneads the dough.

“No, what happened?”

“There’s this article, an ad really. It’s about how you can be part of an experiment in exchange for, y’know, money and I was considering doing it.”

“What’s the experiment?” She’s interested, concerned, patting the flour off her hands and turning to face me. Her careworn face, framed by gray and faded brown streaks, is both beautiful and heartbreaking. She deserves a better daughter, one who spends more time with her instead of with friends she doesn’t know the names of, friends who do things she wouldn’t want me to be exposed to.

“It’s to get this new drug that turns off your emotions. For a while.” There’s a tentative silence as she takes it in.

“Will it have side effects?”

“I don’t know, the article didn’t say.” That’s another lie- potential side effects were amnesia, digestive system failure, epilepsy, and joint weakening, just to list a few of the minor ones.

“Oh, honey, I don’t think you should. It’s too risky if they don’t give you any background on what it could do to you other than what they’re advertising. I know you want to help me, to help us with the extra money but it’s not worth your health.” Her smile is warm and melts my heart, at least its chipped and fragmented exterior.

“I really want to though, Mom. It might be, I don’t know, helpful?” I hate disagreeing with her, hate pushing her when I know what she depends on to survive; I found the liquor cabinet in her bedroom a few months ago when I was looking for some sleeping pills. I found the stash of sleeping pills in the back of that cabinet and went there each time I needed them; each time the stock of alcohol grew.

“If you’re sure of it, I think it’ll be okay, I guess. I just don’t want you getting hurt.”

I try to smile reassuringly but I know it looks more like a strange twisting of my facial muscles than an offer of comfort and confidence.

“I’m...I’m sure, Mom. Thanks.”

“I love you, honey,” she says absentmindedly, returning to her cookies. For a moment, she sways on her feet and I almost lunge out to steady her but she regains her balance so quickly I couldn’t know for sure if I was seeing things or if it had actually happened.

***

After running a few errands, I head back home as the sun sets, casting long shadows down the road. The poor suburbs that we live in consists of small clusters of five room, one story houses, each cluster a varying few hundred feet apart in order to look like less of a target to the foreign bombers that we keeps seeing on TV. The result is a strange formation of narrow streets and turns that forms a lopsided spiderweb of roads with patches of housing, making navigation in the community rather difficult. Every family here has their own tragic story- divorce, domestic abuse, dropouts- and I think we all are waiting for a bomb to drop on us and end the cycle.

Pressing an ear to the door, I notice the TV isn’t on, which is unusual. Slowly, I open the door, poking my head into the dark house. It smells different, empty, and silence blankets everything with a thickness that makes it difficult to breathe. Fumbling for the light switch, I take a few steps forward into the house. My heart is going full-throttle in my chest but I force myself to push my arm out a little bit further-

Crunch. Something breaks into smaller pieces under my shoe. Glass?

My shaking hands finally find the light switch and the room is drenched in harsh, yellow light. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust but then I see it, I see her, I see my mother, crumpled on the sofa, a nearly empty bottle of vodka in her left hand with some of the stuff still trickling out onto her lap, creating a dark stain that’s slowly spreading, like blood from a gunshot wound. Her right hand is cupped, holding a small pile of pills, some of which are beginning to slide out of her palm as her muscles relax due to her death.

She’s dead.

Her eyes are wide open, staring at the ceiling, and her mouth is slightly agape, saliva lining the corners of her lips, and her back is arched but lifeless. The stench of alcohol hits me out of nowhere and I throw up all over the carpet I’ve watched her clean countless times. The usual bitterness is gone, everything is tasteless, colorless, meaningless, but I know it won’t stay that way forever, I know that the emotions will hit soon and I know how they’ll hurt me in a way I probably won’t be able to handle.

The headlines flash in my mind and I run up the stairs to my room, snatching the newspaper off my desk and sprinting back downstairs to the printer. I force myself to steady my hands as I flatten out the page with the application slip against the peeling wall before placing it facedown in the printer. Squinting, I push the buttons that will photocopy the page and wait for the machine to start whirring. There’s a series of clacking noises before I hear paper beginning to roll through the system; the page comes out and I sign my name on the bottom with a nearby pen. There’s another signature they require, one of a parent or guardian.

Air rushes into me and then sweeps back out, leaving me hollow and fragile like a paper lantern. The dotted line beckons for someone to sign it. But it’s not as if I don’t know what her signature looks like, so I pick up the pen again and practice the strokes on another piece of printer paper, watching my mother’s name in her simple, flowing script emerge onto the page through my hands.

I look at the application slip and then at my pen hand, which is shaking very, very slightly. My hand moves the pen across the paper, forming her signature along the line before dropping the pen and folding the paper up; my body seems to have separated from my consciousness and each appendage is moving with a united purpose while my mind watches passively from a distance.

***

One Month Later:

Silently, the hundred of us file out of the labs, each walking stiffly towards our individual chauffeurs, each standing in front of a sleek black car. Each of the hundred carry identical backpacks, filled with money, instructions, and pills.

The pills are the result of the experiments, called the diluters, that reduce the concentration and power of the neurotransmitters that cause our emotions. They don’t tell us what’s in the pills or explicitly mention any of the side effects, but they don’t need to. The pill itself has eased the fear, pushed it under the surface- and besides, the other effects far outweigh the risk.

We are now supposed to “return to our normal lives,” but they don’t know that the reason why I came here in the first place was because it was shattered. Thoughts of returning home, the last place I saw my mother, no longer gives me the same sense of fear, pain, and anguish as it did when they first explained that part of the experiment. Now, I’m still anxious about going back to the town I grew up in, rife with emotion and conflicts that I’ve become detached from. Will the people welcome me back? Will they think I’m still part of their community?

Will they think I’m still human?

For the first week of being back, I need to take one pill each day. For the next two weeks, I’ll take one every other day, and for the last week, I will have three pills left in case I suffer “withdrawal symptoms” that they never specified. At the end of each week, a reporter from this company will come to my house and interview me about my “new life,” and at the end of every four weeks, the reporter will bring a new shipment of pills.

Suddenly, the world seems to tilt forward and I stumble, everything spinning violently- the cars, the road, the buildings, the people- and then it stops again and it’s normal. People are looking at me strangely, but their attention is taken by another one of the hundred who’s collapsed on the sidewalk, spasming and screaming. Everyone takes several steps back before a small group of masked scientists charge out of the labs and take the girl by the arms and pick her up and carry her back into the building. She’s still screaming and the doors that close between us and her do little to muffle them.

I’m breathing heavily as I enter my designated car; my hands are clutched into fists. The echo of the girl’s screams bounce around my skull as we pull out and begin the journey back to my neighborhood. As we speed through endless gray, the uneasy shifting in my head and stomach intensifies as the drugs and my consciousness wrestle for control over my emotions. For comfort, I open and reach into my pack, feeling the neat stacks of bills tucked into individual pockets, making even, squared bulges along the inside. I have enough in this container right now to do anything I want, more than my mother or I ever had in either of our lives. If the price to pay for this freedom is the occasional headache, I am more than willing to pay.

***

Four weeks later: Video Transcript:

REPORTER: How are you feeling, Miss Chase?

CHASE: I feel fine, I guess. Kind of empty.

REPORTER: Could you specify on that last bit, please?

CHASE: Um, sure. I’m just always bored and everyone else’s problems and lives seem really boring to me. Like, I can’t relate anymore. I used to feel sympathy and everything, but now I’m just really detached. I lost the part of me that was able to connect to people and find silver linings and just generally enjoy life. I don’t look forward to anything anymore. Everything seems kind of pointless.

REPORTER: So you’re saying you’re discontent?

CHASE: I just feel like there could be more to life, you know?

REPORTER: Do you think this is at least partially due to your intake of the diluters?

CHASE: What else could it be?

REPORTER: If you could choose to stop taking them, would you?

CHASE: Yeah, I think so. I miss being able to feel and really interact with people.

REPORTER: Was daily interaction and socialization an important part of your lifestyle before participating in this experiment?

CHASE: Yeah. I had my friends and my mom.

REPORTER: Have you been socializing with these people since returning?

CHASE: Obviously, my mom’s not around anymore, but I’ve been hanging with my friends.

REPORTER: Has you and your friends’ interactions been altered?

CHASE: Yeah. I think I’ve answered this question just in a different context. Like I said before, I’m detached. They have relationship problems and problems at home and so many stories that I can’t really understand anymore and wish I could.

REPORTER: So you’re saying you miss emotions?

CHASE: Yeah. I never really appreciated them enough, I guess.

REPORTER: Why did you decide to participate in this experiment?

CHASE: Well, the money. (laughter) And also my mom had died that night I handed in the form and I was feeling...numb, I guess, and I didn’t know how long that could last to prevent the, you know, the pain and sadness and stuff to take over. I was scared.

REPORTER: I’m sorry for you loss.

CHASE: Thanks.

REPORTER: Have you suffered any side effects?

CHASE: I get really bad headaches a lot. And then I’ve thrown up a couple times and passed out once right after taking the pills. But I tried not taking the pills for a few days and then the symptoms got worse and I couldn’t sleep at night even though I was really tired. I didn’t get any seizures or anything, which I guess is good?

REPORTER: Were your emotions or lack thereof affected when you stopped taking the pills?

CHASE: A little, I think. I laughed and smiled more often at my friends’ stories, and got mad with them at the same people when they told me about something their parents or significant other did. I mean, at first, I was really sad and broken because the feelings of grief from my mother’s death were the ones most chronologically close to when I started taking the pills, but after a few days, I got a lot better. It felt really nice to face it instead of always feeling it bubble under the surface. I couldn’t properly enjoy it though, because my brain and mind were still craving the pills. (pause) Is it meant to be addictive?

REPORTER: We cannot disclose that information.

CHASE: Have people gotten hooked on this stuff? It’s just as dangerous as marijuana or crack then, right?

REPORTER: We cannot disclose that information.

CHASE: Someone’s hiding something… (folds arms)

REPORTER: Excuse me.

CHASE: Sorry. I guess. (pause)

REPORTER: Would you describe your emotions while abstaining from the dilutors as positive or negative?

CHASE: It was just generally more enjoyable I guess. My thoughts were clearer and I felt more aware and awake. I would’ve stopped completely except the withdrawal symptoms really hurt.

REPORTER: If you could have your emotions back without the withdrawal symptoms, would you?

CHASE: Definitely. It’s a part of me, of being human I think, and repressing everything causes more discomfort than ease.

REPORTER: Do you regret joining the program?

CHASE: Overall, yeah, I guess. I mean, it was a safety pin in the beginning after my mom died and I felt like I needed something to prevent the emotions from catching up to me, but now it’s just too monotonous.

REPORTER: That will be all for today. Thank you for your time.

CHASE: Yeah, no problem.



Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” is one of the best-known paintings in history, depicting an anonymous person screaming with a river, two strangers, and a sunset in the background. The inspiration for this painting occurred when Munch was walking down the street with his friends when he suffered from a panic attack to which his friends were oblivious to, leaving him alone to face his internal struggle of emotions- anxiety, fear- a potent cocktail of negativity. The unique color scheme he used- indigo, orange, and every tone of gray in between- had two colors from opposite ends of the color spectrum and the values between them, representing two peaks of emotion in the scene: the pleasure of watching a sunset with companions, and then the crisis of a panic attack. Orange is associated with excitement, warmth, and joy, while indigo represents deep thinking, intense concentration, and mind-opening experiences. The intensity of both these colors in the painting draws attention to these sensations, and the use of gray is used to both highlight the vibrancy of the orange and indigo as well as to represent indecision and ambiguity, feeling lost and alone. When we look at the painting, we feel taken aback, perhaps afraid, and then somewhat guilty, as the character of the painting seems to be calling for help. The title of the painting, “The Scream,” uses a strong cognitively charged word, ‘scream,’ which automatically conveys fear and anger and frustration (the main emotions that cause us to scream). This, with a culmination of the colors and their significance, demonstrates the power of the art and its elements to influence our emotions and convey meaning.


A sea of blurred silhouettes wash on my tides

Tangy colors drip down the horizon

And spill over a watery mirror.



Footsteps shuffle and redistribute themselves

Scarlet and lavender waltz across our faces

Then it all shifts



Choking

Shaking

Drowning in a parallel illusion of too much.

Orange flares, crimson blossoms

Violet grows fangs to tear my throat and steal my voice

Faceless silhouettes loom into focus as demons

Built with sharp lines and bright eyes and knives for fingers.



I can see my crumpled body on the bridge,

Bathed in a thousand fluorescent colors that hurt my eyes.

A moment later I’m trapped again

In my own skin.



Kaleidoscope of drunk colors

and melting shapes

and strong lines.

And a heart beating too quickly

and a pair of lungs that have stopped working

and a ribcage that has become too small

and a body that’s useless against the weight of the colors

and it is silent



But I’m screaming



The kaleidoscope twists

and I’m launched back

Carrying the colors,

the fear,

the scream.



Like a rock in a river,

People flow around me.

Indigo is draped casually over their shoulders,

oozing into the cracks of the thin paper

that the world is painted on.



Like a child abandoned at an airport,

I’m stranded

With only my colors

And unheard scream.





The Hanging Arm



They’ll tell the story later, on tape, in fragments: “...I remember just, like, the flashes...A black object...The car spinning...Trying to take the truck left...A shadow of somebody on my right side...Coming across the median…” Of course, that’s not how I remember it. The parents remember it as the night their child was killed. For me, it was the night I killed a child.

Metal had reflected in the harsh light of the headlights, cutting warped lines of yellow in the thick black and brown of the night. In an attempt to get the imprints of the light out of my vision, I closed my eyes for a moment and that was when we hit. For one whole second, everything was exploding- color, metal, sparks, the road, sound- and I felt myself floating above the seat from the impact as the world turned 180 degrees, floating in the moment of time before I became a murderer for the rest of my life. There was the horrific scream of metal against metal, spitting sparks into the air as steel was shredded, and then the wail of the engine as it died, and then the shattered glass spraying and landing everywhere.

Shaking my head, I turn the tape back on and listen to the story, told through a passive voice- a reliving break from the guilt-wracked voice that screams from within: “Mr. Jones's wife, Amanda. That was the single time that Amanda and Tommy were in the same space at the same time. Amanda was not aware of Tommy. She was in a daze but Tommy was very aware of Amanda. And what was coming off her made it clear to Tommy that nothing was OK. Mrs. Jones says something about the other child, and we're like, what other child? And that's when I seen Makayla's arm hanging there.” My hand automatically flips the switch and the room is quiet again. I’m locked in my own mind, with the image of the girl’s arm hanging out the mangled, glassless window blazing in my mind in excruciating detail.

The arm is twisted, the bones and tendons out of place, as if God had been in a rush when putting it together. There was a small trickle of blood winding down her forearm and wrist and a tiny droplet hanging onto the tip of her thumb, waiting for gravity to take it over. For a moment, the fingers twitch and the bead of blood is released, plummeting to the ground below and creating a tiny blossom of crimson that seems to glow against the scintillating, glass covered road. The skin is porcelain smooth, save the strange ripples and currents underneath it formed by the mangled tendons, and near the wrist, several small white splinters of bone poke out, glossy red from blood. The rest of the body is nowhere to be seen, it’s just an arm dangling out into the air still resonating with the crash. 

Nothing else exists in the world- it’s just me and that arm, accusing me of the murder of its owner, telling me that this is when it all changes, when I go from just anyone to a murderer. Nothing else is different when I look in the mirror but on the inside, I have withered into dust, ground from the stone of guilt that sits in my stomach, the weight of murder anchoring me in place forever.


ROSIN: These days, our culture spends a ton of time talking about emotions...And it does often feel like they just come over us. Someone tells us a joke, and we laugh. We learn about a death and we cry...They seem so straightforward...An automatic response, almost like a machine. Put something in, get something out, right? OK. So for our show today, we have a story about this bizarre legal case we heard about, which has at its center this question - where do emotions like pain come from, and how much control do we have over them? Tommy Jarrett and Amanda Thornberry have spent roughly 15 minutes in each other's company... But their encounter had huge consequences in part because it changed the way the law sees emotion but also because it changed the direction of their own emotional lives.

THORNBERRY: I knew if I would get upset about that then they [my parents] would punish me for it. I had to make sure that I didn't show emotion to the fact that something that I adored was now destroyed. I mean, it - it's always been like that. I was raised that emotions are a burden, something that we have to control.

ROSIN: What his dad was trying to communicate was clear to Tommy - don't get carried away by your desires and frustrations. Control your emotions. That's what a man does.

JARRETT: Sometimes you can let emotions control your behavior. Get over it - plain and simple or suck it up (laughter).

SPIEGEL: So Tommy and Amanda...both raised to believe that emotions need to be controlled, each experimenting with different ways to control them...It was a Tuesday, and Amanda, her daughter, Makayla, her husband, Michael Jones, and their new baby, Hannah, were driving from their home to Columbia, Mo.

THORNBERRY: I remember getting on the highway...

ROSIN: There was a sudden summer downpour. And Amanda's husband, Michael Jones, driving in the opposite direction of Tommy, lost control of his car, the green Grand Prix. It spun around and skidded across the median into the lane where Tommy was driving.

THORNBERRY: I remember just, like, the flashes...

JARRETT: A black object...

THORNBERRY: ...The car spinning...

JARRETT: ...Trying to take the truck left...

THORNBERRY: ...A shadow of somebody on my right side...

JARRETT: ...Coming across the median...

ROSIN: When it all stopped, Tommy says he just sat still in his truck for a second.

ROSIN: That was the single time that Amanda and Tommy were in the same space at the same time. Amanda was not aware of Tommy. She was in a daze but Tommy was very aware of Amanda. And what was coming off her made it clear to Tommy that nothing was OK.

JARRETT: Mrs. Jones says something about the other child, and we're like, what other child? And that's when I seen Makayla's arm hanging there.

ROSIN: Makayla was dead.

ROSIN: Horrible accidents like this happen all the time, and they sometimes end up in courts, but there was something unusual about the way this legal dispute played out. Amanda and Michael Jones had suffered an unimaginable loss...And yet, they were the ones who got sued. A year after the accident, Tommy Jarrett sued the Joneses for emotional distress...Tommy Jarrett, the truck driver who walked away from the accident without a scratch...sued the family that had lost a child because he suffered emotional pain. The case made it all the way up to the Missouri Supreme Court, and it's an important case because it helped transform the way the law thinks about emotions...Tommy Jarrett won.

ROSIN: In the months after the accident, Amanda hardly knew what to do with herself. Michael had a brain injury, and Makayla was gone. She would think of Makayla, her red-haired girl, and feel a kind of pain she had never encountered before, a pain so deep it was physical.

THORNBERRY: I felt at times that maybe my feelings were too intense for the situation. I had never felt anything like that before, that loss.

ROSIN: She says it got so bad, she started wondering if her emotions were actually real.

THORNBERRY: I did kind of wonder to myself if the feelings were appropriate for the loss or if I was kind of imagining it to being worse than it really was.

ROSIN: Meanwhile, Tommy was also struggling to understand his emotions because for the first time in his life, he couldn't do what his dad had taught him. His feelings were totally out of his control.

JARRETT: Her little arm hanging out of the car. I couldn't get none of the images out of my mind, her little arm hanging out of the car. I got to get a grip on this. I blamed myself because of my inability to control what I had the ability to control, a child lost her life.

ROSIN: He was sure that come sunrise, he would master these emotions as he'd been raised to do and as he always had. And sometimes for a flash, it would feel that way. The emotions just ran over him - one month, two months...

JARRETT: Get over it.

ROSIN: ...Four months, five months. He stopped leaving the house.

JARRETT: I couldn't stop it.

ROSIN: Seven months, and he still wasn't back behind the wheel.

JARRETT: There for a while, I thought I should die.

ROSIN: But then nine months after the accident, Tommy finally turned a corner. He had seen a doctor who explained to him in a way that he could actually hear - Makayla's death wasn't your fault. There's no truth there. What's happening is that your emotions have hijacked your body, and they have taken control, and they are torturing you. And at first, this was a hard thing to understand because it was the opposite of how Tommy had grown up. But the doctor was saying you...have no control over how you are feeling. Emotions happen to you.

JARRETT: Emotions are very powerful. They are a very powerful thing.

ROSIN: Tommy had PTSD, the doctor explained. The sight of Makayla's arm had triggered it in him, and it was no more under his control than cancer or diabetes. What Tommy needed to do was recognize that and deal with it. He was a victim.

JARRETT: If somebody has a traumatic experience in their life, it will consume your life.

ROSIN: But more important, he'd had his revelation, and he wanted the courts to validate it. The car accident had broken his mind just like a car accident can break a spine.

JARRETT: It became a principle. That emotional distress is the same thing as physical damage. It can wreak havoc on somebody's life, and it can destroy them.

ROSIN: And isn't that in a way how our culture increasingly thinks about emotions? That they're triggered by events in the world, that we often don't have control over them in the way that they affect us, and that we should take them really seriously...And if anyone was going to convince the legal system to embrace this idea in the culture, it was Tommy, a trucker in a leather Harley jacket. Nothing off him suggested he was anxious to play the victim but according to his doctor, he was a victim. Tommy pointed out in his lawsuit that Michael Jones drove too fast for a road that was wet after a summer rain. So Michael had crashed into Tommy's truck and caused his trauma.

JARRETT: Somebody else causes that, then they should be liable for that.

ROSIN: What they could see is that the courts were changing, moving in the same direction as the culture. Emotions are triggered, and people can't control them. The courts just needed another nudge, so they went forward. And though it took three years, he won.





This excerpt from a podcast transcript depicts an example of an event that impacts the emotions of everyone involved: a car accident with the fatality of a child. Both parties- the parents of the killed child and the “killer” suffer from guilt and grief respectively, leaving a substantial impact on their mental health, which eventually results in a lawsuit that reaches the state court- of the killer to the parents for emotional trauma.  In both cases, this is the first emotion that was expressed, after a childhood and youth being told to control and repress them. Through this experience, both victims learn that emotions cannot be forced into submission, that they needed to be recognized and validated and dealt with. His case built off the theme that dealing with and bringing justice to those who had caused his emotional distress, which influenced the courts’ outlook on emotion- as something that had potential to damage people the same way a lawsuit or a car accident could, as well as an important aspect to consider in each case. Later, the podcast includes a psychologist that describes emotions in their purest forms as reflexes- but the difference between reflexes and emotions is that we can choose what we do with the latter- express, repress, describe, as well emphasis on how emotional concepts allow us to build our own perspectives and reactions, which then build our world.

我正好在听的podcast里也有有关emotion的内容，我发给她了：
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=530928414
"And these concepts, these emotional concepts, they are the things that shape the raw sensations from your interoception thingy - those raw materials of pleasant, unpleasant, aroused, calm - into the actual emotions that you experience. And without these concepts, Lisa says, you wouldn't have any of the emotions that you think of as hardwired, even sadness, even fear, even all the other things that you think of as fundamental and wired into you."
"what Lisa is saying is that concepts like these work in all of us all of the time. They take the blobs in front of us and shape them into what we see. And they take the blobs inside us and shape them into what we feel. For better or for worse, experiences are constructed. And your emotional experience is not an indication of something objective about the event. That's just not true."
"That means that you have more control over your emotions than you might imagine. The horizon of control is much broader because concepts are not hardwired. We can change them. Ultimately, we have control."
"changing the concepts we've grown up with and absorbed all of our lives is not easy at all."
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=530936928