The
emergent phenomena are at the focus of Complexity science; they express
self-organizing ability of the complexly interwoven dynamics: energies,
forces, substances, forms. Emotions are typical examples of emergent
phenomena
that reveal self-organizing capacity of the human dynamics. Therefore
the
findings of Complexity are applicable for studying dynamics of emotions.
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1. Magic
of Self-organization
Self-organization
is a virtual
property of the interactive nonlinear dynamics. It becomes actual when
the dynamics are materialized in some substance and their intensity of
interaction increases so that they become swirling (vortical).
The
swirling dynamics are
characterized by the presence of self-propelling feedback loops and
tend
to form a vortex-like whirling structure sustained by forces directed
towards
its centre. At the same time, the forces that act towards the periphery
of the structure cause the emergence of a multitude of pulsating
vortical
layers, similar to the fractals studied in chaos and complexity
theories.
The
dynamics of every emergent
layer reflects the pulsation of the whirling structure as a whole, and
the integrity of the structure crucially depends on the interactive
dynamics
of the layers. This unique dynamical interplay between the whole (as an
expression of layers' interconnectedness) and the layers (mirroring the
whole), drives the overall process of self-organization of the moving
substance.
The magic
of self-organization
occurs in the cavity (emptiness, vacuum) at the axis of the whirling
structure,
where a powerful sucking force emerges. The power of this
self-organizing
force can be gigantic (in tornadoes, for example).
Self-organizing
dynamics
of existence manifest in the astonishing diversity of non-animated and
animated forms in the universe, in their evolution, transformations and
metamorphoses.
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2. Emotions
as Manifestations of Self-organizing Dynamics in Human Experiential
Space
Human
emotions are bearers
of enormous energy; the spontaneous emergence of certain emotions can
produce
irreversible changes (like heart attack or brain hemorrhage) in the
physical
body of individuals experiencing those emotions. Emotions can kill but
they can also inspire and elevate the spirit of a person.
Emotions
emerge in the human
experiential space [1] - a space where the dynamics of each
individualís
life release their energy through one' everyday actions and thoughts,
emotions
and feelings, expectations and dreams, spiritual beliefs and
aspirations.
Let us zoom
into the nature
of the human experiential space and explore how it relates to the
emergence
of emotions. The Human Experiential Space is
~ one
cannot predict what
kind of experience will occur even in the nearest future, therefore one
is uncertain about the emotions which could emerge out of this
experience;
~ tiny
little changes in
the conditions under which oneís life unfolds or in the story
that
one has about oneself and reality can lead to dramatic changes in the
experience
of apparently identical events and processes, and hence can produce
dramatic
changes in the emotions related to this experience;
~ seemingly
simple and routine
modes of behavior can lead to extremely complicated experiential
patterns
accompanying by complexly interwoven streams of emotions .
~ critical
conditions and
factors stimulate the occurrence of spontaneous qualitative jumps in
human
experience and hence in the emotional patterns of an individual;
~ because
of its complexity,
human experience tends towards 'zone of criticality', that is, towards
critical developments impregnated with possibilities for bifurcation
from
one emotional state to another;
~ the
higher the intensity
of the critical state of an individual, the more significant the
qualitative
jump in the emotional state of this individual.
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3. Holistic
Nature of Emotions
Self-organizing
ability of
human dynamics is a holistic expression of the power hidden in their
interactions.
As far as any authentic emotion is a manifestation of this
self-organizing
ability, it is also holistic - it cannot be separated into smaller
parts,
although it could be 'fractalized' (let us recall that fractals are
similar
images of the whole at different scales of representation). For
example,
the grief of the whole nation in relation to the death of a national
hero,
can be expressed through the grief of a single person, without losing
its
wholeness; only the scale will be different - from the macro level of
the
nation to the micro level of an individual.
Because of
its holistic nature,
the best way to explore emotions is through the narratives (stories)
related
to authentic human experience; such a story is always a holistic
expression
of one's experience and hence of one's emotions.
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3.1.
First Narrative
Horst,
an old family friend,
had been at my fatherís funeral. I had driven him home that
night,
late, after the wake, and on my way back to the family home I had found
myself parked in a quiet alcove in a pine forest, near a lake and
crying
a torrent. It was the first time I had really been alone since the
death.
Up until then there had always been people around and always things to
do. It was also the first time I had felt the loss enter into my body
and
shake me beyond conscious control. My tears grabbed me hurtfully. I
didnít
know where they came from. It was as if the rust, the grit, the debris
right at the bottom of my emotional tank had been rattled then shaken
free.
I didnít know I felt so deeply or so strongly. It gutted me. I
hadnít
cried for years and that night I cried myself out, I donít know
how long it took but finally I regained sufficient equanimity and drove
the final three kilometers home.
In the
years since then,
it seemed, I had not greatly missed my father. I guess I thought I had
purged my grief. In truth, I had on occasions even been grateful for
his
absence and the over bearing nature of his parenting. And yet I
happened
to glimpse a photo of him as I cleared my possessions from the home of
Louisa, following a sudden and unexpected breakdown in our five-year
relationship
and I wept uncontrollably. In heartbreak and grief I howled, I wet half
a roll of toilet paper with my salty tears.
On a
deep level I loved
my father enormously. One of the reasons we argued so much was because
of the affinity I felt for him - and him for me - such that whenever he
failed to live up to my expectations I felt let down, and I
wasnít
afraid to tell him. The result was antipathy. When I saw that photo and
found myself weeping, I realized just how much I underestimated the
loss.
If the possibility of such a response would have been mentioned a week
before I would have laughed. I would have dismissed any suggestion that
I still valued him and missed him and reaped the rewards - and suffered
the conflicts - of his parenting. There was much of this chaos also in
the separation from Louisa.
As I
gathered my things
from her house and packed them into boxes I remembered the time she and
I had shared. Rich memories lived in the atmosphere. I remembered the
way
we used to open the curtains each morning to let the sun shine into the
bedroom. I remembered the struggle to keep the house warm of an evening
and I remember the way that warmth, when it was secured, bound us
together
through winter.
The
intensity of the critical
conditions of the narrator (related both to the death of his father and
the breakdown of his relationships with Louisa) makes his emotional
experience
complex, unpredictable and open for dramatic changes.
There is a
powerful connection
between the loss the narrator feels in the sudden separation from
Louisa
and the grief that surfaces in relation to his father. One opens the
way
for the other, or so it seems. It is as if in the strength of the
emotional
response individual emotional experiences ran together somehow. The
narrator
is flooded by emotions, yet like driftwood, individual emotions emerge
every so often and demanded attention only to, almost as rapidly,
disappear
from view, under the pressure of the onrushing stream. The emotional
experience
is similar with what Jeffrey Kohler says: "...anything you are crying
for
at one moment can so easily change to something quite different a
moment
later... much of the time you donít really know exactly what you
are feeling" [2].
Points of
attention and comprehension
shift and change. What remains constant is the immersion in the
emotion.
The rationality of one or another event is overtaken by the power of
the
emergent emotion. This in itself can be a revelation - a sudden jump, a
bifurcation to entirely different kind of experience, which is
demonstrated
in the second story of the narrator.
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3.2.
Second Narrative
After
loss, many people
have told me, healing takes time. At that time and at times since I
have
watched the clock, I have cried, tested my pulse, monitored my
heartbeat,
cried still more and watched myself, sporadically, as I became engulfed
by emotions, then some time later emerged once more. And I have tried
to
find names for the emotions as they threatened to, in fact every so
often
did, totally overwhelm me, in wave after wave after wave. All the time
I have carried on conversations with myself (and others willing to do
so),
on the nature of the emotions that arose in this time. I have felt
"hollowed
out", I have felt "emptied", "cold", "in need" and very much "on my
own"
despite the consoling words of friends and allies. In my gut I have
felt
the effect of loss echo. Through the muscles of my face I have felt it
reveal itself, at first to me, then to anyone capable of seeing it in
me....Loss
is both an emotional and a physical thing. The body yearns for the
other,
it aches with the absence and physically suffers the recognition that
what
is lost will not return. At our peril we devalue the experience in our
attempts to ëovercome ití and ëput it in the
pastí
and ëmove oní. It continues. Poet John Foulcher offers this
fragment of advice.
I
think the way... in
which I have learnt to cope with it (and it has been a gradual process)
is to learn that the phrase "Time heals all" is a lie. Time heals
nothing.
When somebody dies they take a part of you with them and you can never
get it back. When love dies that also takes a part of you and
youíll
never get that back.
It fans
out. It can make
personal sustainability a genuine concern. It is, in this respect, both
a sensual experience and a knowledge form. Foulcher continues,
... when
you are in pain,
if you are suffering most of us tend to think, "Well, Iíll grit
my teeth and bear it" and wait for the light at the end of the tunnel,
and what we miss (with this approach) is experiencing the suffering and
pain that is there. I think to actually experience it by saying
ëThis
is it. Iím going through it and this is how it is affecting
meí
is the best way to cope with it. Your natural tendency is to avoid, to
pull back, define, compensate. But I think the considered response is
to
avoid those sorts of cheap answers and go for the hard one [3].
And once
again I remembered
sitting alongside my father in the bed he died in, and holding his hand
as the sun streamed in through the window. Why, I ask, did it take
seven
years, and a ëmarriageí breakdown to allow me to weep
uncontrollably
for him. It seems as if the embodied processes of loss and grief,
having
been triggered, unfold in unexpected ways. The mind finds meaning in
incidental
things. Immersed in the loss triggered by Louisaís declaration I
was opened to the distress of my fatherís death and much, much
more.
I cried listening to items on the 7 oíclock news, I cried
listening
to music, I cried looking at photos in magazines, I cried seeing
children
playing and couples drinking coffee and traffic flowing and trees
growing.
These tears were not indiscriminate, nor were they altogether
unwelcome.
They stirred me hugely. My body and mind were massively engaged by
them.
I wept, truly, and my weeping was sufficiently overwhelming to make me
stop, rest and turn my attention in on myself.
The
emotion was the thing:
and this thing churned and bubbled and surfaced and reverberated in my
body as I moved through the minutes that comprised the day. Nestled
deep
within, my sensitivities aligned themselves and empathised with others
they found in their vicinity. My vulnerability brought down the
barriers
that allowed me to claim competence in the everyday world. Suddenly I
was
incompetent, I was irrational, I was in tears, I was inconsolable, I
was
beyond help, I was emotional. My good sense was overcome by the
strength
of my feelings. My body was overwhelming ëmeí. Within my
distress
I was celebrating. Never had my emotions been revealed to me so
powerfully.
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4. Emotions
and Language
Responses
to emotional experience
swing wildly. Language is one of the vehicles through which responses
become
manifest. The dynamics of language are such that it ëfeeds
backí
into consciousness and contribute to the way in which the loss is both
experienced and understood in the future.
Evidence
can be found in
a multiplicity of references and artifacts. The mythologies that
support
and embrace cultural life offer a tantalizing collection of keys to the
richness of the variety of emotional experience. These have been
plumbed
to great depth in Jungian theory and archetypal psychology.
Emotions
might ëtouch
us deeplyí, they might ëlook uglyí, they might
ëcome
too closeí, they might ëhit us where it hurtsí or
ërelease
a huge burdení. In these phrases senses overflow and overlap.
There
is a revelatory quality to them. They might ëmake us feel
blueí
or ësee redí or ëtip us off the straight and
narrowí.
They are both emotions and meaning-full emotions. One can speak about
the
inescapable "aroma of loss" and the way it pervades the body, the mind
and the environment. One can see emotions in people: that there are
patterns
in the way the body is held. One can plunge into the relief
accompanying
strong emotional experience ("finally, the fear and expectation is
over").
One can share the fear of emotion ("there is a wildness to it, a
beastliness
that is best avoided").
Because
emotional experience
is known in no small way through culture, that knowing is influenced by
the way we explain it to ourselves. Again, language - the social voice
both of understanding and delusion - can contain the emotion. It can
lock
it down, make it manageable or keep it under control. Equally, it can
place
it in the context of an unfolding life - "I donít understand
whatís
happening" - or expand it beyond the border lands of understanding.
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5. Inspirational
Power of Emotions
Inspiration
is an explosion
of positive emotions; it acts as a powerful energizer of the human
experiential
space (HES).
The crucial
impact of inspiration
is that it can bring forth emergence of new attractors of meaning in
HES. In this sense, inspiration is a powerful stimulator of human
creativity.
Similarly
to creativity,
inspiration occurs spontaneously in HES. 'Trying to be inspired' or 'to
impose inspiration' is like 'trying to be spontaneous' - it does not
work.
On the contrary, it creates obstacles for the 'flash of inspiration' to
be ignited.
And yet,
there are powerful
catalysts of inspiration - external (like beautiful scenery, human
body,
work of arts) or internal (related to individual self-realization,
experience
of love, spiritual experience). Different catalysts can have different
inspiring effects on different individuals.
The
dynamics of the ego-centred
attractors in HES (even those related to personal
knowledge-accumulation)
can hardly be inspired. According to the Buddhist thinkers, attachment
cannot be inspired - its reinforcement can only hasten the exhaustion
of
the energy supporting the attachment.
Being
saturated with positive
emotions, the genuine acts of inspiration may help in transcending the
pulling force even of a very strong attachments (Alcoholic Anonymous is
an example of spiritual inspiration helping people to deal with the
detrimental
consequences of the alcoholic addiction.)
Spiritual
endeavors always
need flashes of inspiration, otherwise they lose sincerity and wilt
quickly.
Inspiration is needed to energize the human search for authenticity,
for
self-realization, enlightenment and wisdom.
Inspiration
is not a 'logocentric'
phenomenon, that is, it is not based on any logically consistent
'system
of thought' that claims legitimacy by reference to external, accepted
as
truthful propositions. Often it is grounded in paradoxes; from the
encounter
of polarities (opposite ideas) contained in a paradox, a powerful
fountain
of inspiring emotions may merge.
Being a
stimulator of creativity,
inspiration needs intermittence (discontinuity) of causality: the
chains
of cause-effect easily melt under lucidity of inspiration.
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6. Emotional
Resonance
Through the
prism of Complexity
and Chaos, emotional resonance can be seen as an attractor-merging
phenomenon:
two or more attractors in HES, each representing a dynamical emotional
pattern, suddenly merge into one common attractor.
In the
chaotic dynamics of
HES, the 'strange' attractors of emotions are never static, they
constantly
vibrate - expand and shrink, depending on the changes in one's
experience.
Therefore, the act of merging of two vibrating attractors into one can
be described as an act of resonance: two or more attractors synchronize
their vibrations so that they stop to be separated from one another and
coalesce into one and the same new attractor, representing an enriched
emotional pattern.
If the
merging emotions are
positive, the resonance can trigger an arousal of waves of inspiration.
In the experience of love, the emotional resonance represents a
gigantic
source of inspiration able to entirely transform one's personality.
The
resonance in negative
emotions is also possible; when two groups of people are in conflict,
all
the members of one of the groups can 'resonate' with the same intensive
animosity (enmity, hostility, hatred) to those belonging to the other
group.
Extremely competitive nature of today's society facilitates the
emergence
of this kind of resonance. It reaches its destructive culmination in
the
wars, which have a constant presence in human society.
Emotional
resonance can be
not only interpersonal (as in the case of mutual empathy, compassion,
sympathy,
love), it can happen with the emotions experienced by one single
person.
A specific emotion can become so overwhelming that all other emotional
patterns either dissolve or start to resonate with the prevailing
emotion.
Examples of such kind of intrapersonal resonance can be found in one's
spiritual experience; the 'oceanic' emotion of unity with the whole
universe
experienced by a person in a state of deep meditation seems to absorb
the
energy of all other 'worldly' emotions and explode into a blissful
inspirational
climax.
. . .
Much as
it may seem otherwise,
emotion is not something we experience alone. It, and the understanding
arising from it, occurs within chaotic dynamics of social complexity...
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References
1.
Dimitrov, V. and
R. Ebsary 2000 A Busca da Identidade, Thot, 74 (pp. 51-60) - in
portuguese (English version available at
http://www.pnc.com.au/~lfell/vlad2.html)
2.
Kohler, J. (1996)
The
Language of Tears, Jossey-Bass (p.89)
3.
Jones, C. 1989
Interview with John Foulcher, in The Search for Meaning, ABC
Books:
Crows Nest, NSW (p.95).
