What is emotion?

Emotion is the emotional resonance of people’s emotional behavior. For example, I saw a young mother crouching down to tidy her children’s clothes and trousers. What happened between the mother and the children was an emotion, but it turned into an emotion in my cognition. The influence of emotion on people is mainly value judgment. Generally speaking, one’s emotional cognition determines one’s values. When people have emotional resonance with something, they will have value recognition with it. Things that make people identify with value are things that make people feel beautiful, and the opposite is ugly and disagreeable. People are always pursuing what they think is beautiful and rejecting what they think is ugly and disagreeable. Everyone has different growing environment, and different growing environment will shape different sense of identity, and the difference of sense of identity will shape strange values, and the conflict of values will lead to various social contradictions between people.

In order to reconcile the social contradictions created by people, universal values with a wider coverage have been built, and a moral system has been built on the basis of universal values. Social rules have been established on the moral system, and a judicial system has been established to punish individuals who do not abide by the rules. This is the basic structural principle of establishing a modern society, and the starting point of everything lies in what individuals will have emotional resonance with. By adjusting and strengthening universal values, we can change and unify each individual’s cognitive environment to the maximum extent, and eliminate social contradictions caused by differences in values from the root. This is the basic principle of building a harmonious society in the country. How to maintain correct and objective values in society requires individuals to adjust their own values, and the starting point is to correctly understand their emotional cognition.

People will have spiritual dependence on things that arouse emotional resonance, and the value orientation produced by this spiritual dependence determines people’s behavior orientation. The richer the spiritual world, the more flexible and broad the cognitive range, and the simple spiritual world, the more stubborn and intolerant. The process of emotional cognition self-correction is to arouse emotional resonance as much as possible, and a simple understanding is to actively improve one’s aesthetic ability. The stronger the aesthetic ability, the more angles you look at things, and the more perspectives you have, the more complete and profound your understanding of things will be. Everyone yearns for beauty and hates ugliness. When making a choice, they all take the beauty in their hearts as a reference. That is to say, a person who thinks something is beautiful will use it as a standard to measure the value of people, things and things around him.

For example, if a person thinks money is beautiful, he will use money as a standard to measure the value of things around him. Those who think that power is beautiful will measure people and things by whether they can show power, those who think that knowledge is beautiful will measure people and things by the amount of knowledge, those who think that morality is beautiful will measure everything around them by moral standards, and those who think that fairness and justice are beautiful will measure things by whether they are fair or not. The values established by emotional resonance are like a scale to measure everything. Everyone uses the scale in his heart to mark everything he meets with different values. Then define self-pursuit with these values as the guidance, and people’s goals and ideals are the visualized results of self-pursuit.

It is precisely because of the differences in emotional demands that various life goals have been created, and the differences in goals have caused conflicts in values. The moral system based on universal values is an important tool to adjust the conflict of ideas, in which individuals should actively realize their self-worth in addition to passive adaptation and acceptance, which is also the normal state of people in social activities. With the development of society, modern society pays more attention to individual power and value. As a result, a more complex and changeable value system has emerged. With the popularization of education and the information explosion, it will have a greater impact on modern people, and most people have been exposed to information beyond their own understanding. Therefore, a clearer emotional cognition can better adapt to and understand the value conflict brought about by the information explosion.

In personal cognition, emotions bring more emotional outbursts, and people and things that can trigger personal emotions are the embodiment of personal values. When an individual makes a value judgment, there are two kinds of performances, one is that people have no me, and the other is that people have no me. People who have no self are judged by what they have, while people who have no self are judged by what they don’t have. They are all the same in essence and will have differences in performance. Different objects of value identification will produce completely different performances. When a person thinks that a person’s social status is very important, he will use the status as a value reference.

When making reference, take yourself as the coordinate to compare up and down, and when you meet people whose status is not as good as your own, your values will enter a state where people have nothing. The external performance will be different because of different emotional cognition, and the internal state is to think that you are higher than others. When you meet someone with a higher status than yourself, your values will enter a state in which people have me without me, and the external performance is also different. The internal state is that you are lower than others. People who are not much different from themselves will enter a competitive state, and their internal demands are to surpass each other, but their external performances are also different.

The emergence of values lies in what a person thinks a person’s status is determined by, and what a person’s emotional cognition resonates with will make him think that what a person has is valuable. Take the wealth with universal value as an example. A person who thinks wealth is a yardstick to measure personal value will equate everything in his cognition with money. When judging other people’s social status and value, they will convert everything they have into money, then value it with everything they own and measure each other’s value. In this process, the valuation of others and yourself is a free evaluation, and the accuracy of valuation depends entirely on personal cognition. As a result, if you think that your value is higher than others, you will enter a state of being without me, and if you think that your value is lower than others, you will enter a state of being without me. On the outside, you will show different thinking characteristics because of different emotional cognitive deviations.

Under the influence of universal values, introverted resentment will be extremely stingy in a state where people have nothing, and they will always prevent people with lower values from taking advantage of themselves, which makes them appear bitter and indifferent. When dealing with people of equal value, we will maintain a superficial fairness, but after taking advantage, we would rather turn our faces than give up our vested interests. When dealing with people whose value is higher than their own, they will fall into a state where people have nothing to do with themselves. They always put themselves on the weak side and are afraid that they are useless. They often use small favors to maintain relationships, and then find opportunities to take advantage of each other. They are very good at using emotional kidnapping to make profits for themselves. If they can’t find benefits, they will blame each other for their disregard for human feelings.

Outward-looking resentment will show all kinds of self-packaging and show off wealth in a state where people have nothing, so as to prove the inevitability of their success. People who treat people whose value is lower than their own will use all kinds of rhetoric to promise others to pay for themselves, and finally only honor part of them or not, and then pass the buck to others to find various reasons for not honoring their promises. When treating people of equal value, they will play all kinds of tricks to embarrass others, and they are also very concerned about whether they have won the respect of others. They often make trouble on the grounds that others don’t respect themselves, and they are petty but eloquent, and they will excuse themselves. Treating people whose value is higher than their own will fall into the dilemma of people with and without, blindly recognizing everything of high-value people, and doing their best to cater to and borrow the value of others to raise themselves.

Introverted begging will show condescending conceit in a state where people don’t have what they have. In this state, they think that everything they have is earned by their own efforts, so people who treat people with lower value than themselves only see each other’s shortcomings and treat others harshly and mercilessly. When dealing with people of equal value, there is a degree of humility but toughness everywhere. Even if you suffer losses, you will find it back in other directions without holding on to the dead bar. When you treat people with higher value than yourself, you will fall into a state where people have me and have nothing. In this state, you will quickly improve and enrich yourself, and your high demands will last until you can do nothing. Externally, you will not be too grateful to those who promote and take care of yourself, and you will be more sure of your efforts and efforts.

Extroverted begging will show moral superiority in the state that people have nothing. Driven by this superiority, people who are less valuable than themselves are often self-righteous, accusing others of their mistakes with their own one-sided cognition, and they will be very concerned about the way others treat themselves externally. Pay great attention to the display of self-achievement when dealing with people whose value is equivalent to their own, and only maintain respect for those they recognize and formal courtesy for those they don’t recognize. When dealing with people whose value is higher than their own, they will fall into a state where people have me. In this state, they will imagine what would happen if they had these, and then turn these imaginations into expectations for high-value people. These expectations will become moral requirements in most cases and cynical reasons in a few cases.

Introverted love separation will have a sense of mission when people are without me. Driven by the sense of mission, it will show a natural and unquestionable arrogance to treat people whose value is lower than their own. Under this arrogant mentality, whether it is worthy of redemption is often used to judge the value of others. When treating people with equal value, they often put their ideas first. Those who don’t agree with their own ideas will have all kinds of paranoid denials, while those who agree with their own ideas will have no bottom line support. When dealing with people whose value is higher than their own, they will fall into the state that people have me without, irrationally pursue others’ existence, and excessively deny their own absence, which is manifested in various idolatries.

The extroverted love separation will produce a sense of aloofness in the state that people have nothing. Under the influence of this sense of aloofness, people who are less valuable than themselves will have a contemptuous attitude, and they will behave in their own way but never explain anything. When treating people of equal value, they will show both respect and recognition, while keeping their distance from each other and never taking the initiative to develop intimate relationships. When dealing with people whose value is higher than their own, they will be trapped in a state where people have me, respect and seek advice to improve themselves, and at the same time, they will find fault with each other for proving themselves.

Whether people have me or have no me, it is the beginning of self-cognition being disturbed by their own emotions, which is also the basic principle of the existence and non-existence of the Reed Classics of Tao Te Ching. If wealth and goods are not beautiful, they will not raise the status of people with wealth and goods in their hearts, nor will they think that poor people are worthless; If you don’t take power as beauty, you won’t be humble in front of powerful people, and you won’t laugh at people without power; If you don’t take knowledge as beauty, you won’t be afraid to show your ignorance in front of knowledgeable people, nor will you show off your knowledge in front of ignorant people. If you don’t think you have it, you won’t despise others’ lack because you have it; If you don’t think you have nothing, you won’t feel humble because others have it. If we get rid of the awareness of the presence or absence, we will not be disturbed by the presence or absence, and everything we see is original; Without the love of beauty, we can correctly understand the so-called ugliness, and we will not deny anything because of ugliness. Most people in the world are trapped between the existence and non-existence, because they are happy because they have it, and they are sad because they have nothing. It is difficult to understand what virtue is unless they get rid of what they think they have.

In Buddhist thought, people’s self-thought is interpreted as "phase", and they are obsessed with longevity and think that longevity is beautiful, and they can enjoy the fortune. Wisdom is the phase of those who have entered the longevity; Obsessed with saving the world, let the world live according to a certain method, and let all beings enjoy the blessings, that is, they have entered the phase of all beings; The heart of wealth, power, wisdom and compassion will all enter my phase, and my heart will be trapped between the existence and the absence, and it will rise and die because of the cause. Most people who practice Buddhism are obsessed with their hearts, and people’s hearts have no wealth, tactics, wisdom and compassion; If you are obsessed with something, you will stick to it, and if you stick to it, you will think it is true. If you are in line with what you hold, you will think it is, and if you are not in line with what you hold, you will think it is not. Correct others’ wrongs with self-righteousness, no matter what the heart is, it is hard to get good results in the end.

People who are obsessed with Buddhism think that all beings can cross, but they don’t know that all beings can only cross by themselves. All Buddhism and Taoism are just roads for the world to cross the river by themselves. No matter which road is taken by the world itself, many people kneel on the road and kowtow in the hope that this road will become an elevator to take them forward. Therefore, all beings can cross because they have a way to go, and all beings can’t cross because they can only walk by themselves. If you don’t get obsessed with your heart and don’t stick to your phase, you will naturally see the nature of all beings. When you see all beings, you will know that your heart is the same as all beings, and your heart is one and you know the cause and effect.

In China’s traditional thought, emotional cognition is interpreted as "feeling", and all emotions are born of feeling qi. Seeing beautiful things, I feel that this kind of beauty is called "emotion", and what I think I don’t have and want to have after my own measurement is called "desire". Everyone has feelings and desires, so how can I balance myself, neither being partial to feelings nor desires, which requires me to adjust my subjective position. The internal principle is very simple. Is it people who decide the value? Or is value determining people? It is the core part of Confucianism that people themselves determine the value of everything. The gentleman advocated by Confucius is to take people as the king, and any value should serve people, and no value can be used to deny the role of people. Confucius said that the villain is to determine people by value. Once people are defined by value, they will be divided into different grades, and the grade difference caused by value will trigger various emotions.

Because your value is denied by others, you will get angry. For example, others don’t act according to their own wishes, you don’t get the respect you deserve, and your contribution is not recognized. If you feel that you are valuable and can’t get recognition, you will have resentment. For example, your efforts have not been rewarded, your dignity has not been guaranteed, and what you should have has not been obtained. Excessive self-recognition and feeling that you are more valuable than others will lead to arrogance. For example, thinking that you have higher status will lead to arrogance in status, thinking that you have higher knowledge will lead to arrogance in cognition, and thinking that you have greater social value will lead to arrogance in power.

When anger, resentment and pride are mixed together, it will produce hostility, which is explained by modern psychology as anti-social tendency. On the contrary, it is righteousness. The principle of righteousness is not to define people by value, but to define all values by people. How to maintain a correct cognition in daily life and social activities? In Confucianism, there is a book that specifically explains how to nourish qi called The Doctrine of the Mean. The basic principle of The Doctrine of the Mean is the principle of righteousness, and its main function is to correct itself when making daily judgments and decisions. You can’t deviate from the gentleman’s way and can’t afford the villain’s heart.

People’s hearts are true, but only when they are disturbed by miscellaneous gas can they be divided into gentlemen and villains. The so-called villains are not born small, but have made themselves small. When a person thinks that something is more valuable than others, then he is small in front of something. Once I am young, I will fall into the dilemma of "people have me without me, and people have me without me". I am proud of what I have and feel inferior because I have nothing. People don’t need any value, but all values need people. This is the right way. No matter who pursues the right path in the end, the most unforgettable thing in feelings is not those who come because we have nothing, but those who are still kind to us without caring what we have or what we have. When judging whether others are sincere to themselves, they are always worried about whether they are coming for themselves. This is the essential need of people for the right path.

. What this demand reflects is that human nature refuses to be bound by value and longs for inner freedom. What can get rid of the bound by value and meet this essential demand is feelings. The easiest thing to get in feelings is to treat parents’ feelings, regardless of whether parents can be themselves. As children, it is difficult to define their parents by value. What parents should do regardless of their value is the initial foundation of being born as a human being, which is also the core of China’s filial piety culture for thousands of years. The reason to advocate and carry forward filial piety is to tell everyone to the greatest extent that all values in the world serve people. In front of filial piety, people should do something and not do everything for external values. This is the important core of Confucian benevolence. How to keep this core in the complicated world is the significance of the Confucian theory of nourishing qi, and it is also the reason why The Doctrine of the Mean can become an important Confucian classic.

Correcting one’s own emotional cognition can help to understand how values affect people to the greatest extent, and also correctly understand the significance of the existence of the value system. A correct understanding of value does not prevent people from pursuing value. A person who does not regard wealth as a personal pursuit does not prevent him from making money. On the contrary, after making money, he can better play the value of money. Not treating power as a personal pursuit does not prevent him from becoming an official. On the contrary, he can serve the people better after becoming an official. Not defining people by value does not prevent value from playing its due role. The only difference lies in the individual’s perspective and attitude towards value and people. For modern people, there are too many things that need to be judged. Maintaining correct emotional cognition can avoid a lot of unnecessary pain and trouble.