Original link: Unstable Emotions are Like Bombs - Author: Wang Lu
I'm too lazy to write about all the troubles I've encountered this year, but Teacher Wang still has the energy to write. I believe he has also encountered similar troubles, so I'll leave it here as a memorial.
Original Article:#
In the movie "All In", the young gambler, while watching a soccer game in a bar, realizes that his bet has won and starts screaming hysterically. I thought to myself, "Oh no, I wouldn't dare to be around someone like that." And yet, his girlfriend, a pretty and kind-hearted girl, dares to date him. After he finishes screaming, his girlfriend looks at him silently and finally says that she didn't actually place a bet. The gambler, after confirming this, falls into a state of numbness and despair, flips the table (in a public place), violently pushes his girlfriend to the ground, and then crazily hugs her and apologizes.
In reality, there are also people like this - hysterical. When they are happy, they jump around like an indestructible loach; when they are angry, they wish for the destruction of the world. Such people are difficult to deal with even if they don't gamble. They are not suitable as partners or friends. Wherever they are, they are like a bomb, and it's not a timed bomb that only explodes once. They can explode a hundred times and still be reused.
When I was in middle school, in a class on ethics and morality, there was a homework question: Is it good to not show joy or anger on one's face? The answer is no, because even if joy or anger is not shown on one's face, it still exists. It's just being suppressed and not solving the problem. It's not achieving a state of neither joy nor sorrow, not being pleased by external things and not being saddened by oneself.
Whenever I hear someone say "not being pleased by external things and not being saddened by oneself," I want to avoid them. I can't stand people who pretend. Some things are not originally pretentious, and of course, I really like Fan Zhongyan. This sentence is very appropriate in Fan Zhongyan's writings, but when modern people bring it up, especially in public places, at the dinner table, or in front of the camera, I want to cover my nose.
The answer to that question in the middle school textbook, I think, is also pretentious. If someone can "not show joy or anger," I think they can get along with others. Although in reality, it's not possible to completely not show any emotion. The so-called not showing any emotion is just "not showing a large-scale display of emotion." What does "showing a large-scale display of emotion" mean? For example, the gambler in "All In". And "not showing a large-scale display of emotion" is like Gao Qiqiang after he becomes successful in "Furious Speed". Note that the adjective "after becoming successful" cannot be omitted. - In other words, the proportion of a person showing joy or anger will change before and after they become successful, generally significantly decreasing. - People who study psychology or sociology might want to research the correlation between the degree to which a person shows joy or anger and their social class, economic status, interpersonal relationships, and level of happiness.
What I also want to say is that it's almost impossible to completely not show joy or anger. A good actor who portrays the anger of someone with status and position often uses subtle movements or microexpressions, such as twitching lips or trembling hands. When cursing someone as a "bastard," we don't capture a person's emotions and level of anger from just those three words, but also look at their speech speed, tone, and body movements. Someone like Xu Jiang in "Furious Speed" is immediately recognizable as someone who can't fit into the system. If they really entered the system, they would probably reach the position of a department-level official. Because it's difficult for someone above the deputy bureau level to tolerate such rich body language, and if they want to hit someone's head with a golf club, they usually have their driver do it for them.
Joy and anger will always be shown, it's just that some people can't perceive it. "Showing emotion" is necessary because we not only convey information through spoken words but also through things other than words. Therefore, converting videos into images, images into audio, and audio into text will lose a lot of information. However, at the same time, text is the most space-saving form of information compression, it takes up very little space. Therefore, the understanding of the world by large language models mainly comes from reading texts.
We express emotions through things other than language in order to convey information. If joy and anger completely don't show, the function of conveying information will be lost. Under the premise of effectively conveying information, it is better for the degree of emotion shown to be smaller. So, people who can't perceive emotions are also called "lacking perception" - perception is highly valued in the officialdom, and if a leader's degree of showing emotion is already sufficient, but they haven't captured it, such a person cannot be promoted. Because they force the leader to emit high-power signals every time, which is not energy-efficient and can easily exhaust the leader. Because the leader is emitting signals all day long, the person they need around them the most is someone with perception, in other words, someone who can capture the signals before they are emitted or just as they are starting to show, achieving perfect communication and being very energy-efficient.
This is beneficial for health. Because every person is both a transmitter and a receiver of emotional signals. The emotional signals that are emitted are not only received by others but also by oneself. It's like in a private karaoke room, if the amplifier and microphone are close together or at the right angle, the sound will be amplified in a loop.
The reason why angry people get angry is not to harm their bodies, not to "get sick from anger without anyone to replace them, and it's exhausting and laborious," but to make others understand their feelings, know their attitude, and understand their meaning. Anger is a means of communication for everyone.
If when he says "I am angry," the people around him have already taken it seriously, then his angry can stop there. Because the communication mechanism is smooth. But when he has to throw things to show his anger, the act of throwing things will in turn intensify his anger. Saying "I am angry" doesn't mean that a person is very angry, it may even indicate that he can still control his anger at this time.
The greater the degree to which joy or anger is shown, the more it will intensify. The smaller the degree to which it is shown, the more it helps to contain joy or anger. This is also the containment of emotions. The containment of emotions is not only the containment of emotions but also related to the stability of physiological indicators. "Showing" is not limited to facial expressions. If it were limited to facial expressions, people with facial paralysis would be the easiest to not show any emotion. But in reality, the rhythm of breathing is also a form of expression, as is the change in speech speed. When a person changes the rhythm of their breathing and the speed of their communication, we know that their emotional state has changed.
To achieve not showing any emotion, it is actually not showing any change in speech speed or breathing. When not showing any change in breathing, it means not showing any change in heart rate, and the rhythm of the heartbeat will not change. When not showing any change in heart rate, it means not showing any change in blood pressure, and therefore not showing any change in adrenaline or dopamine. If one can not show any change in all physiological indicators, emotions cannot have an impact on health. At this point, even if you change your facial expression, speech speed, body language, and everything else externally, it's not a problem because your internal physiological indicators are stable. We call this "manifestation." But in reality, we cannot achieve manifestation because all external manifestations, even slight hand tremors that others cannot perceive, are related to internal physiological indicators.