Poll: Most interesting emotion: Fear vs love

[NeutralDrow]

For hearts long lost and full of fright.
For those alone in blackest night.
Accept our cause and join our fight.
Love conquers all with violet light!

 

[Randomperson9999999]

id have to say love

 

[Amberella]

Love for me. :3 About all I have to say. Not interested in fear too much.

 

[Ieyke]

This arised from a slightly drunken conversation with my flatmates. I expressed my displeasure at the amount of songs about that...L word, and it branched into a conversation about interesting emotions.

I said that fear was more interesting. I've always said, discover what a man is afraid of, and you discover a door into every other part of their personality.

However, they said that about love, but I disagree. If someone loves blondes, why would that tell me anything about them. Love is incredibly simple to me. Someone wants to sleep with someone else, if the feeling's mutual, they stay together until one of them wants to sleep with someone else, then that person will leave.

And what can you do to a man once you find out what they love? Remove it from their life? Fear's more direct. You can break a man simply by talking too much about what they're truly afraid of.

So, what do you think? Remember, this is about what's more interesting. Not what's better, although I'd still say fear. The problems of fear are much easier and more satisfying to overcome, and the ups are far more valuable; only when we're truly scared, do we know who we truly are.

Feel free to mention another emotion if you're more interested in that, though.

The simple answer is that you don't seem to know the first thing about love.
Without love, fear is nothing to me.
I simply don't know of anything that I fear that doesn't involve the people I love.

Love is more powerful than anything, but it's utterly unfathomable to someone until they happen to experience it.

 

[isometry]

Curiosity is the most interesting emotion.

 

[Rin Little]

Love always amazes me when its genuine. I've been deeply in love before and nearly married the man, but things didn't turn out that way. Just in the small moments where you can look at the person and know with every fiber of your being that you love this person with all your heart and would give anything for them and that you literally would not know what to do without them. Just a small look that can inspire all that.

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

Just to echo everyone else: you seriously have no idea what love is.

I'm a pansexual woman, in an open relationship with a gay man. We're likely to get married within the next couple years. He is not sexually attracted to me, but I'm the only person he has ever loved. I have had plenty of sexual relationships, and I've been in love before, but it's been a very different experience each time.

Love is an extremely complex and fascinating emotion, made up of multiple different feelings. Fear is a visceral reaction, barely even an emotion and more of an instinct.

They're still both interesting and can tell you a lot about people, but again...you don't understand love at all.

 

[Loner Jo Jo]

I think we need to make the distinction that there is a big difference between feeling an emotion and observing someone feel something. When it comes to feeling, love is more interesting. Fear is primal, simple. It's a natural reaction to something threatening your survival (real or perceived). To me, at least, fear plays out in the same way, to varying degrees, yes, but it always has the same symptoms: heart racing, panting, sweating, etc. Love on the other hand I feel is far more varied. Part of this has to do with the word "love" covering a far too broad range of emotion. We say "I love you" to parents, friends and lovers yet it means something different to each person based upon something. (If you say "I'm scared" everyone knows what you mean. There is little doubt as to what you're truly feeling.) Furthermore, love plays out in so many ways. Yes, there are different faucets of love: platonic, familial, romantic. For arguments sake, I will stick with romantic love. How I loved my ex is a lot different than how I love my current boyfriend. It plays out in different ways because he has a totally different effect on me than my ex. It's interesting to see that play out.

Now, for others, in observing behavior, I admit, you are right that learning what someone fears tells you a lot more about them than what they love.

 

[Kimarous]

Fear is practically mundane. Look at anything and somebody, somewhere will be afraid of it for some reason or another... perhaps on account of familiarity, perhaps based on previous trauma, or whatever. Most can easily be traced to a relatively simple explanation, and individual fears can be overcome with enough will. That something new might scare you is no more special than taking in a breath of fresh air.

Love is less predictable. By love, I do not mean desire or "attachment", but a selflessness devoted to someone other than oneself. What root cause can one trace to the desire to help somebody to the detriment of oneself, yet to no personal gain? What makes a Good Samaritan? How can the fear that grips a parent be more interesting than the love that allows her to break free and save her child? How is the irrational rescue of a complete stranger while putting oneself at risk mundane by comparison?

 

[Doclector]

Love. Mostly due to my immunity to fear.

Immunity? So not invulnerability. Interesting...

Anyways, I have posted my response to some issues raised here in the OP. Save us some time.

 

[Zerazar]

Both are just different emotions. It bothers me how people have a tendency to oversimplify human beings, overfocusing on one or the other emotion, motivation or inherent trait.

I would like to echo your reluctance towards the metric solar mass of love songs though.

 

[Evil Top Hat]

Fear is very interesting, even the smallest and least threatening of images, sounds or words can evoke powerful spikes of fear caused by extremely deepset subconscious brain processes.

I won't go into why, but the word "bloodcurdling" has this sort of effect on me. Recently, a family member used the word bloodcurdling whilst recalling an event, and somehow the connection of that traumatic experience and the use of that specific word (that I had connected to the event in question in my head, for good reason) literally made me shudder, it was a few seconds before I was even be able to collect myself. All because of one little word, and fear.

That said, fear can be defined and categorized. It has a very specific biological reason to justify it's existence, and the brain activity changes it causes can be spotted from a mile off.

Love is different. Love has no practical reason to exist, mating would happen without it, it isn't strictly needed. It is different for everybody, in both the way we feel it and our capacity to feel it. Fear is an interesting subject for a physchologist, but love is more interesting imo, because it is truly a mystery.

 

[SilentCom]

If someone "loves blondes" then I think that is what you call attraction or even infatuation. Love is something stronger than that. Strong enough that people have been willing to die for each other actually. Mere attraction couldn't do that.

Fear is interesting too. It is something primordial, something strong that tells us not to do something because of the possibility of a bad outcome such as pain or death. This isn't to say that all fears are rational, as a matter of fact, phobias are viewed as irrational fears.

One more thing, Scarecrow.

 

[idodo35]

id say that rage is the most interesting emotion of all
rage can come in so many shapes and colours it can be red and blazing, burning inside with bloodlust.
and it can come white and freezing giving birth to noncomprimising hatred it can lead a man to kill or love to destroy and build rage is what makes the world go around...

 

[Togs]

Meh I can think of more songs about anger then fear- anger can often be cathartic especially when a song helps you express it.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Honestly, both are interesting. Love is infinitely BETTER to experience than fear, but both of them are deep and complex.

To the untrained person, Fear is merely a primal defense mechanism, and love is merely a desire to !@#$ someone.

.....But I think most of us know that both of those emotions are far, FAR more complex than that.

First, Fear. A lot of fears have a deem primal animal instinct root. We fear the dark because we can't SEE what's in it, so it might be concealing a threat. Our minds connect "dark" with "potential threat". Voila. But what about more unusual fears? Spiders for instance. Some people just think they're creepy, a friend of mine hates the way they shudder and curl up when they die, and my brother just suddenly got phobic of them out of the blue, and doesn't know why (seriously, he's terrified to approach even a tiny SPECK of a spider). That's unusual. What about people who fear colors? Or Water? Or bagpipes and other things like that? No one can truly be sure, and that's why fear is interesting. Everyone has the same basic fears, but we always manage to find a few dozen more that are almost unique for us. I do have to disagree that we "see what a man is made of" once he's broken by fear, though. Doing so only reveals the person's most deep rooted animal instincts. At which point, they will either fight (to save themselves, or to protect/get back to someone they love), or flee, or break down into tears/insanity, or they'll just snap and stop giving a shit. It really just depends on the strength of their mind, and the depths of their determination.

Now, onto love.....Yeah, unless you've experienced it, you can't understand it. I know that's cheesy as hell, but if I went back two years and tried to explain love to myself, my past self wouldn't get it. It's a strange mix of infatuation, obsession, and a deep desire to ensure your partner's happiness. At least, that's one common way to put it. If you truly love someone, you would be willing to fight off a million eldritch horrors just to get back to them (granted, you probably won't make it, but you'll still want to try). Some people will sacrifice themselves to protect those they love, and there is no way that you can attribute that to basic lust. And as a previous poster said, it's not an emotion that serves an important need, like fear. Mating can (and does) happen without love. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go look again at the birthday card my girlfriend gave me, because it makes this little blossom of joy open up somewhere in my chest. ^_^

Love is more powerful than anything, but it's utterly unfathomable to someone until they happen to experience it.

Yeah, agreed. It's just something you have to experience for yourself in order to understand it.

Nothing is more complex than the workings of true fear. Pulling the strings, pushing someone's personal emotional panic buttons, it's fascinating.

......Be honest, man...

You're the Scarecrow, aren't you?
No? Perhaps Dr. Caulder?
No? ........H.P. Lovecraft's reincarnation? Steven freakin king? Alan Wake? ......A yellow lantern Maybe?

Because that statement is really freakin creepy. Like, INCREDIBLY CREEPY. 0_0

For hearts long lost and full of fright.
For those alone in blackest night.
Accept our cause and join our fight.
Love conquers all with violet light!

You, Sir/ma'm, have just won a whole damn internet. XD

 

[the rye]

bah love is inferior to fear. Love is some much less cathartic. Love can help extinguish the loneliness, it can make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside but it is nothing compared to the nightmare fuel of fear.

Consider how strange fear is, while it is a strong distressing feeling beneath it lies a strange desire for uncovering the unknown. Fear makes so much more aware of our environment. We experience our world in a wonderfully disturbed way. When you're in love a star lit sky can be beautiful but in the coils of fear a star lit sky hold a world of phantasms, sound seems bazaar and menacing, the moons lights molds strange brutal shapes. I see fear, true fear as the greater emotion, because of our fear of the unknown, of things we don't understand.

 

[RicoGrey]

I love my wife and kids. My biggest fear is something bad will happen to them. Now, isn't that interesting?

Edit: Also, there is no lust between my kids and I, obviously. So, how does that fit into your love concept?

 

[xDarc]

Can't believe no one has brought up Donnie Darko yet. There's a bit in the movie where a motivational speaker is going on about everything coming from either fear or love, and Donnie goes off in because of the complexity of human emotions.