This past Monday night was among the worst television nights ever. There was literally nothing interesting on, a slew of reruns and rehashed garbage (NBC, genius network that it is, has apparently decided to rerun the entire season of the cancelled Trauma). The only new show of any note, in fact, was a veritable clip show ABC ran summarizing the entirety of the popular-with-those-possessing-vaginas The Bachelor.

And yes, I watched it. With my girlfriend. No, I’m not proud of this.

It was terrible, of course, Chris Connelly (who no longer possesses a soul to sell) and some vaguely attractive correspondent excitedly discussing everything that has made The Bachelor and The Bachelorette such popular installments in the reality TV biz. Among other insights delivered: very rarely does televised matchmaking work out in the long run (shocking!); this year’s Bachelor was swayed by a woman who brought her own lingerie and probably did something extraordinary behind closed doors on their private overnight; the creator of The Bachelor is a scummy-looking, marble-mouthed bastard with little regard for humanity (oh, the horror!); and some woman who has become famous online for blogging about the show garners upwards of 150,000 readers a week (which, for someone writing in the online medium, was just depressing to hear).

It wasn’t a total waste, though (95% of waste still leaves 5% value). An interesting conversation topic revealed itself when a breathlessly excited older woman made the following statement:

“The most basic human emotion is Love.”

That sounds nice, but a little trite, as well. There are any number of human emotions, and simply because Love is the one everybody enjoys the most (when it’s going good, of curse), that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the most basic. What, then, is? She couldn’t be right, could she?

Before we set to work parsing this statement for truth, let’s define some terms. Dictionary.com provides us with the following definitions:

Love: a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person; sexual passion or desire; affectionate concern for the well being of others

Emotion: an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness; of the feelings of joy, sorrow, fear, hate, etc.; any strong agitation of the feelings actuated by certain physiological changes; something that causes such a reaction

Basic: of, pertaining to, or forming a base; fundamental; an essential ingredient, principle, procedure, etc.

Human: of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or having the nature of people; of or pertaining to the social aspect of people; sympathetic

Said another way, her statement reads thusly:

“The most fundamental affective state of the consciousness of human beings is a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.”

This sounds like the basic plot of your average cringe- and vomit-inducing Nora Ephron or Rob Reiner movie, one I find particularly hard to stomach if we are breaking everything down to first principles.

Each emotion listed in that dictionary passage above is basic, and one of the first things we learn as adulthood begins is the importance of overcoming basic desires to function within a society. And, if the Buddhists are to be believed, the disregarding of all emotion is the righteous key to an enlightened path.

But what about that word “basic”? It seems correct here to acknowledge that emotions remain present in our neurology because they have survived natural selection and serve some ultimate purpose to the survival of the human race throughout the eons of our development from lower primates into the Masters of a Dying Planet we have become (believers in Intelligent Design can probably stop reading now).

Joy (happiness), Sorrow (sadness), Hatred (intense dislike and hostility), Love (intense affection), and Fear (distress and anxiety caused by danger or pain): these are the emotions we’ll discuss here, by virtue of their inclusion in the definition of “emotion” perhaps the most important for our purposes and essential in some way.

Having established they are each essential, which then is the most essential for humans?

Joy seems too easy. Happiness is fun, but leads to downcast feelings when no longer present. It is preferable to be happy, sure, but one does not operate in a constant state of Joy naturally. A constant state of presence and awareness, yes, but happiness is a generated state requiring effort; not to be disregarded, though, because happiness makes people want to survive and pass along genes to the next generation. Popular Practitioners: Hedonists.

Sorrow is an unfortunate by-product of emotion in general, like that member of your social group that grates and annoys but remains a somehow-integral part of the whole. Sadness proves its utility in the event of loss, a mechanism humans have developed to move on from the felt absence of something that used to be there, a step in the process of feeling whole again without that person or thing. Few people enjoy sadness, and it serves little practical purpose, but it allows our emotions time to reset themselves in the wake of great loss. Popular Practitioners: The Cure, The Smiths.

Hatred is tricky business. It serves no utilitarian purpose, save the separation of Us from Them, a by-product of self-knowledge and group acceptance. By projecting hatred onto another, these who feel similarly are now members of a group bound by a common idea. And now they have numbers and might. Hatred has been a catalyst for change throughout human history, often in ways we now find uncomfortable. Few in their right minds would profess hatred as any sort of ideal, but for thousands of years it has greased the wheels of history. Popular Practitioners: Adolf Hitler, Muslim Extremists.

Love propagates the species by bringing individuals together to reproduce. Used in a broader sense, it serves as the intellectual response to Hatred, the diametrically opposed opposite to an aggressive and angry view of others. On an individual level, it is the reason people meet each other, share intimacy, penetrate, and, when shared between men and women, continue humanity’s march to oblivion. It can make an individual life more complete in many ways, sharing experience with another. It is also sentimental, can be slight and bullshit, and, in the instance of delusion, provides a backwards reason for people to be ugly to one another. It doesn’t quite make the world go ‘round, and it is not all one needs, but it does further along the species and provide the opposite to one emotion (Hatred), can lead to another (Joy), and its loss or absence brings about a third (Sorrow). Popular Practitioners: Jesus Christ, Barry White.

Which brings us to Fear. Anxiety and distress caused by perceived danger. Bushes rustle: what’s behind them? A floorboard creaks: who’s there? A shotgun blast: from where did that echo? A sketchy dude approaching in a dim alley: what’s he want? Fear itself serves no greater purpose than that of immediate awareness of surroundings. Entertaining things can frighten (movie jump cuts, Edgar Allen Poe, gothic art), but this second-hand Fear is more of a psychological unease than anxiety brought about by perceived danger. It can lead to paranoia and a greater focus on threat itself, but Fear, in and of itself, does not necessarily translate from one to another, and this because individual conception of Fear and response to its presence often is the difference between survival and death. Popular practitioners: anyone who has ever emerged from a life-or-death situation, anyone who has not.

Thus, Fear seems a more basic emotion than Love because Fear operates an on immediate level within every human being. One cannot live a life in Fear, but one also must be cognizant of danger and respectful of the volatile elements in a given situation. Elemental human success depends on species propagation, and while Love is often the basis for the act that leads to this, one feels Fear earlier and more immediately than one feels Love. A healthy reaction to/dealing with that Fear aids someone in the path to finding Love and then with the passing along of genes.

A leads to B, Fear the basis for survival to enjoy the rest of the panoply of human emotions. In my estimation, that woman is wrong. Another shocking development, I know.

My girlfriend says this makes me a pessimist. I’m just glad I survived long enough to get to know her. Everything else can be enjoyed heartily, but I do keep my head on a swivel.

Thoughts? Concerns? Register them in the comment section.