A class I’m taking talks about the four main emotions, "scholars agree there are four core emotions that we all experience (and then scholars argue about if there’s any additional common core emotions).
Anger 2. Joy 3. Fear 4. Sadness"
Is there a word for non-emotional though? I’m not talking apathetic, alexithemic, or anhedonic which seem to convey more of a negative tone. But that general time when a person is just “fine” or “ok” not content or carefree but not a specific emotion either. I thought maybe like “emotional homeostasis” but that doesn’t seem quite right either.
Does such a state actually exist? If I tell a psychologist that I’m “feeling okay” but am not currently experiencing any emotions, they might suggest mindfulness exercises.
It sounds like what you are describing is contentment, but you say that it is not. In clinical terms whatever you’re experiencing may be thought of as baseline mood. Every person’s baseline mood differs - sounds like yours is neutral.
Yeah, that’s what’s throwing me off. If someone says, “I’m not content, but I’m fine,” I’m going to think they’re not. In fact I can’t even read that sentence without hearing it in a Jewish mother voice.
“Me? I’m fine. Happy? Why should I be happy? I’m fine. It’s fine. You could call more, but I make do.”
What I miss in the list is Hope. I would describe a neutral “OK” state one in which Fear is balanced by Hope and Sadness by Joy: Not a state in which emotions are missing, but one in which positive and negative impulses are well balanced. What would you put as antonym to Anger? Calm? Peacefulness?
Emotions do not fall in a positive/negative scale but rather as a complex combination of affective responses. The Anger–Joy/Happiness–Fear–Sadness is a typical classification taught in basic psychology (most systems also have some kind of Disgust/Rage and Surprise). Behavioral neuroscientist and psychobiologist Jaak Panksepp, who did a lot of work on the evolutionary origins of emotions and is credited with coining the term “affective neuroscience” and setting it on a firmly evidence-based foundation, actually classified affective responses in seven systemic categories: SEEKING (expectancy), FEAR (anxiety), RAGE (anger), LUST (sexual excitement), CARE (nurturance), PANIC/GRIEF (sadness), and PLAY (social joy), with each distinct from but potentially affected by the others, e.g. a high state of FEAR would correspond with some expression of RAGE, PANIC, or CARE, but depressed expression of SEEKING, LUST, or PLAY. He found these responses present in rats (which his lab studied extensively) and in mammals in general, in contravention to conventional psychology which, until recently, held that only “higher animals” (humans and the great apes) were capable of experiencing ‘real’ emotions and all other animals were just presenting instinctual or conditioned behavioral responses.
To the o.p.: the state of minimization of all affective responses would be serenity or tranquility, and is the state people attempt to achieve with meditation (or numbing with drugs and alcohol). Whether this can actually be achieved in a conscious state is somewhat questionable; affective responses underpin all conscious cognition and reasoning, and in the view of some neuroscientists meditation is less about minimizing these affective responses than suppressing or ignoring them. Certainly there is more to them than just response to external stimuli; isolating someone socially results in emotional dysregulation, and actually putting someone in complete sensory deprivation causes their brain to synthesize fake stimuli (e.g. hallucinate) to compensate.
This runs counter to my experience with meditation. But “meditation” is itself a vague term almost to the point of being meaningless. There is a vast array of meditation styles with varying methods and goals. In the form I practice, there is no attempt to minimize or suppress emotion, indeed, the attempted suppression of emotion is what causes suffering in the first place. I guess if you can sit with extreme emotional states without feeling the need to reject them or act upon them, you have achieved something that to an outside observer looks like the absence of emotion. But that’s not what it is.