being sick and bed bound has meant i have watched a fair few movies.
watched Equilibrium and it raised some interesting questions for me
namely: Would we be better off with no emotions?
Do we feel good emotions more often than bad ones?
The immediate reaction to a world with no emotions is one of horror – we like to laugh and love, enjoy beauty and feel excitement. But what of all the other emotions? Who likes that feeling of your insides being ripped out with jealousy? who likes crying themselvs to sleep at night beacuse of something someone else did? who likes to mourn the death of a loved one, so completely consumed by pain that life never actually ever is the same again?
at what price do we have the laughter and joy? and do we always pay the price, or do we expect others to? are there not people in this world who have seldom if ever felt ‘good’ emotions? abused children who live in fear? starving nations who know nothing of joy or the upliftment of a beautiful sunset because they are too busy trying to survive.
do we feel all the ‘good’ emotions somehow at their expense? does humankind, the sum of all individuals, feel ‘good’ emotions more often than ‘bad’? if we as a species did, surely we would be a whole lot nicer to each other.
underneath it all are we not all just greedy, grabby and envious, spiteful little kids who want want want? cos even when we are nice to others, you can be sure we get something for it.
even mother teresa got a reward – she got to be mother teresa.
or maybe we are not. maybe we are all rainbows and sunbeams.
let’s ask history shall we!
