Taken from: I am - A blueprint for sentience by Krys Norman
The senses we have are both external and internal. We sense in and out physically and emotionally. The internal ones we describe as feelings. We can feel several things at once and may or may not profess to knowing why we are feeling them. They also can be accessed before the rational thought has come to a conclusion as to what should be felt. Laughter occurs almost spontaneously. Yet again, the endeavour to define a state of human feelings is just about impossible. We all know we have feelings, some we think about, some we share, others we ignore or at best, bury. This happens for reasons that we can be both tacitly aware of and even blissfully unaware. With simplicity in mind, the feelings description can be broken down into a series of real time emotional reactions which produce either a threat to be afraid of (negative emotion) or a benefit to prosper from (positive emotion). These emotions can be felt as they are being experienced. If a certain type of experience is occurring for the first time then it is felt very accurately. If it has happened many times before it may be felt in very many different ways as beliefs get formed. This is because each emotional response is stored as if it is just happening. If there is a connection with an emotional response at any particular point in time, the total response will be greater. This collection of diverse, emotional reactions will accumulate over time and affect the feelings that are thought about at any point. These will coincide with the way that the mind views the world and makes its logical decisions.
It is often accepted that feelings and emotions are the same thing. This view point can be developed a little, though. It could be useful to see our feelings as a section of the brain that the rationale can acquire emotional information through. It can determine what mood or moods it has by "feeling" things like elation, love, sadness, etc. These could be interpreted and presented by the feelings section based on existing emotional events and a relevance to all previously stored emotional events. If an event occurs with an entirely new emotion it will be passed directly to the rationale and experienced exactly as it is happening. This happens the most with babies. They receive everything, instantly and accurately and respond pretty much instantly and proportionately. Humans are at their most emotionally honest as babies. This raw emotion and honest response reduces as they experience more and more through infancy. The emotions are still created but repeated events result in feelings being created that may exhibit different characteristics or intensities.
In the main, the causes of positive emotions (like food, shelter, safety) are to the benefit to any individual and they will strive towards attaining as many as possible through their life. They will feel contented, full, safe etc. Not only that but they will gain a positive emotion from sharing the positive emotions of others in their own groups. They will talk about their own positively generated feelings and be encouraged to do so. This will increase the sense of connection with valued others which has a positive response in itself. Conversely, many of the negative emotions result in the fear of the causes of these emotions returning and they are the basis of anxiety, anger and sadness. These events may have also happened to the valued others in their groups and the sharing of them has the same similar emotion triggering effect as with the positive emotions. This acts as a source of negative emotion in the others and there will be a reluctance to engage in this activity. It may be over ridden by the positive response generated by caring but still be there, nevertheless.
The feelings that we have are also managed to some extent. Either we focus on the positive feelings and allow the negative ones to be thought about less or we behave in ways that produce very positive emotional reactions as much as possible and for as long as possible. There are many sophisticated and powerful ways to behave in order to achieve this; Eating, consumption, drugs, control, status etc... The curious aspect of a lot of this behaviour is that it might also cause negative emotion at the same time or some point in the future. Often, something in most people's thought processes does not allow them to consider this. This also transgresses into societal behaviour through the process of group positive validation. The vast majority of individual's behaviour is encouraged, or at least condoned, within society if it allows for a societal positive validation which assists every one's overriding processes. The logic surrounding this concept is affected by the fear of experiencing built up negative emotions.