The future of emotions: I love what you’re feeling. Who’s the designer?
This post explores the idea that there is a general assumption that all human emotions are currently known. How might we break past that limited view and design completely new emotions in the future?
For a brief overview of the underlying trends and emerging issues that help shape this scenario, go here.
Quick re-cap of the 3-horizons framework
H1 represents where we are currently. It may include elements of the future. H2 suggests a transitional scenario. While H3 is the most far-reaching vision: what might the year 2047 look like? The x-axis represents time, while the y-axis represents how well a given technology fits within the needs of a certain time.
Scenario 3 | I love what you’re feeling. Who’s the designer?
Focus: Technology, Identity, Values
Semi-managed Emotions
Today, we live in a state of semi-managed emotions (Horizon 1.) The use of “semi” speaks to the varied nature of emotions. Sometimes we want our emotions to run free: take creativity and boundless joy — a positive case for untethered emotions. While other times we want to reign in unruly emotions: when your younger brother annoys you so much that you want to slap him. And lastly, the realization that in many ways we have no control over our emotions — we might be able to manage how we behave in response to a given emotion, but we are ill-equipped to modify our initial reaction.
Thankfully, many humans use our sense of accountability and reflection to check our emotions if we or others feel that we are out of line with societal norms. If our sad feelings are preventing us from doing our job or threatening a relationship, many turn to anti-depressants. We might then combine the anti-depressants with counseling to work through unidentified emotions or challenges, adding emotional and behavioral tools that put those emotional solutions into action.
After working with our feelings on a conscious level, we might turn to hypnosis to work on our emotions at the subconscious level. Hypnosis uses focused attention and reduces peripheral awareness while enhancing the capacity to respond to suggestion. While it has yet to be determined if it literally influences emotions, it has been used to help people with significant emotional challenges: fears and phobias, psychotherapy, relaxation, and addictions.
Others experiment with less traditional ways of altering our emotions. We might take drugs to experience another level of consciousness and intense sensory feelings. Or we might dance so hard and long that we move into a trance-like state to “feel” the music at a festival. Meditation helps us to manage our emotions by observing feelings and then detaching from those feelings — we are not our emotions.
What if we could train our emotions? Or perhaps even more preferable, what if we could design our emotions? Could technology manage or enable emotions in a way that humans can’t?
Heel, Emotions! Heel!
Before we can design emotions, we will train our emotions (Horizon 2.) Hypnosis and guided meditation will combine to create a super-powered emotion management system (EMS.) This enhanced technique will shift into the biohacking realm where it will be mainstreamed through celebrity and person-to-person testimonials, social media and counselors. Ethical counselors will be trained to instruct individuals in EMS. High standards for counselor training will be instituted to ensure counselors teach people to train their emotions in a way that is beneficial to society, not destructive.
People will feel empowered because they will have more control over their emotions than with drugs. They no longer suffer from libido-reducing or affect-flattening side effects. Since Generation Z is experiencing higher rates of depression and anxiety, adding this non-pharma approach to the tools of alleviation will be a much needed resource.
Do You Like Your Emotions a Little Roomy, or Would You Prefer a More Tailored Fit?
“If we follow William James and take it that emotions follow physiology, rather than the other way around, then it might be possible to produce novel emotions by altering, or intervening differently in, human physiology. As well as producing new emotions (how and why?)” Thirty years from now, we will understand the functions of organs, tissues, cells and chemical phenomena in such a way that we can design completely new emotions or expand upon existing emotions (Horizon 3.)
For example, you meet Gaston while traveling in Australia. He is of French-Armenian-Balinese heritage, and you fall in love with his worldview and marvel at how he approaches personal relationships, yet you’ve never seen such a winning set of emotions like this before. So, you ask if you could record him (visual & audio) while he is emoting, and ask if he would be up for sharing his impulse map (a map of his brain impulses.) He agrees, and when you’ve returned from your trip, you work with your emotion designer to see how Gaston’s emotions might add to your existing array of emotions.
Your emotion designer will adjust for any emotional interference that might occur between your emotions and the new ones. “The research group at University of Kent led by Ramaswamy Palaniappan has shown that people have certain distinct brain and heart patterns that are specific for each individual.”
Not all designed emotions will be used to enhance our personality. We will also use it to prevent identity theft, since each person has a distinct brain pattern, we can use that unique brain pattern instead of our fingerprints.
Currently, we learn to recognize the emotions we notice, but there are many we are not aware of. Perhaps we are just short on words to describe our emotions. “In our stream of consciousness — that wash of different sensations, feelings and emotions — there’s so much to process that a lot passes us by. And so, I think if we are given these new words, they can help us articulate whole areas of experience we’ve only dimly noticed.” If we are able to articulate what we are feeling, we are better able to manage our lives. “If you are better able to pin down whether you are feeling despair or anxiety, for instance, you might be better able to decide how to remedy those feelings: whether to talk to a friend, or watch a funny film. Or being able to identify your hope in the face of disappointment might help you to look for new solutions to your problem.”
XXL Worldview
In this preferable future, we’ll immerse ourselves in languages we are unfamiliar with, searching for novel emotions to design. Some cultures don’t have certain emotions because the language has no word for it. The word “acknowledge” doesn’t exist in Mandarin, yet American English doesn’t have a word for “revered elder who appreciates the past.” We will explore each others’ languages and rituals to find new emotions to help us manage our lives.
The ability to design new emotions will move us away from stereotypical “male” or “female” emotions. Since people will be able to plant any emotion in their mind, their emotions will be true feelings, avoiding being cast in gender binaries.
Emotions to Go With Every Brain
Emotional AI will test new emotion designs to find particular types of people that will be suited to that particular type of emotion. EAI will be able to run various scenarios, prototyping our emotional landscape before using a mild energy transference to add the new emotion to our brain. Because emotions are distinctive patterns of nerve impulses, we could create a similar nerve impulse to deliver the new designer emotion.
The emotion designer will consider the best area of the brain to seed the emotion:
- the deep limbic system for highly charged emotional memories
- the prefrontal cortex which manages impulse control, insight, empathy, judgment, concentration and the ability to plan
- basal ganglia which coordinates combining movements, feelings and thoughts
- the temporal lobe which takes care of mood stability (among many other things)
Designers will come to be known for their skill at placing the right emotion in the right part of the brain with the right mix of other emotions. Most people will want positive feelings implanted, but there will be some that want negative feelings. For example, some people might have a tough time getting angry and ask for the designer to seed their brain with just enough anger — not enough to be destructive, but just enough to handle situations that warrant anger.
Our ideas about emotions today are relatively new and largely stem from the 19th century. To think that we have defined and understood all there is to know about emotions would be foolhardy. The preferred future of designing emotions is far-fetched, but based on what we’re learning and implementing today, it’s in the realm of possibilities.
Stay tuned for the next scenario — the darkest one yet: Excuse me, while I rescue my emotions. From our present, naïve understanding of who’s using our emotions to submissive acceptance and on to transformation under surveillance.
