The greatest emotion of all

Is it possible that the greatest emotion of all is Sadness? Sadness is the underlying emotion of any good deed. If you wish to help some one it is because you are sad at their plight. Or you do it so they won't be sad, but in turn it is because their sadness makes you sad.
It is sadness/unhappiness that makes men want to change the world. Or their life's at the least. And it is sadness that teaches what happiness is. Imagine this exact world without sadness. Whould we be happy. No of course not, for greed and hate still exist, but there is an absence of sadness. So in turn no one fought against it. It is sadness direct or underlying that pushes men to do good things.

One could argue then that happiness is greater for without it there would be no sadness...

is want an emotion. i think that it is. and if so, i also beleive that that is the strongest emotion.

I can see what your saying Conway. However the pure human condition involves a balance of emotions, like the yin-yang. There is no one underlying 'great emotion'. Each emotion corresponds with the opposite. Without sadness we have no happiness. Without happiness we have no sadness. Without hate we have no love. Without love we have no hate. Without negatives in life we can't have optimism. Loneliness and company. Boredom and excited. Bravery and fear...etc.
No pain no gain. Emotions are opposing but are complementary forces.

Yes you can also argue that you can't control emotions. You can only control your actions after you've felt the emotion. So helping someone out of sorrow is an action that the mind controls. The emotion can definitely influence it but emotion alone does not have the final decision on the act.

Love is the greatest emotion. few even understand it, and even fewer harness it.

Would not some of those who do know how to harness it not want to? It seems like love is something that would be... hmm... deeper, greater, somehow, if you did not have control over it.

Or possibly love is like fire. More effective when controlled and harmful when it is out of control.

the more i think about it i would either say sadness or love... can't really give a good explaination right now but from the experiences in my life they were/are the biggest emotions..

although sadness may seem to be the most intense at times, love conquers, creates, divides, shapes, moves, directs our entire being.

Well I must say I'm rather disappointed in you conway.. hahah just kidding. but i thought you would be a little deeper when analyzing emotions and saying that "Sadness is the underlying emotion"

balance is all i have to say........ balance.. think about it

analytical29

My friend you have missed understood me. In no one is sadness the "base" emotion. Just that it is the greatest. And let me clarify a little for every one else. I say it is the greatest to us as human entitys. All and all I should think that love is the greatest emotion. But if we as humans did not have sadness then no one on the face of the planest would try to make things better. And after all they certanitley need to be better.

And my dear friend "balance" is not an emotion

Conway: Yes balance is not an emotion. However you may need to understand that (including from what I mentioned above), we refer to balance as stating that there is no 'greatest emotion'. That there is no one emotion that stands out more than anything else. No one emotion that should be valued more important than another emotion.

"Be still like a mountain and flow like a great river." Lao Tse.

i think that there is an emotion for every person that stands out most. and i also think that these emotions can change in the person. like an emo kid's strongest emotion would be sadness, but i cheerleaders would be, cheerfullness. thats notto say that the emo kid cant become a cheerleader, but for that moment it is sadness.

summit- if all your emotions are equal in worth, fantastic. but that doesn't mean that everyone elses is.

Surely sadness is the negativity that affirms we exist. That we have an ego to pity, a reason to value.

Has anyone here considered the negativity of political marketing campaigns? That if someone could create a successful marketing campaign based around something other than negativity (i.e. the other party is rubbish), they will be a rich person.

So my end question is, do you think it is fair to equate sadness with negativity, and all its connotations?