Emotional Levels

The best analogy for how levels of emotions work is to the figure/ground distinction. This is the distinction between what is the focus of attention (figure) and what forms the background against which the figure stands out. The background is experienced as relatively undifferentiated and static, while the figure is experienced as relatively differentiated and dynamic.

On my account of the emotions, when we experience emotions, it is because we are interpreting something, a focus of attention, as relevant to our concerns in some way. The spread of potential foci of attention form the background against which any particular focus stands out. Thus, we can conceive of a background of emotions corresponding to the background of foci. Both of these backgrounds are experienced as relatively homogeneous, although there is space for being aware of things hovering on the periphery, eliciting one's attention.

The relative homogeneity of the background and the relative richness of the figure account for a general separation into two levels of emotional emotional experience. In other words, we are always experiencing some kind of emotion in response to a figure and having an (background) emotional reaction to the background. This background emotion provides a baseline against which other emotions are measured, and sets the standard of reasonable variation.

A background of joy, then, does two things: it heightens the default emotion, and it makes mourning more acute. The inverse applies to a background of sadness. The background can also color the focal emotion in other ways, perhaps contaminating it, perhaps contrasting with it, perhaps supplementing it. It is important to note that not all emotions occupy the spectrum of happy/sad. Anger, I think, does not fall directly on this spectrum. A background of anger contaminates happiness and sadness both into particular forms of happiness and sadness. Likewise, joy can modify how we experience other emotions, providing resilience and a baseline of expectation that there is joy to be had.

The analogy of figure/ground also fits with how little we are usually aware of secondary emotions. Occasionally, we feel a swirling mass of emotions, but usually we feel one emotion at a time, or even feel like we are feeling no emotions. A background is ordinarily overlooked, and only the figure is noticed. The figure, in turn, is only noticed in its differentiation from the background. Thus, when the figure and ground match, nothing seems to be felt. On the other hand, when we are feeling something, it is usually only the focal emotion. The background only becomes noticeable when it is abnormal, that is, when it stands out against the background over time of our emotional lives, or when it starts having a noticeable impact on the shape of our emotions by constricting them. In the ordinary case, then, we can only tell what our background emotion is by either asking others or noticing how we tend to feel in general, when we attend to a variety of phenomena.