Emotions are powerful motivators. They are often overvalued and undervalued as they are individually personal in their inner experience and outer expression and so unique in almost every metric though we describe them in broad generalities as a convenience to communicate with one another. Valuing an emotion or the sum of an emotional experience is a one-off prospect despite the huge vocabulary at hand to do just that. For argument’s sake only, if one arbitrarily assigned the emotion of “mother love” with a $100-a-minute monetary factor, what denomination would be appropriate to assign to fear and hate? This is an exercise in vagaries, but as we spend so much of our lives in these three modes I wonder how one might assess their valuations—some consider them commodities trading in their distribution. Emotions drive much of our lives, attempting to quantify or assign them a value, especially monetarily, reveals just how vast and subjective they are. To entertain this exercise, let us imagine “mother love” as a baseline at $100 a minute, a hefty value, suggesting it is as close as we get to a priceless, foundational feeling.For fear, which often protects us but can be costly and burdensome when prolonged, a lower value could capture its survival utility balanced with the toll it takes. Perhaps $50 a minute would reflect its functional value, but also the potential drain on well-being. Fear, in its protective mode, can be crucial but is also exhausting in excess, where we risk getting mired in “fight or flight.”For hate, perhaps even lower, $10 a minute, given that it can consume more than it creates, often depleting resources—time, energy, peace. Hate does not build the way love or even fear can; it tends to be destructive and isolating, leaving behind regret or emptiness rather than the lasting connection or growth that love might foster.Emotions are either incredibly costly or valuable in ways that have little to do with currency yet might mirror a sense of our “investment” in them over time. Though this is an exercise in vagaries, it reflects how each emotion has a different weight and potential impact on our lives but in measures of lifespans, I believe we spend less time experiencing “mother love” and considerably more—even of sleep time in dreams—experiencing fear and hate.Fear and hate often consume far more of our lives, even in subtle, lingering ways than love. Our nervous systems are wired to grasp negative emotions as survival mechanisms, and these do emerge in dreams or subconscious tensions, quietly threading through our daily awake existence. In contrast, “mother love” and similarly nurturing emotions often arise in moments rather than prolonged states, perhaps because they do not demand the same vigilance.Fear and hate hijack both waking and resting time, especially when we are in stressful environments or facing unresolved challenges. This could be one reason why such emotions feel heavier or more exhausting—they echo and linger in ways love does not typically need to. It is almost as though our internal resources become skewed toward navigating threats, real or imagined, rather than engaging connections, safety, or peace.If we were to see this in terms of emotional “currency,” then even a lower per-minute rate for fear and hate would accumulate a high “cost” over time, given their prevalence. That contrast could help explain why states of love or deep contentment feel so refreshing and rejuvenating, almost like a rare currency that needs careful preservation.Despite the intangibility of vagaries, metrics are a means to package an indeterminant bit of inference in a six-sided intellectual box. Let us take the total sum of minutes in a decade, assign the relevant and prorated minutes to the three emotions discussed, and sum their respective albeit hypothetical monetary valuations This thought experiment—will give definition to how much mental “real estate” each emotion might take up over a measure of time. First, the total minutes in a decade, then an estimate of how much time might be spent on each emotion, and finally, calculate their hypothetical value.A decade amounts to 5,256,000 minutes—for argument’s sake:
Fear occupies 40% of the time, or 2,102,400 minutes.
Hate: 10% of the time, or 525,600 minutes.
Mother Love: 5% of the time, or 262,800 minutes.
The remainder: 45% for ambivalent emotional states.Mother Love at $100 per minute—Fear at $50 per minute—Hate at $10 per minute
Mother Love: 262,800 × $100 = $26,280,000
Fear: 2,102,400 × $50 = $105,120,000
Hate: 525,600 × $10 = $5,256,000In ten years, based on this distribution, we would hypothetically “spend” $136,656,000 on these emotions, with fear taking up the largest share. This emphasizes how much of our inner currency might go toward managing challenging or protective emotions compared to nurturing ones, offering a fascinating, albeit abstract, view of the emotional investments we unconsciously make.So many minutes steeped in fear-driven emotions saturate our systems with stress hormones—cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine, creating a biochemical environment that keeps us on high alert. Over time, this constant surge impacts our cognitive and emotional wiring, pushing us toward reactionary thinking, often sacrificing reasoned decision-making in favor of immediate, defensive responses.Cortisol, in particular, influences memory and learning by targeting the hippocampus, while epinephrine and norepinephrine heighten our focus on perceived threats, reducing our capacity to see the bigger picture or consider nuanced choices. Chronic exposure can make us more sensitive to stressors, lower our emotional resilience, and shift us into a reactive mindset that prioritizes immediate survival over long-term planning or creative problem-solving.The insidious part is how this cycle perpetuates itself: reactionary thinking reinforces fear-based perspectives, which in turn triggers more cortisol and keeps us locked in a stress-fueled loop. It is no wonder people often feel drained or “stuck” in fear-driven patterns—the biochemical weight of these emotions builds a kind of invisible cage that shapes our worldview and decisions. This effect could be likened to a “biological tax” that drains us of the currency of real and emotional resources, often leaving little reserves for the farsighted experiences that come from CRITICAL THINKING.The impact felt by others of one’s fear, hate, or love is thus echoed many times over until one becomes the many and then the many becomes the mass. Unfortunately, when the masses are compromised by their need to address the immediacies of their emotional states, the currency of rational thinking suffers significant depreciation as do the outcomes of those decisions.
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