What is the most useful emotion?

Famous sport debate: What sport has the best athletes?

E.g. If the average athlete had to compete at the other top 100 sports, which sports athlete would score the highest on average?

It’s a great debate. People argue Football, MMA, Crossfit etc

This created inspiration for the following question:

What emotion or emotional state performs the best on average?

If you lined up all the possible emotional states: Anger, Happiness, Sadness, Motivation, Lust, Anxiety, Rage, Vendetta, Love, Ecstasy, Pride, Joy, Guilt etc

And then looked at how they'd perform across 100 different life situations: Standard Monday, worst day of your life, getting mugged, getting married, getting sued, starting a new job, moving house, finding out you are terminally ill, going to Starbucks, etc

What emotional state would perform the best on average?

My conclusion: Calmness.

I can’t think of a scenario where calmness isn't useful.

In fact, unlike the sports debate — it’s not even close. It's nearly impossible to think of a scenario where calmness doesn't perform.

Let's steelman my thinking...

Steelman Case 1: "If your house was on fire, you wouldn’t want to be calm. You’d want to be extremely motivated to get out of there."

Rebuttal:

You wouldn't want to be slothful or relaxed. But you'd want to be calm.

If you hyperventilate and panic, you could make life-ending decisions. The best firemen are the ones that are the most calm.

Even in the most extreme jobs: Navy Seals, Police, Fighters, etc — the best are calm under pressure.

You don’t want to be lazy or overdosing on an MDMA serotonin high — but you do want to be calm.

Steelman Case 2: "Calmness is useful for negative or neutral events, but if you’re permanently calm, it would rob you of life’s positive moments. Would you want to be calm on your wedding day?"

Rebuttal:

1. Calmness slows down time - If you’re having the best day of your life, you want to be able to slow down the day.

Whenever I ask people about their wedding day, the most common reply is: "I wish I'd soaked in the moment and taken it all in more"

I can't think of a better state than calmness to do that.

2. Calmness is a fantastic transformer - If you want to intensify an emotion, it’s easier to do that from a base of calmness. If you try to go from an intense emotion to calmness, it's very difficult.

Calmness is an empty canvas on which you can paint any psychological experience you want to feel.

Almost every situation benefits from calmness. And in the rare scenarios that benefit from not being calm, it’s easier to turn calmness into that desired emotional state than the other way around.

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How to be more calm?

Now that's the trillion-dollar question.

Still figuring that one out 😅

But I suspect the first step is realizing that calmness is the most useful emotional state on average.

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🚨 Nuance alarm:

1. There could be a nitpicking debate around whether calmness is an emotional state or an absence of emotion. I get the point but isn't useful for the thought experiment.

2. I'm not saying all other emotions are useless, or that you have to pick just one. It's just a thought experiment that highlighted that I should put more focus on calmness.