Because without sadness, we wouldn't know what happiness feels like.

unexpected pearls of wisdom in my cute grils animu

Thank your brain and the chemicals that course through it. We need sadness to survive, I assume. Otherwise we wouldn't have evolved to be able to feel it.

A lot of reasons. Mostly because sadness has a lot of utility as an emotion. Just like pain, it teaches us how to live our lives and what to avoid. A child feeling pain learns not to touch an open flame, and likewise, feeling sadness at things like the death of a loved one teaches us to avoid those events where possible.

I don't really believe things like 'without sadness we wouldn't know what happiness feels like', insofar as sadness and happiness are chemical reactions in your brain. If you've got the happiness chemicals flowing, you're going to feel happy, even if you've never experienced sadness before.

One duck was smart enough not to step into nothing. Years later, after his genes have spread across the tri-state area, and that town decides to drastically increase the number of drains they have due to flooding issues, the local ducks will take it in stride, rather than being wiped out. This is the price that must be paid for that utopian future.

>>61621
>I don't really believe things like 'without sadness we wouldn't know what happiness feels like', insofar as sadness and happiness are chemical reactions in your brain. If you've got the happiness chemicals flowing, you're going to feel happy, even if you've never experienced sadness before.
I'm not a neuroscienctist or anything but I'm pretty sure that's wrong. The receptors in your brain get desensitized if they're activated too much. So even if the happy chemicals always flowed the receptors would get worn out and the happy chemicals would stop having a noticeable effect. You're probably going to say that we could just be "okay" sometimes and happy other times without being sad, but I don't think that really matters. The point is there has to be at least two emotional states regardless of evolution.

>>61621
Brain chemicals is a thing, but it's all relative. If you had nothing but "happy" and "okay", then "okay" would be sadness. It's currently that way. The daily sadness you might feel personally or vicariously is likely nothing compared to the sadness that the Black Death wrought over the world. Just as people complain about all the violence in the world- really it's all relative, violence has been relatively low since WWII.

Chemicals in your brain only decide how you react to outside stimuli. What you consider to be pleasurable or sad or shitty is much more complicated.

>>61625

Actually the ducklings were rescued. Since natural selection was not allowed to happen, there will be no future for ducks.

>>61628

That's mostly true. Neurochemistry also impacts how we respond to internal stimuli as well, however (e.g., cognition, physiology, etc.) But yes, regardless of the model (e.g., Watson, Schachter and Singer, Zajonc), emotions involve both the physiological component as well as some form of subjective interpretation and cognition.

>>61629

Natural selection involves anything in the critter's environment. A species that is prone to being selected out of the environment due to predation, for example, is still being naturally selected. The same is true in the other direction -- selection can work in a creature's favor if it's particularly cute and prone to being protected by other critters as well.

What's a duck doing in the middle of the city anyway? City's not safe for a duck. If drains don't get them, the Chinese will. They should stick to bodies of water and various other wild areas.

>>61632
You should probably write an open letter to them.

>>61633
They might fall through an open letter, though. A closed letter, like "M" is more appropriate for your average duck.

>>61631

Technically when humans are involved it is artificial selection. Funny how we write ourselves out of the equation, were as much a part of it as the ducks.

>>61639

No, artificial selection is when we *actively breed* animals to certain specifications (i.e., we make a *choice* of traits that we want to select for).

But, yeah, I agree. We love to distance ourselves from everything else.

poor widdle duckies :(

:(

Because our brains are big fat faggots.

http://www.isciencetimes.com/articles/5854/20130813/unable-feel-sad-stroke-malcolm-myatt-england.htm

>>61655
Looks like the work of a tomcat...nature can be so cruel.

>>61601
That's bullshit. There's a neutral state, you know?

  >>61662
>you're in agony while you go through a stupid TSA checkpoint.
So that's why I moan and cry and pee myself while going through airport security: because giant spiders don't exist. Thank you, 99chan. You teach me something new about myself every day.

What I can say from the perspective of having abused oxy- your "normal" becomes a state of complete and utter joylessness. Depression. You're not "sad", just depressed. Sadness is not compatible with happiness, but the opposite of happiness is more like anhedonia. I'm back to a state of normal where I can eat a piece of candy and sort of have a process going of "hey, this is pretty neat, it tastes ballza and it makes me a tiny bit happy" rather than "this food tastes so fucking bland, I wonder when I'll be able to get high again".

Ever since reading this thread every time something shitty happens I just think to myself "well at least I'm not being eaten alive by a giant spider."

What will you think if you DO get eaten by a giant spider?

>>67908
"Damn that wizard! He said he killed them all!"