Answers
There’s a school of thought that all emotions are is our mind reinterpreting physiologic changes in our body. To wit, what you said about hormones is on point.
In a sense all emotions are primative. With the development of language we have come up with interesting ways of reclassifying our feelings, but there are some primary ones. Fear and anger are the deepest, rooting from our so called “lizard brain” (I believe it’s the thalamus). Memory is primitive too, because it was the catalyst for evolution.
So yeah, I’d say sadness is probably related to fear (a support giver in the community is gone) as well as nostalgia (all the positive memories you had of the person). Sounds pretty primitive to me 🙂
Source(s): Some study of psychology and neurology in undergrad and grad school
I don’t think it’s primitive. I think emotions are based on your perspective on life and how much you attach yourself to a given situation. When someone dies, one is not sad so much for the death but rather because that particular person meant a lot to them and now they’re gone.
In Buddhism, in general, they teach not to attach oneself to materialistic things and to observe their emotions rather than become attached to them. You’re way of thinking is veey similar to this.
Having a crush normally leads to daydreaming about good things with/about that person. We become so attached to this self predicted reality then when that crush likes someone else we think that person having the good time we daydream about with our crush. And yes then jealousy comes in.
Your way of thinking is, in a lot of ways, a good thing because you can learn to let things go that are outside your control. Not to shove religion down your throat but I’d suggest checking out Buddhism. It helped me a lot with my depression.