Maybe...

This was a comment on Lambert's post but then it got too long, so I made it a post

I guess its because we send so much telling ourselves that the public cares, the media takes a lot of it's time telling us we will be judged and we infer from this that we will be talked to. In fact it is a part of humanity that leads us to judge in silence. If we see someone in the street fixing a bike, we won't stop to help them cause we are selfish, but if they are a teenager and have a scraped knee, i swear 85% or more of adults will assume, you have been doing tricks or something similar, this reinforces the idea that you are an irresponsible teenager and thus you deserved everything you got. I guess it depends what you are doing but this is generally the case. Everyone who says "judge less not ye be judged" is a hypocrite, we judge automatically, it is part of our nature, we base all our decisions of risk vs. reward. Even which way we walk to school, or similar for example, if you are walking to school, when deciding a route, you will base ur decision based on the time you have, the places you want to avoid and maybe even the people you want to see. The first is simple, you can chose the quickest path and be on time or the longest way and be late, the reward and risk. However if on the long way round you will see your friend who is undoubtedly leaving late then that is your reward. You are risking being late but in doing that you will be able to see your friend. I reckon this is why stuff backfires, we use stereotypes to decide risk and reward. What if that day the friend is sick or spontaneously on time? or the head-teacher is handing out detentions to late comers? As a human we base things off what we think to be true which is why we are a bit fucked. If we expected the unexpected then we would never be surprised and in a way this would be easier, however, this could also lead to being ridiculously pessimistic, yet again, risk of being pessimistic vs. never been upset. It's ironic isnt it that to never be upset we have to reduce ourselves to expect we will be upset.
Kind of like how emotion is a contrast. Happiness is basically the opposite if sad and sadness is the opposite of happiness and so when we are really sad, even just being a little bit happy is kinda like being really happy. So resigning yourself to never being upset, means you will never be so happy, as you dont have the contrast.
Think of it like the graph.
If you reduce youself to having a straight line of emotions, between happy and sad, you will no longer feel happy or sad. whereas if you have a curve like the line on the graph, you are more likely to experience extreme happiness, even though you may experience extreme sadness.
Like you know how Newton said, every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction, every emotion does aswell to have one without the other is like having attraction but no repelling in magnets.
I reckon it's also like if you bounce a ball, the opposite reaction of dropping the ball is it bouncing back up, but it has to drop to come back up...

So that's my theory of emotions.