Where did this Data come from?
Intro/About
Mapping the primary emotions
Including secondary emotions. The total is calculated by giving each primary emotion 5 points, each secondary emotion 2.
The Quandry
Contented, the impact of only having 12 emotions, working in a framework. Even AI wanted to get out of it, suggestign other emotions. But we’re committed. What does using this constrained data view mean, and how does it impact what we see?
Contented: Working on the railroad, drift in what contented means, first came up in OWlring on The Railroad, but surfaces in multiple songs – Contented begins to mean “orderly” and “Accepting”. A fine line with “Resigned”, the line in WOTRR – “All the day long” – my interpretation of this song, vs the words, esp without history
Contented also often comes up in sad songs, as nostolgia, or people recounting happier times (On the Banks of the Wabash)
Observations
- what emotions?
- What’s the spread?
- Where are we all or nothng? Emotion is more uesd in Primary than Secondary an Vice Versa
DO NOT DROP the emotion field or leave it blank if a redirectable cue is present. Instead, assign the best-matched Circumplex emotion with a bridging rationale.
I ran into my own conflict with controlled vocabularies here, specifically on the definition of “Contented”, specifically in including the emotion but this actually points to the impact of a limited set of options, and to the importance of definition.
Contented: Contented occurs quite often. Here’s how Chat describes it: The line “all the live long day” reinforces the emotion Contented due to its emphasis on routine, consistency, and a lack of distress or urgency. It does not imply high pleasure or relaxation, but rather a stable, low-arousal, mildly positive tone aligned with enduring, simple activity.
Emotions are included, even if that emotion is projected into the future. In “I’ll take you Home Again, Kathleeen”, “Contented” is included as a secondary emotion, where the lines “To where your heart will feel no pain, And when the fields are fresh and green” suggest a future goal.
In “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” “Contented” appears again, somewhat suprisingly to me. But in this version of the song, taken just at it’s textual value, are there any traces of
- Alert
- Excited
- Happy
- Relaxed
- Calm
- Bored
- Depressed: perhaps in the line “All the live-long day”, which brings with it the sense of a long day,
- Sad
- Angry
- Distressed
- Tense
Wants to include Hopeful