The Emotional Economy

I had coffee with a friend from Taiwan before Christmas and shared some interesting thoughts.

I believe the essence of business lies in the exchange of commodities. From this perspective, the recent emergence of “emotional economy” is essentially a process of commodifying emotions and accelerating their exchange. Social media likes serve as emotional tokens, while the specialization of internet broadcasters represents the customization of these emotional products.

Overall, this appears to be healthy business behavior, as business is fundamentally about exchange. But here’s the question: Can emotions be traded? When emotions become commodified and easily tradeable, are they still emotions?

This reminds me of the recent push for “networking.” When interpersonal relationships are measured by value, can we still call them relationships?

If connections built on benefits and value will eventually dissolve due to those same benefits and value, then this is 100% a business transaction. In this process, “parts of a person” become commodities.

But can a person really be divided into parts and turned into commodities?

I don’t think so. In software development terms: the coupling is inevitable, and it’s too high.

Professional skills, social interactions, and even emotions - modern society is dividing, quantifying, and standardizing people. Our professional skills, social abilities, and even emotional management are viewed as “human capital” that can be independently valued and traded. To some extent, this is okay - after all, I don’t want convenience store clerks throwing meat buns in my face. But if we over-modularize it, viewing people as mere execution units - I don’t think that’s sustainable.

If we divide people into various aspects and subject them to control and evaluation, these sub-aspects might eventually replace the authentic core. Because the real core cannot be observed or measured, it becomes an environmental variable for the sub-modules. Your core - what we call humanity - if it cannot be observed, it might as well not exist, or will eventually cease to exist - as its value will be eroded by quantifiable factors. If you’re just composed of countless sub-modules, then the existence of a “core” becomes redundant coupling, increasing the unpredictability of the sub-modules.

Factories hate unpredictability. Factories love measurement, quantification, and calculation. And now, this calculation has entered human emotions.

If emotions are commodities, then the next business step would be to analyze their composition and try to reproduce them at lower costs, just like modern artificial flavoring. Will people then truly be free to possess emotions? Or will “naturally fermented emotions” become… a luxury product? When we become accustomed to instant, fast, convenient, and “perfectly calculated” emotions, will we still be able to accept the imperfections in human relationships?

Or perhaps, is the value, or the definition of emotions, inherently derived from their chaos?

Side note: This friend showed up wearing Christmas reindeer antlers, saying he wore them while walking around Roppongi. I love these kinds of rational eccentrics the most.