Because, it seems to me that the emotions come first chronologically. What I am talking about: we are familiar with the human rumination I am sure. Why is that a thing? Must the very core of our "architecture" be about looping? Why must it? Why don't we have a fractal mind that branches and branches and always changes and, um, improves, but by its nature is very very unlikely to have the same (or rhyming) thoughts sequentially. Could such a mind exist and be "like us"? If it had a memory and interacted with the world based upon the past, or "past experiences" wouldn't that imply "going back and fetching stuff from storage"?

I guess I would argue that the branching, fractal mind that doesn't "cycle" isn't a thing. Each state looks a bit like the one before but also like the one you had when you were five, or thirty. So maybe looping yes and fractal yes, just to be imprecise.

Anyway, as a new "thought" you just had could easily be proceeded by a "feeling" beforehand, without you being aware. I would argue that, however the mind works there's surely a broiling stew down there where all kinds of things go on about which you have no "conscious" idea. Would you argue the contrary? Are we fully "conscious" of everything that goes on in our "mind"? Of course not.

So as thoughts come about, as they inevitably do, why shouldn't an associated feeling come first? "Well why and why not?" you might ask. What does it matter?

It matters because you find yourself responding to the emotion when the actual "payload" of the thought comes along, or at least I can perceive that as a the chronology. Maybe a made-up-I-totally-swear anecdote:

3rd Grade. Teacher is pointing at shapes and asking at random, "what's this one!?" and pointing to random students, as if with a maxim gun.

"You!", she points at you. "What's this one!?"

"Um..."

Nervous unexpected fart.

"A rhombus!"

"No! It's a octagon!", she shouts.

You both chocolate and lemonade your self as the who class roars with laughter. They call you "octorombus" and blow raspberries at you until your graduating year of high school. Tough break, kid.

And curse the universe, you develop IDB in you late teens.

And when you need to both pee pee and poo poo and your tummy is rumbling one early morning, and you are tottering like a penguin to the University Hall bathroom you get a weird, somehow super-biological sense of shame for some reason. Yes you need to pee and poo, after all you partied hard last night with the strangers you recently met. And you're killing it in this new town with all the good grades. But why! Why do I feel like the worst person in the wold right now?; not even deserving of a bathroom.

After a few more steps you notice that the underpass to the adjoining half of campus has an entranceway with an obvious rhombus shape as you approach it from this angle.

Not implausible. Maybe there are bette or more believable anecdotes. It seems plausible and, to the best of my judgement, on many occasions, I've had feeling: "doh, you! what a dope!" followed by the explanation: "Oooo...riiiight. That person from my past who always made me feel bad about this thing that I randomly find in front of me at this moment in time. Universe, you character!"

And if that's the case, might that thought be more "selected" in this ecosystem of things that end up boiling to the top again and becoming your conscious experience? ...the selfish meme?

Don't sweat it, brotums.