Thinking About Feeling

Thinking About Feeling

Human motivation is the product of feeling, not reasoning. In this way we are like all other animals. David Hume summed it up –

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions

Hume, David (1739). A Treatise of Human Nature. London: John Noon

Desire is the product of feeling. Reason is just a sophisticated tool to help us obtain what we desire. This is so simple and crystal clear, yet somehow not commonly understood.

Can reason operate on our emotions in a constructive manner? Perhaps, if we are both –

• Aware of our position as feeling-motivated animals

and

• we are motivated by sufficient “passion” for an accurate perspective on the cosmos

Reason can enable us to reflect on our feelings. This provides an opportunity to observe and acknowledge our feelings without allowing them to blindly direct our actions.

Thinking About Feeling

Your Feelings Are Stupid

Do you find the former statement insulting? Good! That means you are human. So am I. My emotions are just as dumb as your stupid feelings!

Stupid though they may be, we still need to hear and acknowledge them. First, because they won’t shut up if we don’t (I’ve heard them compared to children in this regard). Second, because they can sometimes convey valuable information and guidance (which requires reason and discretion to tease out).

Consider mythology and its impact and reflection on civilization. I believe that mythology is largely created by and for emotional adolescents. The gods and heroes of myth are motivated by ego and perceived insults, greed, fear, envy, and anger. Their inability to manage these feelings provokes them to commit stupid and destructive acts. This is significant because society creates the myth, and myth informs society, thus institutionalizing, validating, and perpetuating the legitimacy of action guided by unregulated feeling.

Thinking About Feeling

The Problem of Anger

Anger is the stupidest and most destructive of feelings. How much needless tragedy is the result of two parties angry with each other, each side convinced that they are right and “good,” the other wrong and “bad?” Our reflexive emotional inclination to escalate our response to the actions of the other then produces cascading consequences.

Speaking from my own experience, anger floods my brain and overwhelms my higher order tactical and strategic thinking. Almost invariably, that which I execute in anger I regret at leisure. This is usually because what I do in anger provokes escalated angry responses rather than constructive resolution.

While I used to think that anger had no value whatsoever, I now believe that to be incorrect. I think there are at least two constructive applications of anger:

Thinking About Feeling

• Anger as Motivation
  • Anger can provide the initial motivation for the disempowered and exploited to take action in their own interest. From my privileged and entitled position in society as a 6′ tall, (self-)educated, white, heterosexual male, this wasn’t immediately self-evident to me. While I believe that if a minority group in pursuit of equality commits actions in anger these will be self-defeating, I doubt anything will be done at all without anger providing the initial motivation
• Anger as Communication
  • Some of us (myself specifically) can be rather stupid and insensitive to the impact of our behavior on others. Simply telling me that my behavior is causing pain to someone in a relative minority position to myself is sometimes not impactful enough for me to internalize the message and alter my behavior. I have sometimes required others to escalate their expressions of anger towards me to fully realize how much distress my actions cause, and internalize that enough to make any changes
    • [Caveat – the parties involved may require a significant mutual relationship for anger to produce anything beyond reactionary escalation]

The Sum of our Plight

The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology

Edward O. Wilson – debate at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, Cambridge, Mass., 9 September 2009

Yesterday, this box held sixteen cookies. Yesterday, I ate twelve cookies. Nice work from the guy who preaches the essentiality of reduced consumption!