There is a strange and persistent notion milling about that emotionalism is the opposite or, at least, is in conflict with rationalism. This notion is irrational.
If rational decisions draw on observations, data, experience, credible testimony, and logic, what are emotional decisions drawn from? When someone cries, don’t we wonder the reason for the crying? We ask, “Why are you crying?” and we expect an answer about some sad or painful event or, even an experience of great joy. We don’t think, “Oh, that person is crying, he must be suffering a bout of reality disconnect.”
Do people make emotional decisions? Isn’t the question, itself, irrational? On what basis can an emotion make a decision? I’m happy today, so I will take a right turn at the corner instead of a left. I’m angry, so I will wear blue jeans and eat dessert before dinner. I’m frustrated, so I’m off to throw marbles at squirrels.
When a person “gets emotional”, this is not an indication he is not thinking; it is evidence he is thinking. The emotional display doesn’t establish that the person is thinking well…but neither does it indicate that the person is thinking poorly. Emotions don’t lead us to bad decisions; insufficient information leads us to bad decisions.
In the temple Jesus found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” – John 2.14-17
John reports this event dispassionately, but the recollection of the disciples makes it clear that Jesus was not dispassionate. In the Bible, the word “consuming” is nearly always associated with raging fire. Think Paradise, California. He was red in the face, furious, sweating through his garments, yelling out orders. The money-changers scattered like rats caught in a floodlight. Jesus tore the place apart. He actually made a whip and used it to drive out animals and people!
Was his action irrational? I doubt driving out the money changers had lasting effect, but that wasn’t really his intent. He was making a statement about how the people of Israel had lost track of the privilege and importance of the Temple, how it was to serve as a joyous meeting place between God and his people. The men Jesus chased from the Temple were taking advantage of those who wished to worship, and had turned that sincere desire into a profit-making venture. Jesus’ anger was not a capricious display. Other gods reserve the right to be capricious, but the Judeo-Christian God cannot be, because caprice is contrary to his nature. Jesus’ emotional display was carefully considered and intentional. But it was not a performance. His emotions were expressions of integrity, for they represented his thinking, which happened to be correct thinking.
This example of an emotional Jesus is no outlier. Jesus wept over Jerusalem; at Gethsemane he told Peter, James and John his “soul is very sorrowful, even to death”; he cried at the death of Lazarus; when Mary wept over her brother, Jesus “was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved”; numerous times he spewed invectives in the direction of the Jewish religious leaders; and he cried out, “My God, why have you forsaken me!” as he was dying on the cross.
It is well to remember that the summation of the law is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” The word “love”, while certainly a term of practical implications, also signifies emotional, personal connection. The fundamental command given by God demands passion from his people.
Sitting around a table, someone once remarked, “I think it’s good policy that when families get together, sex, politics, and religion should be banned from the conversation.” Everyone there chuckled in knowing assent. Wishing to avoid being disagreeable (in a rare moment of restraint), I smiled, even as I thought to myself, “But those are the only subjects I’m interested in!” For me, the avoidance of hot-button topics is the wet rag of social interaction.
Consider politics for a moment. The U.S. is currently fumbling through a period of political polarization. What causes the volatility? One of the contributing causes is the slippery slope terrors. When the right insists that abortion should be illegal, the left sees women in dark alleys puncturing themselves with coat hangers. When the left calls for action on global warming, the right assumes the action will choke big energy profits and, with domino effects, drive the economy into ruin. When the right talks about controlling the flow of immigration, the left reacts as if to do so is racism, and callousness towards asylum seekers. When the left recommends universal health care, the right sees socialism, i.e., freeloading, entitlement, and the demise of motivation and enterprise.
Examples of polarizing hyperbole are legion. In such cases, emotions are stirred up by exaggeration and nurtured with fear. This does not mean the fears are groundless, but they tend to be fixations on worst-case scenarios that almost never materialize.
There is always risk, of course. It is risky to get out of bed in the morning. It is probably more risky to stay in bed in the morning (at least, if staying in bed becomes a habit). The riskiest place to be is in a hospital. This is due, of course, not so much to the hospital itself, but to the self-selecting group of those who go there—the seriously ill and injured. Assessing risk requires looking at broader context and observing from varied perspectives.
Oftentimes emotions are inappropriate and need to be harnessed. Sometimes deep emotions are the absolutely right thing for a person to experience.
Hannah Arendt coined the phrase, “the banality of evil”. Ms. Arendt wrote a book about Adolph Eichmann, a high-ranking official in Hitler’s administration, who was responsible for carrying out the “Final Solution”, as well as overseeing German concentration camps. Eichmann escaped the Nuremberg trials by hiding in Argentina but eventually was captured by Mossad and taken to Israel. There, in 1962, he was tried and hung for war crimes.
Ms. Arendt’s thesis is that Eichmann was neither a fanatic nor a sociopath, but a person of average intelligence, heavily influenced by Nazi propaganda, who undertook his work, not out of passionate hatred for Jews, but as a loyal German following orders. Whatever qualms he may have had about his actions were salved by his view that he was a cog in a great machine that he had no power to stop or divert.
Eichmann is an example of a man guided by calm rationality. He was deliberate, calculating and effective. But his mind was emotionally vacuous. He did not seem to experience empathy; he gave little thought to the misery, pain and destruction inflicted on the Jewish people, or the others who suffered under his direction.
Empathy is a concept that describes how one person can imagine the feelings and experiences of another. But empathy is incomplete without its emotional component. Empathy is about identifying with another; it is imagining yourself as the other person. Through the emotions a person can have a deep sense of another’s feelings without having the same physical experiences. Eichmann illustrates that rationality detached from emotion can become a dangerous thing. To dismiss emotion is to dismiss a particular kind of perception, thus limiting understanding.
Emotions cannot be extricated from thoughts, for they are the product of thoughts. And, yet, our thoughts may not have the capacity to comprehend or express what it is that emotions are adding to them. Humans are wonderfully formed and, in many ways, mysterious. We are not brains on sticks; we are physical beings. There are connections between our spirits (our thoughts) and our bodies. The emotions reveal an element of the connection, as our bodies experience and magnify those thoughts we find most compelling. Our mouths go dry, our muscles turn to jelly, and our foreheads sweat when we are nervous. Our skin crawls when we sense something nearby that seems threatening. We cry when we are sad, or when we are moved by important ideas. We laugh at a clever turn of a phrase, or at silly stunts. Our ears turn red when we are embarrassed. Is it possible to think or reason and yet remain, like the fictitious character, Spock, dispassionate? Or, to put it another way, if we can find no emotion in our thoughts, is it possible for these thoughts to be mature…or even genuine? Expressions of emotion are not indicators of irrationality but indicators of personal investment in ideas.
Some years ago, the church I attended sponsored a Cambodian couple as they sought asylum from the mayhem and murder taking place in their homeland. Our church was able to give them support as they labored to acclimate themselves to American culture—and they were a wonderful encouragement to our church, as well. I recall hearing about the first time one of the ladies in the church took the Cambodian woman to an American grocery store. She was in awe of the rows of bright colored packages, and at the astonishing variety of food available to everyone. She broke into tears at the sight.
She explained her tears by recounting that, as a refugee, she would sometimes go without food for days. She spent time in camps where food was limited in quantity and type, which contributed to weakness and ill health.
It is possible to walk into a grocery store and be focused solely on the mundane task of collecting the items on the grocery list. This is the vision of the typical food shopper. But someone else can walk into the same store and be overwhelmed at the bounty…seeing that the bounty represents not only enjoyment and nourishment, but a stable, cooperative, sophisticated society in which such an enterprise can exist. The tears of this woman were indicative of a deep understanding of something that Americans know only superficially. Was she being emotional? Certainly. Was she being irrational? No; she was being extra-rational.
We should never dismiss people’s perspectives on the basis of their emotional displays. Such dismissiveness is essentially argumentum ad hominem—a device useful for “winning” debates, but useless in terms of grappling with the core issues of debates. Not only does the dismissiveness skirt the debate, it adds personal animosity, making it all the more difficult to face the issues of discussion.
Dismissiveness is also a strategy for the avoidance of debate substance. If we enter discussions intent on “winning” them, over time we are likely to become skillful debaters. But such skill may have the unintended effect of binding us to ignorance. The real aim of debate is to exchange insights. The first objective of debate is not to appear smart to but to get smart. From this perspective, the one who learns the most from a debate is the real winner. The one who enters a debate as the least informed is the one who stands to gain the most. You could even say that the real winner of a debate is the loser, as long as the loser is listening and learning. (Perhaps if we taught this idea more, people would be less inclined to let their egos interfere with their discussions.)
Emotional behavior or speech is not an indicator of irrational thought. Rather, it is an indicator that a person has taken some idea to heart. If someone thinks something is important, there is something important. Even if the person’s idea is completely wrong, if he holds it dear, others should examine his passion with genuine interest. (What makes this person so passionate?) The second object of debate is to win the person.
Should we remain calm in our discussions? Yes, it’s a good idea, since people are often put off, if not intimidated by, emotional displays. But we should not, ourselves, be easily put off by emotional displays.
Personally, when I get too excited, I find it difficult to call up the words I need to explain what I am thinking. I am distracted by my own emotion. It is best if I take a breath, slow down, and do a mental zoom-out in order to consider the situation from a broader perspective. But this adjustment is not about dismissing my emotions for misleading my thinking. Rather, it is about reenabling the discussion. The issues at hand, i.e., the points of debate, still await consideration. We cannot allow emotions to retard the pursuit of wisdom for, while unchecked, they may serve as obstacles, at the same time they are often the heralds of important truths that should not be overlooked.
Is the truth tepid? I think it is hot!
Recent Comments