Feeling, Emotion and Reason
I’m known by friends and family as being brutally trusting of my mind. Logic is essential to my decision making process. Unfortunately, people tend to think that this means that I despise emotion. That to feel is my enemy. This … could not be further from the truth. I do not despise emotion — I embrace justified emotion.
Emotion should not be seen as a reason to conclude something true. It should not be seen as the foundation of our thought — it must be seen for what it is — the end result of thought. The reaction to a process, not the decision-making process itself.
Emotion is not concrete. Emotion can be caused by anything. Emotion is not trustworthy. Emotion and feeling tells people to blow up towers. Emotion as a decision-making process tells men to abuse their wives. It tells people to act without justifiable purpose.
Emotion should not be our reason, it should be our response to reason. When we feel, we should feel because it is right to feel — not just because. We should feel strongly for our faith, because that is the role of emotion — it opens the human mind to grasp significance. We should feel strongly about concepts such as justice and grace, because it makes sense to feel those things.
Emotion has its role. I feel incredibly strongly all the time. I often go on walks to be by myself, so I can listen to the birds, see the trees, and simply feel alive. Emotion is wonderful. Because it is wonderful, I refuse to abuse it for destruction. Emotion is wonderful, and it has it’s place. That place is not as a decision-making process.
Cold Reason
Many times I have been called cold. Most people view a strict and rigid belief in the rational and logical to be of a non-emotional nature. One individual literally told me, “it just ain’t got any soul.” I have been called “uncaring”, “uncompassionate”, “boring”, “eccentric” and “heartless”, because I do not abandon my mind during times of social or cultural conflict.
However, I propose the opposite to be true: logic is the basis of the greatest of all feelings — respect for the human condition. Without reason and logic, our actions become incoherent. Rather than doing something because it follows a proper order in reality, because it “makes sense”, we do things on the basis of whim — chaotic actions.
Look to all the problems of the world: Violence, war, war, poverty, drug addiction — every human problem is caused by a rejection of reason. When one party abandons reason to solve a problem, violence and war become their solution — coercion, force, state action. When someone abandons reason on the basis of their actions revolving their desired partners, manipulation and sometimes even rape become the solution. When individuals abandon reason in economics, poverty befalls them, lives are destroyed.
It is said that reason is cold, heartless and “ain’t got any soul.” How foolish. In reason we find the salvation of man’s problems — the answer to economics, the answer to social quagmire, the answer to policy, the answer to questions.
I turn the tables on those who espouse feeling and tradition in spite of cold reason — it is you who have no soul, because it is you who destroy your world by closing your eyes. Choose reason and we will be saved — abandon it completely, and mankind is doomed.