Dealing with emotions (I)
Emotions are an important part of our lives. Our positive emotions not only motivate our existence, but also give it a great deal of enjoyment. Our negative emotions, on the other hand, can get out of hand and impact our lives in ways we do not want. Both can easily lead to emotionalism. Emotions are mostly an epistemic issue, but spirituality can also inform our ways of dealing with emotions. I will look at both aspects here.
An emotion is, to express it algorithmically, a biological shortcut. If you look at a simpler animal, all or most of its behaviours are regulated by instinct - a hardwiring of the brain between stimuli and action. You see a predator, you evaluate whether it saw you or not, so you hide or flee. If it's mating season, you do whatever it is you need to get a mate and procreate. Emotions are also like that. If an animal feels pain, it will try to get away from the situation. Confronted with a supposed enemy, the cat will feel fear, get its claws out, and plunge headlong in battle mode.
As for us humans, our behaviour may be less instinctual, but we still have emotions. They are, of course, far more complex, but their basic principle is the same. We experience love when something gives us well-being and joy (or the hope of such), be it a person, an object, a hobby, and so on. We experience hatred when we are unsatisfied about a person or situation exerting power against us outside of our control, be it our workplace, our significant other, a political context, and so on.
The stimuli that trigger these emotions are vast, but the reaction is subconscious and instantaneous. That is to say that, like all instincts, there is no direct, present-time reasoning that leads from the stimuli to the emotion.
This last point is important when talking about the epistemic status of emotions. There seems to be a popular dichotomy on the subject dividing Reason - seen as cold and calculating ("logic") - and emotions - seen as impulsive and beyond calculation. We are then asked to choose between becoming an unfeeling monster, without boundaries (the archetype of the "mad scientist" or the "inhuman android"), or an impulsive, reckless leech (the archetype of the "frustrated artist").
But objectivity demands that we reject this dichotomy as flawed. As Einstein stated :
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind
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