You know, I’m kind of tired of the ‘atheists are all amoral psychopaths’ memes that I hear every so often. But more than that, it’s a classic tactic.
If you frame your opponent as a monster, a horrible person… evil, then you can reduce the argument to emotions. And emotions are much easier to control in someone else than reason. The entire concept of trolling is evidence of this. We see people all over the internet freaking out because a random person said something on Twitter. It’s not an reasoned reaction, it’s an emotional one.
In World War II, the US was not fighting Japanese. We were fighting ape-men called “japs” who wanted nothing more than to steal blond women. It became an emotional issue and therefore controllable.
Humans have emotional reactions to things. It’s a big part of what we are.
The reason for that strange introduction is that I’m sad today. It’s not shameful or anything else to be sad. It’s something that I desperately want and I probably can’t get tomorrow after planning and preparing and waiting for it for the last six months (has it been that long)?
Call it privilege, call it a first world problem if you like, but when one works for something for a long time and the plans fall apart, it makes people sad. A new job, a relationship, a special project… all of these things can invoke the kind of sadness I’m talking about.
However, I do recognize that this is an emotional reaction. It’s is a feeling of incompleteness, of effort… not wasted… but not fulfilled either. And that’s what the feeling is. That’s all that it is. Our brains recognizing that something isn’t the way we want it to be. Which tends to happen a lot.
The problem is that, sometimes, the sadness can overcome someone’s ability to deal with it. I don’t know if some people are just better able to handle such things or if their past experiences have made them more emotional resilient or some combination of both. I do know that I was sad a lot as a child. We didn’t have much. I never had many friends. I was generally alone. I was teased a lot as a child.
What I think has helped me to deal with sadness and depression and rage and all those other emotions is reason. Once I get past the initial burst of emotions, I can find a way to examine what I’m feeling and why. It’s not always easy. But it is utterly fascinating to sit down and really look at one’s self and be able to say, “I’m sad and I’m sad because something I was hoping for isn’t going to go the way I wanted it to.”
Then, using reason, you can examine the issue and, at least in my experience, I find that, in almost every case, there’s a solution. In this case, it’s simply being patient and waiting a little longer. Can every problem be solved? No, but a rational decision is much better than an emotional decision.
I’ll admit that occasionally an emotional decision will be the same as the reasoned decision. But it seems to me to be like the hero in the movie who rescues the girl hoping to get laid. The decision is the same (rescue the girl), but the reason is flawed.
We should do things, because they are the correct thing to do or the best possible decision (that we know of). We shouldn’t do things because, in a second of emotional outburst, we do something. I know what I’m asking here. It’s HARD to do this. But our decisions are much better for it.
Let me give you an example. My child is growing up. He recently told me that he was mad at me and didn’t want to be my kid anymore. He was sooo mad. But, in a moment of clarity, I was able to step back, avoid the emotional reaction and really look at what was going on, what he was feeling, what I was feeling, and make a reasoned response.
Instead of yelling, or fighting him, or anything else, I just smiled sadly and said, “Well, I still love you, but if you don’t want to be my kid, I’ll drop you off wherever you’d like to go. You’ll have to leave your toys and your cat, but I’ll let you have a change of clothes.” That shut him down so fast, it was absolutely stunning. In less than 5 minutes he was snuggled in my lap and we were back to being calm and everything was fine.
I never even raised my voice. Indeed, I thought it was kind of funny (which made him more mad).
This reasonable response (wow, look at that root word) was not an emotional response, but it was infinitely more effective.
As I write this, I am trying to apply the same process to my sadness (it is really hard and takes lots of practice) and it’s working. I’m sad, but my mind is reminding me of all the things that are accomplished and that a delay is just a delay. It’s not actually going to change anything. Heck, a lot of things might even be better because of some end of the month factors coming into play.
In all the movies, the master says something like ‘fear shouldn’t control you’. And that’s true, but it’s the same for any emotion. Fear, sadness, depression, love, happiness, and all the other emotions are not the correct ways to make decisions. Some of these emotions are good, some are bad. But they are all just feelings. They are, literally, changes in the chemical structure of the brain.
Reason though, is a good way to make decisions. It gives us the advantage of cycling through several responses and using defined criteria to determine the best possible decision. Emotions don’t work that way. If you are sad, you will have a very different response to the same stimuli than you would if you were angry. Reason prevents all those variable responses.
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P.S. I am NOT a doctor or therapist or anything else. Your mileage may vary. I’ll happily talk with you if you have an issue that you’d like to talk about with someone. But all I can do is talk.
