Emotionalism is not ruining civilization.

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Assertion: 'Emotionalism,' though it has its excesses, is not ruining civilization

I am a reasoned person. I study formal logic and philosophy. I value the faculties of reason enormously. However, I do not believe that so-called emotionalism is ruining civilization. It may have certain ill effects, but western civilization does not hinge on how much or how little Oprah cried last week.

The mistake that people on both sides of this debate make is dichotomous thinking. There is a life of the mind and a life of the heart, one of which is vastly superior to the other. I will try to avoid this. The ill effects of falling too far into one side or the other, whether as an individual or as as society, are well-documented. The major problem with a society of emotion is that the trains don't run on time, and the major problem with a society of reason is that only a small part of the population -scientists and capitalists- are considered as having anything to contribute, which is gross narrow-mindedness. Isn't a world without art and motherhood just as unappealing as a world where no one knows how to build a bridge?

I pointed out in the other thread that society tends to go back and forth between reason and emotion. Your point about dichotomous thinking is good; too many people see the issues of adhering too rigidly to one or the other way of thinking and respond by following the other way just as rigidly. Really, in either case, it would be next to impossible for everyone in our society to fall so far to one extreme that civilization would cease to function. You'll always have your rationalists and your artsy types, just maybe in different proportions.

Art and Motherhood are not emotionalism as he defined it. I believe that most of agree that those of us with emotions can enjoy them as long as we aren't using them to bludgeon people.

I don't like being bludgeoned with emotions either. I just think that reason can also be cruel and divisive.

Asperger's can be problematic where there are two extreme positions on an issue.

Black-and-white thinking tends to cloud people's judgment.

It was emotionalism, not reason, that plunged the western world into the Dark Ages.
It was reason, not emotionalism, that brought us out.

It was emotionalism, not reason, that:

- Started the Crusades.
- Motivated the Conquistadors.
- Provoked the Holocaust, the Pogroms, the Inquisition, and the Salem Witch Trials.
- Sparked the World Wars.
- Inspired the Luddites.
- Precipitated the Great Depression.
- Maintained the Cold War.
- Initiated the current war in Iraq.
- Led to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Only reason keeps events like these from plunging the world into anarchy and chaos.

Reason is merely a tool, like a hammer is a tool. You can use a hammer to build or to bludgeon. So too with reason.

Emotion is more like a fire in the woods. Kept under control, a fire can warm the body, soothe the soul, and help provide healing and nourishment. Left unchecked, and it could rage out of control, leaving only ashes and charred corpses behind.

There is too much emphasis on unchecked emotion, and not enough emphasis on disciplined reason. Greed, hatred, lust, and pride drive our world's leaders. Such things thrive where ignorance prevails, but not where reason and respect rule the day.

I am not saying that we should eliminate emotion, for where would we be without a mother's love or a father's mercy? What I am saying is that emotionalism - the overbearing rule of emotion - is contrary, even detrimental, to the advancement of civilization.

We are on the road to global disaster, disguised by only the thinnest veneer of civility. But good manners alone do not make for a civilized society. Reason must operate in harmony with emotion, or we risk unthinking barbarity or unfeeling indifference.

Strike the balance.

Last edited by Fnord on 19 May 2008, 9:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I agree about the false dichotomy. And often it seems that the problems with "rational" or "emotional" arguments aren't really either.

I.e. "Rational" arguments based on unquestioned, arbitrary premise(s):

The logic might be fine, but that doesn't mean the conclusions are right. A mix of both strategies are always there, and I think the balance is what's important. Any initial premise can be reduced down with "why?" to other premises, infinitely. So, there's always emotion involved.

OTOH, too little rationality also leads to arguments that can't be debated, explored, nuanced-out. In a way it seems like the exact same problem:



False dichotomies, like the original poster said.

Nitpick...

Truman decided to go ahead with the bombings because direct invasion would have killed more people since japan would fight to the last man, and many American lives would be lost as well...

Emotionalism inspired the Holocaust. Rationality, in the form of obsession with science and efficiency, carried it through. Strike the balance!

I could read this to say you need both rationality and emotionalism to have something like the Holocaust. And you are saying to strike a balance and have a measure of both... MissPickwickian is a Nazi!

I walked right into that one.

My basic point is that emotionalism and rationalism both have positive and negative influences on civilization. Hitler was a "double negative"--he combined the worst energies from both sides. Pointing it out therefore strengthens, rather than backtracks, my thesis.

Now for a double positive: art could not exist without both components. If artists, writers, and musicians ever want to do anything worthwhile, they need both right-brained creativity (without it their work is dull and soulless) and left-brained structural sense (without it their work is a bloody mess).

There were Enlightenment thinkers who tried to work out a formulaic, algorithmic method of producing epic poetry and the like. Not very successful, so I'll concede this half. BUT,

Well, I would call it a bloody mess, but I'm an uncultured slob with no appreciation of the visual arts. Just about anything painted in the first half of the twentieth century (and a good deal afterwards too) pretty much ignores structural sense. Guernica certainly looks like a bloody mess, though that may have been the artist's intent. Impressionism actively rejected advancements in artistic technique that had been commonplace since the 1400s.

Guernica has a structural sense also, though it is not as obvious as it is in, say, Raphael. The figures look chaotic; they're supposed to because it's war. However, you will notice that the painting contains many geometric, and therefore logical, shapes and a classical triple triangle pattern at the core. Without this, Picasso would have been stuck pouring brown paint into a funnel
and saying it represented the horrors of war*. Even Pollock's splatter canvases make mathematical sense when reduced to their essentials.

Impressionists were beholden to artistic structure whether they liked it or not. Structure was a coat rack on which their emotional expressions could be hung. Strike the balance!

*Modern performance artists do do things just like that, but modern performance artists suck. Coincidence?

So, wait, why should rationality be considered important in this relationship? I mean, sure rationality may help us do things, but that does not seem to reflect a need to "strike the balance", after all, isn't emotionalism inspiring you to try to inspire us to "strike the balance"? That to me, shows that emotionality is clearly the dominant expression and that "striking a balance" with rationality is not possible. How does a man strike a balance with a hammer? He doesn't, he uses or discards the hammer at his pleasure. The same is true with emotion and rationality.

Well, if we're taling about the holocaust/nazi germany, one could say that they believed their logic for destroying people of jewsh descent, and castrating those with undesirable traits was only rational since they believed they were bettering humankind by creating people with better genes. One could also say that it is emotion that stops such things from happening again, especially when people strike up images of suffering families, lives lost, etc. To mean it seems that there is a fairly good amount of emotion and (perceived) logic in almost any situation.