“Feelings are not supposed to be logical. Dangerous is the man who has rationalized his emotions.”
-David Borenstein
You know, I think it's time to get my views straight on some things. I have been working on that with a few of my blogs, like the whole ugly vs beautiful/evil vs good one. So I thought today I'd do one on emotion.
Emotion. Big word, although it contains so few letters. We all know what feelings are, so I will skip that part. This blog is more about dealing with emotions. We all do it differently. Me? I can control them, pretty much. And I can control them by finding the root. There is not one emotion in me that I cannot find the root of. And knowing that, doesn't it make me seem so much less emotional than everyone else? I'm not really. I just know where they come from so I have better control of how I portray them. So, in a way, I guess that makes my feelings logical. If I cannot find the root, then I should not be feeling it. So then... It's hard to say... I refuse to feel it? I don't know. But I know that if I cannot find the root, I stop feeling it, because there is no reason to.
"Dangerous is the man who has rationalised his emotions." Maybe so. Take Conor, for example. From Bloodtide. He has rationalised his emotions. He uses his love of Signy to deceive her in the great betrayal. "All his life he had been able to hold his feelings deep inside himself, like tiny fish frozen in the icy tightness of his heart... and now it served him beautifully and horribly in his deception of Signy. So deeply and tightly had he frozen his feelings, he had no idea what they were." Doesn't that make Conor a dangerous man? It means he has no compassion, no idea how to protect what he loves. "He didn't know it, but Conor was breaking his own heart first of all." Conor has rationalised his emotions almost to the point of insanity. I rationalise my emotions too. Does that make me dangerous? I don't know. I haven't really hidden them as deeply as his, I can still feel.
But do you ever wonder whether it is better be able to feel sadness than nothing at all? Without sadness, you cannot know happiness. Without trust, you cannot know betrayal. But what would it be like to have no emotion at all? It would probably feel like sadness, to a person who has had emotions before. But if you grew up with no emotions, if you were born emotionless, and died emotionless, how would it feel? Imagine, a life without sadness, or anger, or feelings of betrayal. Wouldn't it be nice? Imagine, a life without happiness, or love, or feelings of trust. Wouldn't it be horrible? Maybe that's what rationalising emotions is... Having none that are real, because by rationalising them too much, you control them completely. Which makes you a dangerous person. But... I can do that... I can rationalise my emotions. I can't make ones I have reason for go away, but I can make those I don't leave me alone and I can prevent showing those which are real. I... Am I dangerous? Theory says I am... I guess that if I did do bad things because of emotion rationalisation, that would provoke uncontrollable bad emotions. So I do not think I am dangerous... Who knows?
A rational mind is usually a greater danger to itself than anybody else. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I don't cry at funerals because I have no reason to. It doesn't mean I'm heartless I just see no reason to be sad. The greatest danger is to find your emotions too strong to control, then you become at risk of problems like a nervous breakdown. Then again if anything should occur it is also a chance to locate and understand a weakness you were unaware of.
ReplyDeleteI'm an empath. And by that I don't mean that I can see auras or that kind of mumbo jumbo, I can read the emotion on ones face or undertones in their voice and respond accordingly. To not "feel" others strong emotions, by feel I'm talking about really strong undertones in the way people speak, for instance the huskiness in a voice when a couple are attracted to each-other, or the spitefulness of anger or hostility in arguments affect me greatly most of its due to sensitive hearing and eyesight.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, a way to not be overwhelmed is I've rationalized emotions to the point I can tune out myself from picking up on these feelings to blunt and soften my sensitivity yet my own emotions i feel very strongly When I want to or not at all when I don't. does that make me dangerous. rationalizing emotions into categories to protect myself. 'twas useful when I was accosted by drug addicts after school one day couple years ago.
I'm inclined to think emotions are logical. They are some of the first logic we learn as babies. But we refine our emotional logic without even knowing it. It just happens with consistent use. It's not something we can control. It just happens as we age. We become familiar with them and as we get older emotions become familiar. Sometimes we lose the original cognitive meaning we have associated with them and therefore build new memories to relate them to; however, it is possible we resist cognitive associations. It's normal though to have some resistance. It's because we have learned to associate certain emotions with certain cogitative states. I've written something on this before and I touch on it a little here, but this is not a time for me to dwell on such things as I have other obligations. I like that quote though "Feelings are not supposed to be logical. Dangerous is the man who has rationalized his emotions" I think there is some validity there, but all emotions are rational. It's the scale in which we permit them to exist is concerning.
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