Emotion is a poor substitute for thought

A chara, – It would be interesting to draw a graph of public discourse over the last 30 years to trace when “disagreement” morphed into “being offended” or “upset”. In other words, when exactly did emotions permeate and in many cases come to dominate intellectual and public discourse?

It seems to me as if this is the dividend of a therapy culture, where if you “feel” something then it must automatically have legitimacy.

For sure, something may have “emotional legitimacy” for the one who “feels” it but it may be a very subjective and/or limited understanding of whatever the actual topic might be and there is the added problem that “feelings and emotions” can be very fickle.

It can appear like a warped Cartesian logic at times, “I feel, therefore, it is.”

READ SOME MORE

How you “feel” about something can change. There must be a distinction made between “feeling” and “thinking” . “Feeling” from my own experience is often a primary but unexamined response to an idea. I have often “felt” a certain way about a topic or an idea which I hadn’t encountered before but then when I “thought” about it my “feelings” towards it changed.

In an age where we respond to each other almost instantaneously and with great impatience, emotion is so often a poor substitute for thought. – Is mise,

BILLY Ó HANLUAIN,

Kimmage,

Dublin 12.