The Tartt Take

Over the past few centuries, there has been an increasing shift toward focusing on intellect and away from emotions. I fear that this has been a giant mistake. Allow me to explain.

In The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt compares the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind to a rider and an elephant. The elephant goes where it wishes, and the rider can’t control the elephant but can come up with possible explanations as to why the elephant went where it did. For the human mind, the unconscious controls what we do, and the conscious tries to rationalize the behavior, even when there’s no discernible reason for it. I’ve verified this through my own self-awareness and countless interactions I’ve seen or been in.

Additionally, despite how much emphasis is placed on thinking, humans are emotional creatures. Even those who struggle tremendously to notice or identify what emotions they’re feeling are still fundamentally driven by emotions. Humans seek things that make them feel good and seek to avoid things that make them feel bad. All human actions can be put into one of those categories. Because emotions are the primary drivers of human behavior, any successful attempt at influencing behavior must focus on the emotions. That’s why attempting to “reason” someone out of a highly emotional state is doomed to fail: thoughts come from emotions, so trying to change those thoughts without addressing the emotions starts at the end of the causal chain instead of at the beginning. It is akin to attempting to make it rain by pouring water onto the street.

It’s fairly common for someone to make a request based on emotion but want to have a “reason” for making that request other than their emotions, which causes them to choose something that sounds plausible even though it’s completely arbitrary. This can continue even if what the person said is revealed to be a mere rationalization rather than a primary reason. Person A might decline an invitation to a party he wants to avoid. When Person B asks why he’s not going, Person A might say because he doesn’t have a ride. If Person B then offers to give him a ride, Person A will still decline to go, which reveals that the lack of a ride wasn’t the true reason. While this is usually innocuous, sometimes fights can break out over disagreements on the stated “reason.” These fights tend to continue as long as the focus remains on the intellect instead of the emotions each person is experiencing. This results in the strange situation of two people speaking with huge amounts of hostility toward one another while totally ignoring their raging emotions, acting defensively, trying to disprove what is being said without even understanding it (usually with mockery, scorn, and insults, which are in no way logical or reasonable), and “listening” to respond. All with the goal of staying logical! Looking at it this way can bring a chuckle.

Another frequent occurrence is confusing emotions with thoughts. A great example of this occurred at one of my past jobs. I asked a customer how he felt after his experience and he replied, “It was pretty cool.” After a pause, I repeated the question, and he repeated his same answer. He didn’t say anything about feeling relaxed, calm, peaceful, happy, relieved, or any other kind of emotion. He focused instead on what he thought about the experience. Interestingly, this also applies in the other direction. How often do you hear someone say, “I feel” and then say something that is clearly a thought rather than a feeling (such as “I feel I should say something here.”)? This seems to have become incredibly common over the last few years and I don’t get it.

Aside from confusion and creating and exacerbating fights, ignoring emotions has other negative effects. I recently had a hard day before going out to dance. Before arriving, I felt more sadness than I had in a long time. That sadness had mostly turned into frustration and fear by the time the dance began. Two people I know asked how I was doing while I still felt upset. To one, I said “Frustrated, sad, and scared,” and to the other, I said that I wasn’t feeling as sad as earlier and was mostly feeling frustrated. The first one laughed before I said I was being serious and then didn’t follow up or say anything to me the rest of the night; the other didn’t respond at all. I felt upset at both of them after giving those responses and now want to spend less time around them both. Those interactions showed me that emotional intelligence is still a rare trait, especially in highly social settings that prioritize lighthearted emotions rather than heavy emotions. Fortunately, I felt much better as the dance went on. Later at the dance, a few other people I know showed compassion toward me after I said how bad I had felt earlier. I felt glad to receive their support.

My dog Sawyer never tried to hide his emotions. Whether he was feeling positive or negative emotions, he always shared them with anyone who was interacting with him. His love for me was always clearly on display. He inspired me to more freely share my emotions. That’s still a struggle for me, particularly when it comes to sharing negative emotions without hurting anybody in the process, but I’m gradually getting better at it. As with so many other areas, humans could learn so much from animals about emotions.

I fear that emotional intelligence will continue taking a backseat to intellect, logic, and reason. Despite increasing awareness of the importance of emotions and their impact on all of us, I’ve seen hardly any examples in real life that made effective use of that information. In fact, several folks I know (as well as myself) who have done deep dives into these subjects still tend to put emotions on the backburner when situations get tense. Although the results are not always hostile, they are almost always ineffective and are more prone to cause division instead of unity. My efforts to change this have almost always failed, and I have felt frustrated and sad enough times to give up any further efforts to cause widespread change. That has brought me a small degree of peace. I’ll continue increasing my own emotional intelligence and working on using it effectively in as many situations as possible. I feel content whenever I succeed at that, and that seems to produce better results than attempting to control how others manage their emotions. Much of my inspiration for this comes from Marshall Rosenberg, who valued finding and connecting with what is alive in the other person rather than taking offense to what they said when their emotions were running hot. That approach brings people closer together instead of pushing them farther apart. Whether it will bring world peace or just make some daily interactions smoother, I’ll feel good doing it.