Friday, February 2, 2024

Harnessing Emotion For The Sake Of Self-Control

Self-control from emotion is not always necessary.  Pursuing self-control from emotion itself, rather than self-control of sporadic, subjective desires to be emotionalistic, misaligns someone with the nature of reality, harming him or her in the process.  Ignoring or suppressing any part of one's humanity or individuality is never rational in itself; no, even irrationalism or moral deficiencies must be confronted to be overcome, and to neglect or intentionally avoid even knowledge of one's emotions is to trivialize them.  Whenever possible, people need to harness emotion in an effort to develop or exercise self-control, especially when it comes to sustaining the desire to acknowledge and live by the truths of rationalism.

For some people, and for some people more than others within this group, there will be temptations to disregard logical truths even though they cannot be false, in spite of the fact that anyone who rejects them is a fool without justification for any belief and without the right to be treated as highly as a rationalist.  Reason is true by default, for the only way for it to be false already requires that it is already true.  Nothing could be more important than it or aligning with it, no matter how hurtful, shocking, or difficult to emotionally accept it is.  That logical truths are reality no matter how someone feels about them follows from them being inherently true, but neither the existence nor the enjoyment of emotion makes a person at odds with these logical necessities.

A strong emotional love for that which transcends emotion (and all other things besides itself) and that which, indeed, makes emotions metaphysically possible to begin with cannot be irrational.  The love of reason, of its intrinsic truth, absolute certainty, immutability, and utter transcendence of all other things, cannot possibly be contrary to reason!  To the extent that a person can muster it, it will always at the least make the experience of holding to the objective truths of rationalism more pleasurable and personally exciting.  This could plainly provide reinforced subjective motivation for a certain kind of person to not forsake reason, not that this is necessary to fully commit to rationalism no matter how distracting random impulses or circumstances might be.

Even on a pragmatic level, the lowest of all layers to philosophical truths, a person will forever be at war with himself or herself or with objective reality itself (of which their consciousness is a part) if they misunderstand, neglect, or flee from the mere presence of their emotions--or if they yield to emotionalism.  Emotion does not make anything true except that one is experiencing emotion in the moment.  It also is the single most experientially powerful component of motivation and excitement.  Never holding someone's worldview hostage away from rationalism unless they allow it to, emotion in no way makes someone irrational, and it can paradoxically be used to more and more deeply enjoy reason in a way that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Emotion does not have to distract from self-control, and its presence or intensity does not mean that someone is unable or unwilling to avoid emotionalism.  It can be used to strengthen self-control, including specifically in a rationalistic context.  Someone could certainly allow emotion to help them conjure up the desire or resolve to adhere to strict rationalism.  Grasping the necessary truths of logic and experiencing penetrating emotions are not logically exclusive; no contradiction exists between them.  There is far more to the relationship between reason, the intellect (which is only the mind's grasp of reason and not logical truths themselves), and emotion than just reason being true irregardless of emotion.

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