Overemphasis on Thinking
Our western culture I think overestimates the importance of thinking. For instance, our schooling (which I refuse to call education) is almost entirely focused on thinking. In Australia of late there is a push of the ‘back to basics’ variety – the basics being reading, writing and ‘rithmatic. The basics are not considered to be things like: the beauty and grace of well co-ordinated movement, collaboration with others on worthwhile projects, being in touch with our bodies so that we choose to eat healthy foods, creating works of surpassing beauty, learning to listen so that we can have mutually enriching relationships, or how to start a money-making business; to name just a few things that I think are pretty basic to our lives and happiness. In brief: the basics are about thinking and communicating our thoughts.
Overemphasis on Feeling
This has lead to a reaction I think – an overemphasis on feelings. (At the social level this is the story of the western enlightenment and the romantic reaction to it.) For instance, Iona Marsaa Teeguarden, in her wonderful book The Joy of Feeling bodymind acupressure (which I recommend) says that we shouldn’t go with Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” but instead go with, “I feel therefore I am”.
I do think that our culture is still in this split – valuing thinking with some kind of hostility to feeling combined with an over compensation for feeling; leading to indulgence and consumerism.
Our Feeling Is Valuable
I think we need to acknowledge that our feelings are a valuable part of who we are. That moments of elation and disappointment, anger and sadness, and much else, are part of what make us human. I think that we need to acknowledge that they can be problematic too (we may need to set aside the feeling of panic to survive an emergency, we may need to set aside meditating on the beauty of our beloved when chopping the vege’s or risk cutting ourselves).
If we acknowledge our feelings then we can listen to them and learn from them. Every feeling is a kind of judgement about our situation. Fear is a judgement that danger is present. Laughter is a judgement about incongruity or delight. Anger is a judgement that something precious to us has been threatened or violated.
These feeling judgements are no more infallible than our thinking judgements. The feeling may be triggered by the similarity of the current situation to an old one – instead of relevant to this one for instance. What feelings do provide is information. If we listen to our feelings as well as our thoughts then we have more information and are more likely to make fruitful decisions.
A Visit to Felton
Felton is, without a doubt, a nice place to be. Polite are considerate and respectful. And the relationships are good. And people are healthy with supple bodies – you don’t see many bodies that are rigid and inflexible – it can be a pleasure to just watch the people of Felton move around.
The children grow into adults who know how to care for others and have a sense of who they are. Conflict can often lead to productive innovations so that there is a bit of an experimental air to Felton – things are pretty stable but there is a sense that people are fresh and willing to try out new ways of doing things.
Felton is not paradise – people still get sick and have accidents. People still need to mourn the death of loved ones and be sad about the misfortunes of life. They do however have the support to feel their feelings and have had good models from others of how to express their feelings. While not paradise Felton is undeniably an improvement on our current lifestyle (and in my view a BIG improvement).
If there is a drawback to living in Felton is that things can get a bit ‘mushy and gushy’ on occasions. If there is one feeling that is sometimes devalued it is anger. Perhaps it would be right to say that a sign of maturity in Felton is expressing anger well.
For a good glimpse of how embracing our feelings could affect our lives there is a ‘parable’ by Claude Steiner called, A Warm Fuzzy Tale. I think it would be an excellent thing if our world was a lot more like Felton.
Related posts:
- The Rough Guide to Self Development Part Five A Visit to Slaog
- The Rough Guide to Self Development Part Two Our Experience and Our Thinking
- The Rough Guide to Self Development Part Four Thinking About Our Experience
- The Rough Guide to Self-Development Part One Introduction
- The Rough Guide to Self Development Part Three Changing How We See Things
Tags: anger, emotion, Fear, feelings, happiness, sadness, warm fuzzy
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Hi Evan,
I disagree with feelings being a judgement because feeling just are. We don’t necessarily have direct control of them. However, it our thoughts about the feelings that becomes the judgement and gets us into trouble. We can change our thoughts which can therefore, change our feelings.
take care,
CC
Hi CC, what I meant was that our feelings contain an evaluation of the situation that they are about. I think our feelings are in response to something outside ourselves (although our response to it is inside ourselves). Does this make sense? Perhaps I put what I meant poorly, or perhaps we simply disagree. Thanks for your comment.
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