By Manohar Thakur
Emotions are part of the primal biological processes of the brain in all living beings. They have an evolutionary utility which is essential for existence. Anger, shame, guilt, love, pride, disgust, hatred, pity, fear, slyness, jealousy and many many more such emotions are part of our everyday lives.
It is well established that these emotions are universal and whatever names are given to them in different languages and cultures, one thing remains constant - the facial expressions and body languages associated with each of them are uniformly the same everywhere. Even people born deaf and blind show the same external signs of each of these emotions.
The reason behind this is that these are controlled by a part of the brain which is supposed to have evolved in the earliest stages of evolution of life. They have great survival benefit and that is the underlying reason why they have persisted in spite of the rigorous processes of natural selection which weed out any attributes that are not conducive to successful existence. The very fact they exist is proof they have been useful to existence. However, as we evolve, we are constantly exhorted to 'control' or sometimes 'sublimate' our emotions, to use reason instead of emotion when faced with different situations in life. I believe this has value. My only concern is that the balance between reason and emotion should be maintained and each should be given its due importance depending upon the situation at hand. To blindly generalise and debunk emotion in favour of reason is to miss the point.
A person without emotion is like a tree without leaves, a flower without colour. Very rightly so, there has been a resurgence of emphasis on Emotional Quotient, we have been used to value Intelligence Quotient for a long time.
It is essential we nurture, value, manage and express our emotions as much as we strive to improve our power of reasoning-this will hopefully lead to a fuller, warmer and more healthy interpersonal communication leading to a happier society.
Comments