Friday 16 April 2004

Mind Versus Heart

Too often have people heard the term, "Think with your head, not your heart." An easy enough phrase, spouted casually when the need to make decisions arise. With all terms, it is much easier said than done. It is hard to separate well-meaning advice, for instance, from the emotional connotations or the way it is presented. It is part of the psychological makeup that makes humans uniquely human.

My dearest friend, Nat, postulates that "It is no secret that human beings are flawed creatures. But what is the greatest flaw in the design of human beings? Recently I have begun to wonder if emotions are perhaps our greatest imperfection. Think about it: as logically and as analytically we try to deal with the situations in our lives, we are often motivated intrinsically by our feelings. We thrive on love, we feed our anger, we ride the highs and lows of our lives. This is all good and well, but does it really make us efficient enough to deal with the complexities of our lives?"

Even the most rational of people would be hard-pressed to admit that their opinions are not the least bit prejudiced in a situation. Humanity is not maths. There is no black and white, but all the shades of grey. Rationality cuts things down to bare essentials, to black and white that allow people to see the extremes of a situation.

It is part of this that makes another's opinions, for instance, so much harder to swallow. In a potentially tense situation, the people involved are much too emotionally near to be able to see the situation as it is. The outside observer is usually more able to say things to effect, sizing up the situation as clearly as it is. As cold and callous as the observations might be, that is the effect of separating mind and emotion. Rationality has no emotion, it is pure logic, the train of thought stemmed from the analytical part of the brain.

Emotions have no right or wrong. It is just the way a person feels, and an individual cannot help feeling that way. It is raw humanity, instinct. Yet if an individual was to give in to their emotions, god help the world. Humanity at it's most primal. Subjected to the highs and lows of a fickle heart.

Humanity if flawed in its emotions, but therein lies the fact that makes humans so unique.

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