Emotions are not rational or irrational

It’s but a signal,

But they are also an end

 

It is thus misleading to consider them in terms of rationality,

Their only rational or irrational element is our attitude and interpretation of those emotions

 

But it’s also misleading to NOT incorporate them as crucial variables in our reasoning about a given process, or a set of goals

 

For instance,

Happiness is both a signal, and an end

It’s what we’re after

It’s what, when actually, strongly experienced, is quite utterly intoxicating

And it’s also a signal — verification that our actions were successful at arriving at this happy end,

 

So all this is coherent,

What could be incoherent?

A leap from thing making you happy to that thing being necessarily good or useful

 

Now that is all still quite simple, we tend to know that “happiness is not everything”,

Except do we?

Just saying that doesn’t change that we do quite like happiness

Especially experiencing it

And once we are experiencing it, or NOT experiencing it, lacking it — it becomes a powerful variable in a given process

And unless that is acknowledged, as a variable — then quite inevitably you will try to explain it with some other, erroneous variable, erroneous process

 

For instance,

when you hate your work — you may be tempted to hate work in general

Even though obviously, rationally, it serves a purpose, and that purpose makes sense, and the fruit of your labour is likely something you yourself would have wanted (and the world of course wants, hence is paying you for it)

 

or

You get relaxed when you are drinking a couple beers and watching stupid shit on the TV,

But it obviously does not further your goals

If you claim that you’re doing everything to further your goals — you are now being incoherent

 

or

let’s consider words which truly cheer you up

Is the positive emotion you’re experiencing at all a factor, in how charitable you will be in interpreting the words cogency?

 

And again the simplest solution is to just proclaim that avoidance/pursuit of given emotion is the key factor, which distorts the reasoning,

But what if that emotion is ALSO the goal?

Not merely a distortion — but the important lens?

 

And at that moment, we can’t simply claim that we are being irrational,

if that very distortion is the point,

If that very emotion, which influences our reasoning — is also what we are trying to accomplish

 

Is it irrational now?

I suppose it is irrational, incoherent with our explicit goals,

while still being locally-rational,

and again rational, if you will, once that emotional distortion is predicted as one of the goals

 

E.g.:

-have an abstract goal, and an emotional goal (e.g. happiness)

-experience both happiness and struggle along the way

-use both of those as POTENTIAL signals to how well you’re executing on your long-term and short-term goals

 

I suppose this is the correct model

Pretending you’re not emotional makes no sense, it’s just factually not true, not how being an animal works,

pretending your goals are entirely isolated from your emotional needs also makes no sense (albeit a lot of strange permutations are possible)

pretending your emotions don’t influence the process is also wishful thinking, unrealistic

AND pretending that emotion itself is somehow intrinsically the source of truth — rather than merely a signal, a variable, is another common error, magical thinking and fucking woo woo nonsense