Yipes, have I seen this so often! Add to this the problem that committees often feel so obligated to “propose something” that they place proposition over rational judgement. And the longer they work on the proposal, the more they fall prey to sunk costs themselves. Then, the poor department is obligated (because of sunk cost) to approve something that never should have been proposed in the first place! To avoid this trap, committees could propose a series of options, including the option to do nothing, then the department is acknowledging their hard work by adopting one of their solutions, and thanking them for their hard work!
"emotions are the indicators and protectors of value." I never thought about it that way, but it's a great way to think about emotions! Perhaps this is why Spinoza identified two main emotions - joy and sadness (or pleasure and pain) -and considered the rest to be variants of these two. For example, envy, pity, or fear would be types of sadness, while schadenfreude would be a type of joy. Maybe emotions exist to let us know quickly if something is good or bad, at least for us personally. The Nietzschean question, however, is where these values come from, and that is a whole different story...
Also, perhaps in some cases, emotions are more 'right' than rational thinking, as we humans can rationalize ourselves into believing whatever makes us feel good, even when the initial 'bad feeling' might have been the correct one.
I loved this, especially that emotions are not bad when it comes to making decisions. Cold rationality is not always the means to find the best way forward. And thank you for diving deep into a complicated situation and opening it up in very insightful ways. Powerful work, as always.
Yipes, have I seen this so often! Add to this the problem that committees often feel so obligated to “propose something” that they place proposition over rational judgement. And the longer they work on the proposal, the more they fall prey to sunk costs themselves. Then, the poor department is obligated (because of sunk cost) to approve something that never should have been proposed in the first place! To avoid this trap, committees could propose a series of options, including the option to do nothing, then the department is acknowledging their hard work by adopting one of their solutions, and thanking them for their hard work!
"emotions are the indicators and protectors of value." I never thought about it that way, but it's a great way to think about emotions! Perhaps this is why Spinoza identified two main emotions - joy and sadness (or pleasure and pain) -and considered the rest to be variants of these two. For example, envy, pity, or fear would be types of sadness, while schadenfreude would be a type of joy. Maybe emotions exist to let us know quickly if something is good or bad, at least for us personally. The Nietzschean question, however, is where these values come from, and that is a whole different story...
Also, perhaps in some cases, emotions are more 'right' than rational thinking, as we humans can rationalize ourselves into believing whatever makes us feel good, even when the initial 'bad feeling' might have been the correct one.
A great essay, as usual!
Yes! There's some great feminist literature on what emotions do for us, and the idea that they may be more right than our thinking sometimes.
I loved this, especially that emotions are not bad when it comes to making decisions. Cold rationality is not always the means to find the best way forward. And thank you for diving deep into a complicated situation and opening it up in very insightful ways. Powerful work, as always.
Thank you! :)