Doug Noll traces why we've been taught emotions are weak, from Plato through Victorian culture to rugged individualism. Neuroscience shows emotions and the prefrontal cortex work together. He shares how incarcerated students learn to honor emotions instead of suppress them.
Chapters
Why is it that we believe emotions are signs of weakness or vulnerability or irrationality? And the reason is really pretty simply stated. Up until 20 years ago, before the advent of neuroscience and all the different scanning technologies that allowed scientists to see what was actually going on in the brain, all we had to work with were the observations of people's behaviors. And it became very obvious thousands and thousands of years ago that when people were emotional, they were not rational. They weren't able to think clearly. They made bad decisions. They engaged in— oftentimes engaged in destructive behaviors. And it didn't take much wisdom or experience for people to start figuring out that people who were emotional oftentimes lost control of themselves and oftentimes lost control of themselves in very destructive ways. And so Over millennia, philosophers and theologians have argued and taught that being emotional is bad because we can't control our emotions. Plato talked about this in the Phaedrus, the idea that these emotions are really difficult to control. And again, that comes from common experience and practical wisdom is that when we're highly emotional, we can't turn our, our prefrontal cortex is turned off and we can't think clearly. And no matter what people want to say about free will, we cannot will ourselves to stop feeling an emotion. And that's just, that's just the nature of the physiology of the brain. So over many, many, many, many thousands of years, people have said that emotions are bad because emotions have always been associated with non-thinking, destructive behavior, especially negative emotions. On the positive side, theologians have argued that passion, lovemaking and orgasm and all that stuff, are bad because of course they have tried to control human sexuality for thousands of years to varying degrees of success. So even positive emotions have been seen as negative. As late as the Victorians, you know, there was a strong culture against being emotional. Keep a stiff upper lip. As we moved development of the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, the whole idea of the rugged individualist— a complete myth. There was no such thing as a rugged individualist when the West was opened up. People only survived because they formed communities. You can't raise a barn by yourself. You gotta have a bunch of people helping you raise a barn. You can't harvest a crop by yourself. You need a bunch of people to help you harvest a crop. So this idea of rugged individualism which is again the idea of somebody who can tough through anything and shows no emotions and don't let them see you sweat. It's all mythical, not based in history, not based in science, not based in anything. That's why we have this belief structure that emotions are weak or make us vulnerable or make us exploitable. I will say there's a little bit of truth to that because if you don't have a way of honoring and mastering your emotions and you become emotional, You can be exploited in certain circumstances. In the prisons that I work in, the incarcerated people, my students who are incarcerated, will tell me that the worst thing you can do in prison is show weakness until they learn how to honor their emotions, and then they realize that their emotions are an amazingly powerful tool that they can use to protect themselves.
