The War between Reason and Emotion…

REFLECTION

Monday 6th April

Both Emotion and Reason act as forces in our minds…that act in opposite ways thus leading to internal conflicts and sometimes tendencies to dominate. But only when they are balanced will the decisions that one makes are right and morally justified. Thus these tendencies to dominate are what cause the weak moments of our lives. At times humans become the ‘materialistic rational scientific city man’ as the poems of TS Eliot highlight clearly. In his poetry emotions have more or less vanished from earth…Humans are just ‘hollow men’ with nothing but money to guide them. They are robots…this happens when reason overtakes everything. When emotion leaves us not even the devastation of the war and the cruelty of death affects us. Our decisions become for our selfish needs.
Domination of emotions too causes nothing but wrong decisions. Dictators and politicians are expert at playing with emotions so as to blind reason. Even if there is a conscience, a cluster of emotions can lead it to become clouded. And thus irrational decisions are formulated and implemented. This not only ruins the life of the person who is thinking emotionally but also the people around him. Examples of emotionally swayed individuals in the 21st century would obviously have to be the terrorists. Even politicians try and use it by trying to instigate hate into his listeners against the other party.
It is not wrong to think emotionally or extra reasonably. Unconsciously we just perform what feels right at that point. However for justified and absolutely true decisions a balance combination of reason and emotions is true. I mean if our prime-minister Mr. Manmohan Singh ran the country without properly thinking about it in the diplomatic ways but yet making his decision so as to not go against his own sentiments, we would either be in a state of war with our neighbours or a puppet country up for show, not the IT centre and the largest democracy of the world!