On… Feelings
Will they help of hinder our efforts?
The first mini-series that I wrote for Climate.Emergence several months ago was on Eco-Anxiety.
I shared four practices that help me work with anxiety generally, and especially with the fear that I feel about ecological breakdown.
In posts that followed I shared ideas for honouring our climate grief inspired by the death of one of my late mentors, I also explored what we can learn about our responses to fear from our current management of the pandemic, and, following the flooding of my parents’ house, I speculated on why we might experience climate denial as a means of keeping ourselves emotionally safe.
Climate.Emergence blog posts are intended to be a place to emotionally process what is happening to our planet.
These blogs have been a way of sharing the research on emotional responses to climate change which I began in March of this year. (Thank you for reading, sharing, and commenting on these offerings, it makes it so worthwhile.)
My conviction that working with our emotions is essential in halting climate change in part comes from my work lobbying MPs. It was the realisation that understanding MPs’ feelings were the key to successful lobbying which led to a series of breakthroughs and eventually a nationally recognised approach to climate campaigning.
In the jaded world of politics, trying to communicate the scientific data of climate change, it was at first extraordinary to me that emotions should be so pivotal to success.
Feelings were the last things an MP would want to discuss, surely? And how could they be useful when they are so subjective and difficult to pin down?
I knew myself to be a particularly emotionally driven person, but surely it’s not the same for everyone? Or is it?
If It’s Hysterical It’s Historical
When I’m dealing with an overreaction to something in myself, or in someone else, I often think of the phrase if it’s hysterical it’s historical.
The last time I found myself bringing that phrase to mind was… yesterday.
Something was said, and, probably totally unknown to that person, a chain of thoughts and emotions swept across my body in response. Before I knew it I was ensnared in the impacts of thought patterns going way back to things that happened years ago.
Like I said, I’m quite an emotionally driven person.
My wonderful mindfulness teacher, Fiona of Fiona Watson Mindfulness, talks about ‘catching the arrows’ of our emotional reactions so that we can notice them and choose our response with more intention. I’ve found that image really helpful, but it’s a practice and it’s also so much easier said than done.
Science experiments (involving fun activities like showing a picture of someone’s ex-partner shortly after a break up) have proven that our brains process emotional pain in the same way as we do physical pain.
That’s to say that, aside from the fact that emotional pain can cause physical ailments, the actual emotions themselves register as a type of physical pain.
A broken heart is just as real as a broken leg as far as our brains are concerned.
‘A system of morality based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion’ – Socrates.
Reason and emotion have been pitted against each other for as long as Western civilisation has existed, with emotions nearly always coming off as the poor relation. The famous Ancient Greek thinkers, like Socrates, didn’t think much of emotion, and perhaps with good reason.
Feelings can make us do the craziest things. Believe the craziest things. Vote for the craziest things.
How often have you looked at the rhetoric of a political leader you oppose, for example, and thought who could possibly vote for that? Or a headline from a newspaper you wouldn’t usually read and thought who in their right mind is buying into this stuff?
If we know anything from the catastrophic effects of the Brexit debate on the UK’s democracy (surely something we can all agree on, regardless of our position on EU membership) it’s that unchecked emotions can derail sensible dialogue along with hundreds of years of established political protocol.
We only need to take a quick glance at the bleakest moments in human history to know that emotions of hate, disgust, jealousy, and betrayal can also drive humans to do some awful, awful things.
They can overcome us, overrun us, and I am sure I’m not alone in looking back at some of the darker parts of in my life knowing that it was my feelings, or someone else’s, that got the better of the situation.
But where do feelings come from in the first place?
Why do some worship Corbyn whilst others think Johnson is the best thing that has happened to us? Why are some outraged to return to the office whilst others believe mandatory mask-wearing to be an infringement of human rights? And how come last week a Black Lives Matter performance on Britain’s Got Talent elicited both ‘thousands of messages of support’ and hundreds of complaints to the TV regulator, Ofcom?
Diversity’s performance was the second most complained about moment of TV in 2020 so far. (Image: ITV)
It is becoming increasingly difficult to be shocked at how little we seem to see eye to eye, but isn’t it extraordinary how much there is to disagree on, and so strongly? And is there any hope to heal these rifts and find peace in our common humanity?
The answer might just be in what we make of our emotions.
The Greatest Delusion in Western History
My book recommendation for this week is Jonathan Haidt’s, The Righteous Mind.
Haidt’s work has been cropping up all over the place during my research on emotional resilience. This particular book is his explanation of why ‘good people are divided by politics and religion’ and in it he takes the view that;
‘worship of reason is itself an illustration of one of the most long-lived delusions in Western history.’ (P. 103)
Ancient Greece, considered by many as the home of Western Civlisation.
How do you react when you read such a strong statement?
Do you find it offensive? Obvious? Provocative? Irritating? Validating?
I personally found it a little hard to believe at first.
Yes, we are emotional beings, but our ability reason, to debate, to form opinions, and persuade others according to our arguments does prevail at least some of the time, doesn’t it? Surely rationality isn’t a completely lost cause?
Apparently, it might be.
Using the findings of a series of experiments that he and his colleagues conducted, Haidt makes a compelling case that human beings react to information first with an emotion and secondly with the reason why. There is only a split second between the two internal processes, but the reason why is formed primarily to justify the original reaction.
Essentially our opinions are based on our gut feelings and not in our rationalisation.
Jonathan Haidt’s ‘The Righteous Mind’, is a funny and compelling whirwind tour of how we come to believe what we believe.
So, according to Haidt, you will have had an emotional reaction to his statement on the delusion of rationality which I just quoted, and that will have been based entirely on your pre-existing beliefs.
What might follow is a series of thoughts about why the statement is offensive/ obvious/ provocative or whatever you felt it was… and what is most compelling about Haidt’s research is that he demonstrates that at this point in the opinion-forming process we are already remarkably resistant to changing our minds.
Usually, our opinions will only change if challenged by a source we already trust and respect, although — I was relieved to read — very occasionally we can be swayed purely by new information or experiences.
The more important the opinion is to us, the more resistant we are to changing it.
Which is why politics and religion (and climate change) are such minefields.
The Elephant Within
The reason our brains are wired this way, according to Haidt, is because of our evolutionary history.
We were first instinctual beings and it wasn’t until much later that we developed the ability to reason.
Haidt likens the instinctual/ automatic part of our brains, which remains dominant, to an elephant.
Our animal instincts are more like elephant instincts, according to Haidt.
As we evolved over thousands of years the elephant developed a ‘rider’, which is our ability to reason.
Our unruly elephant instincts still set the direction of travel, but we now have a rider which attempts to manage and justify the elephant’s responses in order to make them more socially acceptable and communicable to others.
This is why reasoning with someone about something can be so ineffective, especially in the heat of the moment. In those times the elephant has already set the direction of travel, and appealing to the rider through reason will make virtually no difference whatsoever.
It’s also why convicts that a judge finds more attractive will consistently get lighter prison sentences, why we’re more inclined to make harsher judgments if there’s a bad smell around, and even why we become temporarily more morally conservative when in proximity to a hand sanitiser because we have a greater sense of purity.
These are just some of the experiments and research Haidt has drawn on to prove that our elephant instincts are in far more control than we might realise.
The Morality of Climate Change
Haidt’s theory is part of the ongoing debate about the psychology of human morality.
It’s not definitive, but it does offer some interesting insights into why we seem to be disagreeing with each other more and more.
In a society that considers itself as rational and enlightened, we increasingly draw on information, data, and evidence to further public discourse. But as this is in the realm of the rider it does little to persuade our elephants, and only widens the gap between opinions as we find ourselves jumping to disprove the others’ position.
This was something I used to see a lot of in MP meetings and, counterintuitively, it was mostly when the conversation became more emotive.
At this point the elephants in the room usually became increasingly agitated and unable to listen, pulling the riders further in the other direction.
To change someone’s mind we have to appeal to and appease their elephant, which are the core beliefs and values that already exist. (Where these come from is open to much debate, but Haidt proposes that they are genetically determined… which is a whole other blog post.)
This is why building trust and finding common ground worked so well in halting the cycles of conversation breakdown between campaigners and MPs.
How Reason-Worship Hinders Us
The limitation of reason is that it automatically creates a ‘right/ wrong’ dynamic.
Emotions are subjective and spectrum-like, where reason asserts that there is a right answer and we usually think it’s our one. This automatically makes discourse more challenging.
As Western civilisation has increasingly striven to detach itself from our emotions in order to achieve ‘reason’ we have found that instead the opposite has been true. Public trust in experts has decreased and reasonable, constructive debate has become increasingly strained.
Research like Haidt’s enables us to generate greater self-awareness of our lack of objectivity. And why should this be something to avoid? Why shouldn’t it be something that we celebrate?
Why can’t our diversity of perspectives become something to celebrate?
We are all coming at the raw data of what’s unfolding in the world with our subjective experiences, perspectives, and preferences. Every single person on this planet, even those we disagree with on the strongest of terms, has something to communicate to us that will deepen and enrich our understanding.
And if we know that our opinions are likely to have at least some grounding in subjective emotions (even for the most rational amongst us), it might be possible to hold them a little lighter and become a little more open to other perspectives also.
How Mismanaged Emotions Hinder Us
The limitation with the delusion that reason is free from the influences of emotions is that when gut instincts say ‘that is wrong but I can’t explain why or I can’t prove it to you on those terms’, those instincts can be side-lined and sometimes to our detriment.
They are, for example, the insights of indigenous people who have fought for environmental protections for centuries before the Western world woke up to the reality of climate change.
And as the various sides of political debates watch the others, wide-eyed in horror at the increasing hysteria and rhetoric used to justify themselves and rally supporters, we are in danger of perpetuating the age-old notion that if emotions could just make way for reason once and for all, many of our problems would be solved.
Emotions, feelings, and gut reactions are quite literally the elephants in the room that we cannot ignore because they are the main source of intelligence we have to work with in our lives. All of us.
Whether we like it or not, they are our driving force.
So it is not in suppressing or rationalising away our emotions that we might find peace for humanity — because we know that in reality that’s not possible — but instead in the humble embracing of our subjectivity by learning to navigate, understand and communicate our different perspectives with each other.
That’s why diversity, the subject of my next blog post, is also essential to the success of the climate movement.
An emotion, like any other piece of data, is neither right nor wrong, is not be evaluated as a help nor a hindrance, but seen instead as a vital insight to be taken into account and explored in its own right.
And with our elephants happily assured in this way, we might find our riders more able to do their jobs properly too.
About Me I’m Jo,
formerly the founder Director of national climate change charity, Hope for the Future. I am currently researching eco-anxiety and how we can build emotional resilience in our response to the climate emergency.
Welcome to Climate.Emergence- a place to emotionally process what on earth is happening to us and our planet.