I watched the movie Equilibrium just now. This post is not a review of the brilliant movie, but some musings it inspired. This movie raises a very important point - what is a human being’s purpose in life, if not to feel? Without emotion, all achievements or failures are alike. Friends, lovers and family will have no meaning because we do not feel anything for them. The uniqueness of the individual, the creative urge, the passion and drive to make things better; all gone, nonexistent.
Feelings make us vulnerable. They are also our greatest strength. Controlling emotions, expressing and channelling them correctly; is the way to making feelings a person’s greatest strength. But this is easier said than done. Emotions are unwieldy. They resist control. A crime of passion has a lighter sentence because the person committing it is perceived as not in control of their own actions. Their emotions have taken them over.
Feelings make life worth living. The feel of the first raindrops of a shower on sun-parched lips, the smile of a baby, the brilliance of a sunrise, the tenderness of a goodnight kiss - feelings evoked by different things in different people - these are the essence of humanity. They need to be controlled, however, or all hell breaks loose. Wars erupt, empires crumble, people live in fear, hunger and desolation. On a smaller scale, relationships sour and people are hurt.
Emotions get the better of judgement many times. But these setbacks should not depress humanity as a whole into thinking that the entire endeavour is pointless. Without emotion, without feeling; there is no progress. The urge to better oneself, and humanity through it, comes from deep within the psyche where primal instincts of survival and desire for perpetuation of the species reside — the emotional part of the mind.
Emotion is human. So is failure, and resurgence along with it. Human nature is elastic. Equilibrium in the case of humans can never be static, it needs to be dynamic equilibrium to truly achieve the full potential of our race and keep us from destroying ourselves. How do we achieve it then? That’s the eternal debate, but at least we can rule out the total removal of emotions and concentrate on the million other theories.
Feelings make us vulnerable. They are also our greatest strength. Controlling emotions, expressing and channelling them correctly; is the way to making feelings a person’s greatest strength. But this is easier said than done. Emotions are unwieldy. They resist control. A crime of passion has a lighter sentence because the person committing it is perceived as not in control of their own actions. Their emotions have taken them over.
Feelings make life worth living. The feel of the first raindrops of a shower on sun-parched lips, the smile of a baby, the brilliance of a sunrise, the tenderness of a goodnight kiss - feelings evoked by different things in different people - these are the essence of humanity. They need to be controlled, however, or all hell breaks loose. Wars erupt, empires crumble, people live in fear, hunger and desolation. On a smaller scale, relationships sour and people are hurt.
Emotions get the better of judgement many times. But these setbacks should not depress humanity as a whole into thinking that the entire endeavour is pointless. Without emotion, without feeling; there is no progress. The urge to better oneself, and humanity through it, comes from deep within the psyche where primal instincts of survival and desire for perpetuation of the species reside — the emotional part of the mind.
Emotion is human. So is failure, and resurgence along with it. Human nature is elastic. Equilibrium in the case of humans can never be static, it needs to be dynamic equilibrium to truly achieve the full potential of our race and keep us from destroying ourselves. How do we achieve it then? That’s the eternal debate, but at least we can rule out the total removal of emotions and concentrate on the million other theories.
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