The Power of Emotions, and the Danger of Repressing Them

Through the discussions we have been having and the films we watched in class, I learned and realized how powerful emotions are. For instance, critics and studies tend to disregard the value of emotion when evaluating it as a way of obtaining knowledge of the empirical world. This is because when our emotions are applied to our thinking when we attempt to make important decisions, our way of perceiving the potential benefits and disadvantages of that decision is highly filtered by the emotions in question, which in turn can lead us to make choices which could be seen as irrational. When we let our emotions take control of ourselves, and fail to think with reason, we become more vulnerable to making bad decisions, some of which can have irreversible impacts on our lives.

Since examples are always more powerful than simple declarations, here is a little story that happened to me and that made me question the legitimacy of emotions in acquiring knowledge. I was once in a restaurant and at the end of my meal, had a short discussion with the waiter. He told me that he had lived about ten years in Russia, teaching engineering at a university after having studied there. Right away, I was surprised by seeing him there and asked him why he had come back. He answered that he came back for his family and had been unable to find an equivalent position to the one he had in Russia. This is a perfect example of how a weak control of one’s emotions can lead to life-changing consequences. Because he did not think rationally and see the disadvantages of coming back to Morocco and trusted his emotions more than his sense of reason, he was now working as a waiter, whereas he could have stayed a professor. 

On the other hand, after leaving the restaurant, I asked myself a few questions. What if he was happy with his new life? After-all, what seemed irrational to me might be completely logical to him, and who was I to judge? If he is content with his new life, then can we still say that emotions are unreliable and untrustworthy? What if the disadvantage of being away from his family outweighed the inconvenience of having a lower-paying job for him? Using this point of view, it becomes harder to say that emotions should be repressed. Indeed this experience made me realize that in the contrary, we should give our emotions a lot more attention. Although emotions like love, hate and jealousy can make us do regrettable actions and are, to some degree, causes of human conflicts like wars and crimes, emotions are part of who we are and make us human. Indeed,  it is the complexity of our emotions which defines us from other animals. Without emotions, we would not have art, nor would we have music, or literature. Every single action or thought that we have is impacted by our emotions, and if they are repressed, we can lose our sense of ethics.

The movie “Equilibrium”, directed by Kurt Wimmer in 2002 explores the danger of repressing our emotions to the point where emotions become illegal. In a world that was decimated by a third world war, emotions are outlawed because they are seen as the source of all human vice and evil. However, being essential parts of humanity, emotions can not be repressed that easily and always end up coming back. Any person caught feeling, in what is called “sense-offense” is “processed”, or executed. The following scene shows the execution a former police agent guilty of sense-offense, who is terminated because he read a book of poetry. This shows the danger of repressing our emotions. As seen in the documentary “Flight from Death”, we cause evil by trying to label something as evil and trying to eradicate it by all means. In “Equilibrium”, emotions are labeled as evil, which in turn only leads to evil itself.

Dimitri Richard