Emotions should be allowed in politics, too

Emotions should be allowed in politics, too.

That sentence has been hanging around in some part of TheEditor's cerebral cortex since it popped up on the computer screen as a regularly shaped composition of adjacent pixel values.

The light emitted by the region of the LCD display traveled through about one yard of a breathable gas mixture (about 78% nitrogen, around 20% oxygen, trace amounts of other gases, some dispersed dust and biological material), then through a silica based, metal enclosed material, some more "air" into the layered biological light sensor assembly of the homo sapiens entity we call TheEditor, finally via a wide nerve into the brain.

Emotions should be allowed in politics, too.

The statement was the headline of an OpEd piece in a major German paper in the context of the Scottish independence vote. 

In the piece, the OpEd'er acknowledged that individuals would, at the end of the day, decide based on their feelings.

Okay, so they have to write something to justify their paychecks, TheEditor had fumed, we all recall it. But why is this even worth mentioning?

Because it exposes the carefully constructed world of "rational" thinking as a mirage, an artificial edifice we all pretend to accept.

For convenience.

To justify behaviors and actions we would otherwise suffer from.  To make us feel good if we buy something for a buck at a garage sale and keep the millions it turns out to be worth all to ourselves. To kill humans and other animals for the greater good. Or take the upcoming German road toll - it was born out of sheer spite, but we cannot say we make politics out of spite. So it becomes an infrastructure fund, necessary in times of tight budgets.

To treat life as a poker game or a chess match. Everybody makes fun of a player who hurls a chessboard or who throws the cards at an opponent - that's what gets the youtube hits.

Yet, even the most rational conversation is all about emotions. In public discourse, we tend to treat aspects like the emotional aspects of shopping as a big discovery or something we'd rather not mention.

Or as theater, as a show, to explain away the sheer travesty and indignity of a person exercising a supposedly logical and rational job.

If even folks like judges, trained for almost a decade in reason and logic can't keep it together, who dangerous must the rest of us be?

To make it worse, "the rest of us" often do manual labor, using tools that any surge of emotion turns into deadly weapons. So, we select for those who don't cry, we select for those who - even though they have to work on that straight face like the young Ms. Rice - deny emotions, yet play politics with them all the time.

Psychologists know, preachers should know, and those who suffer from PTSD not only know but live it.

It's all about emotions.

If we did not get biochemical satisfaction out of a mathematical equation, there would be not math.  If we did not feel bad about losing a business deal, there would be no PR, no backstabbing in the sales office.

Should someone who writes Emotions should be allowed in politics, too be hired as a political journalist?

Of course, because it won't matter much.