Emotions can certainly be misleading: they can fool you into believing stuff that is definitely, demonstrably untrue. Yet emotions are also our indispensable tool for navigating, for feeling our way through, the much larger domain of stuff that isn't susceptible to proof or disproof, that isn't checkable against the physical universe.
Interpretation
Emotions can mislead us but are essential for understanding beyond logic and proof.
In this quote, Francis Spufford emphasizes the dual nature of emotions; while they can sometimes deceive us into believing falsehoods, they are also crucial for navigating the complexities of human experience that cannot be measured or proven through empirical evidence. Emotions serve as a guiding force in our lives, helping us make sense of abstract or subjective realities that extend beyond mere facts.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of intuition in decision-making, one might use this quote to highlight the role of emotions.
There have been low moments before, but Christianity is an incredibly adaptable organism, using different parts of its repertoire to mutate into new ecological niches, yet preserving intact its story of grace, of love improbably triumphant.
Taking the things people do wrong seriously is part of taking them seriously. It’s part of letting their actions have weight. It’s part of letting their actions be actions rather than just indifferent shopping choices; of letting their lives tell a life-story, with consequences, and losses, and gains, rather than just be a flurry of events. It’s part of letting them be real enough to be worth loving, rather than just attractive or glamorous or pretty or charismatic or cool.
All things are created twice. There's a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation to all things
If a juror feels that the statute involved in any criminal offence is unfair, or that it infringes upon the defendant's natural god-given unalienable or constitutional rights, then it is his duty to affirm that the offending statute is really no law at all and that the violation of it is no crime at all, for no one is bound to obey an unjust law.
Haldane was engaged in discussion with an eminent theologian. "What inference," asked the latter, "might one draw about the nature of God from a study of his works?" Haldane replied: "An inordinate fondness for beetles."
Violence is fomented by the imposition of singular and belligerent identities on gullible people, championed by proficient artisans of terror.
It might be added that corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.
Memory is a code to who we are, a collection of not just dates and facts but also of epic emotional struggles, epiphanies, transformations.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.