Jonathan Dodd returns. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
We British tell ourselves, and anyone else who’ll listen, that we’re no good at emotions. I’m not sure I agree with that. What we do is we use emotions as a resource. Which ought to be a good thing in these energy-starved days, because human emotion is an infinitely-renewable resource.
I’ve decided there should be a new discipline called Emotion Engineering, to study the way we use emotions to manipulate ourselves and everyone around us, like moving our relationship furniture around to suit our needs.
Emotional excommunication
I once knew a family in which there were three sisters. Two sisters were always talking to each other and approved of by their parents. One sister was always out of favour with everyone else and talked about behind her back relentlessly.
This isn’t an unfamiliar situation, except that the emotional excommunication never lasted for more than six months, when a different sister found herself out in the cold. This happened like clockwork for years. The only exciting thing about it was trying to predict which one would be next to pick the short straw.
Of course this arrangement worked very well for all involved. Whatever their collective emotional needs were they were satisfied, otherwise someone would have broken the game up by refusing to play.
Real Guilt and Comfort Guilt
One of the great things about being human is the infinite variety of possibilities out there to get involved in, or just to watch unfolding.
Recently a friend of mine was going to come over and stay the night. No big deal. He cried off, citing family difficulties, and said that he felt guilty about not being able to come, even though it wasn’t his fault. Or maybe it was. My jury is still out on that one. My reply was this – ‘There are two kinds of guilt. Real Guilt and Comfort Guilt.’
It was one of those moments when I listen to what comes out of my mouth and like the new idea very much.
Heavier artillery
I think we do use our emotions to manipulate other people, but I don’t think we’re aware that we’re doing it most of the time. When I was a teenager my parents used to try to make sure I came home when they wanted me to at night by telling me how disappointed they were when I came home late.
I suspect they didn’t have any heavier artillery in their armoury, and it didn’t work with me, because I didn’t want to feel guilty about their disappointment. Besides, staying out late was so much more fun.
Sorry, Mum and Dad. I know I caused you a lot of trouble. But I turned out all right in the end.
Emotions are real
I think my friend actually felt guilty, and I think he was emotionally astute enough to know that it reflected well on himself to feel guilty about letting me down. I also think he wanted to stop me asking him any more about what it was that caused him to cancel. Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.
But he wasn’t astute enough to understand that he gave it away by mentioning that he felt guilty in the first place. Because emotions are real. We really experience emotions and for the most part we don’t have any control over them.
They’re a natural reaction to things that happen to us, expressed physically. We know when we’re happy, or sad, or guilty, or embarrassed, because we feel happy or sad or guilty or embarrassed. We probably can’t describe how we know, but we do know.
Do lots of creative things with our emotions
And the beauty and complication of being human is that we can do lots of creative things with our emotions.
We can hide them and celebrate them and deny them and we can manufacture them, or at least the way they make us feel. And we can use them in our relationships with others and with ourselves. For better or for worse.
Perhaps there’ll be Professors of Emotionology eventually. You heard it first here.
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
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