By Patricia Mukhim
This article is a result of an incident at the Shillong Raj Bhavan on August 16 last. The occasion was an award ceremony named the RITI Academy awards instituted in memory of Crystal Gayle Kharnaior, daughter of noted artist and Khasi intellectual, Raphael Warjri. The five awards were given to persons who have made a mark in (a) the performing arts (b) media (c) academic excellence (d) as a vocal artist (e ) visual artistry. After the awards were distributed Newly appointed Governor of Meghalaya, Mr Chandrashekhar H Vijayashankar who dispensed with the written script pointed to a significant matter – which is the lukewarm response from the audience while the awardees were receiving their awards. The Governor said that each of the awardees had worked hard in their respective fields and deserved the award given to them hence the audience should rejoice in the achievements of these awardees and their loud resounding claps would encourage them to scale newer heights. The Governor verbalised what many of us feel at different award functions or performances. The claps are almost inaudible – as if the audience is in two minds about whether to put their hands together for those who are felicitated or not to, almost as if clapping is not for adults.
In the west, it’s a different scenario. At any event you are called to speak, when what you say resonates with people they will cheer and clap in the middle of your speech and spur you on. One can feel a surge of emotions in the room. Why is it that we Khasis are so emotionless as a people? Why are our emotions misplaced and directed only at certain issues and entities? The bulk of our anger is targeted at politicians; at the government, especially the ministers. We don’t get too angry about other things because we have not even analysed the origin of our anger. I believe we are very emotionally unintelligent people who never express our happiness outwardly as if that would make us look foolish. Even our anger is misdirected which is why issues are not addressed. I am glad that Governor Vijayashankar has pointed to this fatal flaw in our mental and emotional make-up.
To understand the role of emotions vis a vis reason I read up a couple of books from neuroscientists and psychiatrists. Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett’s books “Seven and a half lessons about the brain,” and “How Emotions are Made” speak about our tendency to place too much importance on the brain when emotions actually guide our reason and therefore our decision making. The problem with us individually and as a society is that we are not educated to handle our emotions using the brain because we have believed for the longest time that emotion is a primitive human response that’s likely to lead us astray. We have learnt from listening to adults around us that reason is cool, rational and sophisticated and therefore believe that all the engineers and scientists are where they are because of their ability to separate reason from emotion. Just how wrong we are in putting reason and emotion in separate cubicles in our minds has been proven by neuro-scientists and psychologists in this century. These findings are in fact intellectual breakthroughs of the century.
Very often, the Khasi society’s response to any problem is instant and often violent and then there’s a long hiatus before the matter is resurrected. Elders call this the aluminium pot effect. They say aluminium pots heat up quickly and cool down equally quickly. But is that because emotions have failed to guide our sense of reasoning, because we have separated the two for too long when they are actually embedded in one another? In the book, “How emotions are made,” Prof Barrett says we may think that in everyday life the things we see and hear, influence what we feel but it’s the other way around. What we feel alters our sight and hearing.
Barrett says that decision makers need emotions to take risks and venture towards creating policies for the poor. What they don’t see and feel does not hurt them or push them to do better. This is exactly the problem with our elected representatives today. They don’t see the poverty and health concerns of people in their constituencies because they are obsessed with their own upward mobility and that of their family members. They engage in meetings the entire day using their “brains” with no place for the emotions to guide their decision-making. That’s the reason why governance is failing. It has become a dry, mechanical, rational activity that looks at how much money there is to spend and how much is saved for attending to personal needs of the constituents. In both cases the emotions have been shut down so questions as to why people need to approach an MLA for paying for health care or for paying school fees and for buying school uniforms at the beginning of the year are never asked by the MLA or by the government of the day. Hence there is no attempt to address the gaps in health care and provide education that does not pinch the purses of the poor too much. If the government health system was working well, why would anyone need to go to the MLA and seek his help for healthcare? The emotional brain should tell the minister/MLA that there is a need to repair this broken system.
The fact that we tend to look at engineers, scientists and financial wizards as emotionally detached, calculating, always cautiously evidence like walking computers is in itself so wrong. We assume they are non-emotional people and therefore are doing well in life. Look at our examination system, particularly the questions for competitive exams. Most tests are standardized so there is only one-dimensional thinking allowed. There is no place for creative thinking which involves emotions. And we conveniently label those who don’t pass the standardised tests as too emotional and incapable of reason. Modern neuro-science says emotions put us in the right state of mind so that we can effectively think about the situation we are in. In his book , “Emotional,” neuro-scientist Ralph Adolph says, “An emotion is a functional state of the mind that puts your brain in a particular mode of operation that adjusts our goals, directs our attention and modifies the weight we assign to various factors as when doing mental calculation. In other words, emotions slant the mind in one direction or another depending on circumstances. When we see injustice the emotion of indignation comes to the fore and helps us develop empathy such that we want to address that injustice. The emotion of euphoria pushes our minds towards risk-taking while happiness makes us more creative and flexible in our thinking and disgust pushes us to reject immoral behaviour. Adolph adds that fear helps to amplify our senses and focus attention on issues. Anxiety makes us pessimistic and we are less likely to take chances. Sadness improves memory and helps us make more accurate judgments; it enables us to communicate better and to pay attention to fairness.
In another book, Permission to Feel, Yale scholar Marc Brackett guides us through the process of verbalising our emotions using the RULER method. Here R stands for Recognising the emotion; U – to Understand the emotion, L to Label; E to Express it and R to Regulate the emotion so that it does not get destructive and result in violence. Brackett further states that we need to be emotional athletes to be able to make great decisions in our lives and enhance our reasoning capacity. We humans need to be ardent enough to feel and astute enough to understand our feelings. Life is more complicated than a series of calculus problems and to negotiate these complexes we need to use our emotions intelligently because they guide this navigation system.
Neuro-scientists all agree that while IQ scores may correlate to cognitive abilities, control over and knowledge of one’s emotion state is what is most important for professional and personal success.
Dr Lisa Barrett correctly states after years of study that the “Brain” is not for thinking. She says the brain’s most important job is to run the systems of our bodies to keep us alive and well. Even when our brain produces conscious thoughts and feelings they are more to manage the needs of our bodies than we realise. At the end of the day therefore, we are only as smart as our emotions. Sadly we live in a society that’s besotted with raw brain power but is not educated on how to manage emotions for greater productivity.