Logic & Emotion

I have been finding things to write about since a long time. Then I had a discussion with one of my more emotional and thus less logical classmate, whom I rarely even greet, on a sociological topic (sounds more scholarly than the real thing, seeing as it started on the freshman hotties). The classmate displayed a low aptitude to pursue a multifaceted, multivariable non-linear logical thought process. So, I was easily bored and started one of my subroutines while talking with him. I started analysing his arguments in a direction to predict the dude's hang-ups, insecurities etc by looking through the minor incoherencies, logical gaps and fall-throughs in his arguments. I thought of writing about the extrapolation I had done on my observations between the elevator and my room. While writing about it, I wanted to write 'emotions and logic cannot coexist'. But I knew there is much more to it than that. So, I decided to write on this topic.

One can easily observe that in a situation where emotion is involved, however strong logic may be, it rarely truly prevails. I wrote 'truly' to cover the situation where the decision is made based on sound logic but the person who made the decision is left emotionally unsatisfied and there always lingers a regret or doubt or a 'what if' based on pure emotion and no logic.

I do not condemn emotion as the thing wrong with the world. Emotion is what is responsible for the growth of humans. It enabled us to stand apart from the other species. This is what would please people driven by emotion. But if you really look at it, you will notice that other animals also have emotions, some have them much stronger than us. Then, what is it that stood us apart? Logic. Understanding. We stood apart because of our ideas, our knack for more, our ability to identify possibilities. This is what those biased towards logic or biased against emotion would agree to. But I try to pursue true truths. I believe that logic and emotion are meant to coexist. One is insufficient without another. If only logic was to rule, people would have no reason to live and humanity would have ended before starting. Now, if one argues that the aim or reason to live would have been to find out the laws of universe, or the Truth or something like that, please understand that that kind of behaviour i.e. passion or curiosity is fuelled heavily by emotions. If emotion was to rule, people would have failed to develop into what we are today. But then what of the animals? Don't they lack logic and have emotions? Well, there is something called instinct which I think is the basis of the animals' functioning. And I also think that their emotions and whatever logic they have are embedded deep into their instincts. But I am no expert.

I know I cannot give a truly unbiased view on this subject because I prefer logic over emotion but I try to resist minimizing the importance and role of emotions. My view places logic as the main driving force with emotion as a necessary appendage, surely necessary though still just an appendage. I don't really understand emotions and thus I can't compare logic and emotions extensively. All I can do is observe and shoot in the dark. And the sad part is you cannot know for sure if you hit the target or not!

I would like to ponder upon logic and emotion but what stops me is that would be equivalent to an observation observing itself. I know that one could argue that this kind of a thing is possible and cite a theory that says, considering God as the observer and the universe as the observation, that the observer is a part of the observation and was born with the observation. But that is a different thing because that theory speaks about one part of an observation observing another part, whereas in my case the observation is a part of the observer (I'm talking about the structure and the roles of logic and emotion in a human). Another reason could be some form of application of the observer effect.

I could keep on rambling about it as new thoughts keep coming to me but its pointless, as I just explained.