In Which Knowledge is Acknowledged

Well, it's been that sort of day (the sort of day where I declared my intention to do something completely different), so I've updated the links bar to the right of the actual bloggy bit. There are still a bunch of moribund links there, but who am I to say that Pun will never decide that you can be a married lady and also still update your blog? (For instance.) So I've just sort of left those ones at the bottom of the list in a gesture of... patience, maybe? Supportiveness? Let's face it, it's really more of a gesture of the inability to throw anything out. A lot of the mess in my house is a gesture of that sort of spirit. Year 12 was 7 years ago, but who knows? Those notes still might be useful one day. I couldn't possibly throw them out. This makes my house a bit of a fire hazard, potentially, but on the upside, although the risk of fire increases with the amount of paper I can't bring myself to just flipping throw out, the amount of secret non-regret regarding any such conflagration varies proportionately with it. Which is to say, although it makes a fire more likely, I'd be less sad about one?

I've begun a bunch of posts recently, but they've all been just a bit not-very-good, so I haven't finished or posted them. The problem is, right, that this isn't all thought out well in advance. These posts are the actual thought processes that I'm having about whatever I'm writing about. So if I have an idea for something that would maybe make a good post, I have to strike a careful balance. If I don't think about it at all, I can't remember what it was. If I think about it much at all, though, by the time I get here I've thought it right through, and the whole things seems strangely stilted and false. Like a wooden actor reciting lines by rote, rather than an impassioned orator holding forth. (Not that these are ever that much like that, but you see what I mean).

Anyway, one of the things was that the other day I saw a jacaranda tree in bloom! It was also in leaf, and it was a pretty saplingy looking tree, so it looked sort of uncertain about the whole thing, but there were definitely flowers. This means it is officially the beginning of the season of being inappropriately, over-earlily and not-as-secretly-as-would-be-ideal-ily Excited about Christmas! Yay! Those of you who've known me for years saw where this paragraph was going from about the 14 word, but for the rest of you, this is an official warning. Soon I will be even more excitable than usual.

I was going to write this whole post about how I was absentmindedly nice to people (that is one weirdly spelled word, isn't it? "People"?) last weekend and a couple of times, as a result, people gave me things for free, but like I said, I overthought it. Whenever I tried to write that thing I either sounded like a smug preachy twit "Hey, you guuuuuuuys, I'm really sooo nice, you should all try it!" or like I was only doing it because sometimes if you're nice, people just give you stuff "Hey, I like your, uh, teeth or whatever. Anyway, do I really have to pay for this cocktail?", so that was unfortunate.

Still, it was pretty great you guys, I totally did get stuff and people were really nice.

Also, I was talking to my Dad the other day and he said that he was at a conference (or job interview? Or something? Anyway, he was reviewing a bunch of young up and coming types)recently and they had to do an impromptu speech (it would be awesome if that was a job interview type thing, because that skill has come in useful all of maybe twice in my life, and I'd like to find out if I'm actually any good at it, or just filled with misplaced smugness: all too possible) on the topic of which they thought was more important: emotion or knowledge. Which is fine except that apparently every single person posited that emotion and feelings were definitely more important. I caught myself doing it too. He told half the story and I was all "oh, feelings, obviously" but when I learned that I was just another sheep in this respect, I got sort of suspicious.

Because, OK, right, fine, but ALL of them? So no-one really thinks that knowledge is more important? Even sometimes? Is this because of Disney movies? Have we all been raised to believe that "follow your heart" is a better message than "stop being such an idiot"? I bet that's it.

I've never seen a movie which, given the choice between head and heart, doesn't pick the latter. Which is cool, yes. I mean, being in love is peachy, and reaching out to people with empathy is important, and whatever. But seriously? Have none of us, at our age, really taken a moment to go "wait, I'm taking the advice of a cartoon princess who has faced a total of one adversity in her recorded life, and that advice is that when in doubt, I should listen to a pump"?

What does that even mean, to follow your heart rather than your head? Given, as I've intimated, that we've pretty much established that the poetic emotional "heart" per se is not what you might call a meaningfully separate entity to the brain, isn't this just laziness? Since both your knowledge/understanding and your feelings/emotion are in the same spot, in the same organ (give of take 15cm), how can one be inherently superior to the other (obviously there's more than actual proximity at work here; ot totally value my frontal cortex more than my uvula, for instance)?

I think it's really just that your "heart" usually tells you to do what you actually want to do. "I know I should write my essay, but my heart tells me to go to the beach". "I know that I'll lose my job if I don't answer the call, but my heart tells me that my family is more important" (this latter is a big theme in movies. Also, one's heart very often wants one to hurl one's mobile (or "cell") off a cliff or out a window or into a pond or something: your heart wants you to upgrade to an iPhone, maybe?) But here's the thing, that's obviously that you "know" that your family is more important. Or whatever. It's really just lazy thinking. The real message is "do the thing you would really prefer to do".

Because knowledge is useless in a vacuum, sure, but feelings in a vacuum are meaningless. I may have no use for my knowledge of what Caesar said to the Tenth Legion (although I bet that comes in useful before I die), but it's probably better than that feeling you get where you're sad for no reason. Even being happy for no reason, while nice, is not actually as nice as feeling happy and knowing that it's because of something actually good happening. Because it's also not sustainable. Feelings need knowledge more than knowledge needs feelings. (Note: if I'd taken the other tack and was writing this the other way around, or if I'd gone with my original idea of having 2 posts which debated with one another, I would, at this point, mention that it's easier to learn things which have emotional valency. I know this because of Science. So in fact, it's what you might call a commensurate, if not symbiotic, thing.)

Maybe it's a Class Anxiety, Cultural Cringe sort of thing. Here we are, a bunch of well-educated (don't be modest, you know that you're well-educated, otherwise you'd be unlikely to be bothering to read this, since blogs like this are definitely most useful as procrastination), heart-felt, Disney-raised young people, and we're all afraid to say that "Knowledge is power". This is because knowledge is so often stratified along socioeconomic lines. We fear that to say that knowledge is of any really meaningful use will be to imply that poor people, people who didn't finish high school, illiterate people, are somehow not as good as us. And this is a point which, in our heart of hearts, we have mixed feelings about.

Einstein famously said that "imagination is more important than knowledge" and you know what? If you've already been extensively educated in physics and are trying to derive a theory of relativity, so that you already have a basis of knowledge which you can afford to dismiss with an airy wave of the hand after using it, then sure. If you're trying to make a line of very popular posters and fridge magnets to console students, doubtless. If you're trying to sound modest to the layman and also thumb your nose at the smug pricks you work with, then by all means.(Bet you a dollar that this was what Eistein was up to). But the fact remains that imagination without any knowledge will only do you any good if you already happen to be a philosopher in the class of Socrates. Which, no offence, you aren't. I have a number of philosophical friends who take themselves and the internet marginally more seriously than might be considered strictly good for them, but even they can only build their castles in their sky because of having spent so long being talked to by people with their feet on the ground.

Also, people with autism are not measurably more dissatisfied than people with dementia, or amnesia, who've lost their knowledge. Granted, those people have lost something they had before, and bipolar folk tend to miss their emotions rather when they're trying to get their medications right, but I don't know that the people who've lost feelings are really as frustrated as people who've lost their knowledge.

People with intellectual disabilities such as Downs Syndrome never get as much knowledge, mind you. They seem pretty happy a lot of the time. Except that I suspect that might be one of those things that we really just desperately want to believe, that those poeple are happy, really. Firstly so as to allay our pity and that feeling which is akin to survivor's guilt, and secondly because we want to believe that we just get sad and stressed because we're so damn clever. Also, those children are hardly a case-controlled example. They are so cossetted and protected that of course they often look pretty happy. (Note: this is a good thing. I would not dream of thinking for a moment that that's not exactly how it should be).

Maybe our feelings are more important to others? Mothers of autistic babies and mothers of Downs babies both have a pretty terrible time, but the ones whose babies love them back are probably ultimately more satisfied with their lot. Unless we're dealing with a doctor or maybe a pilot in bad weather or something, we tend to value the sensitive niceness of others more than their knowledge. And even then, we really prefer them to be lovely as well as able to tell us that we don't have lupus. (Hey hey, check my pertinent yet obscure pop culture reference there. Expertly done.)

Maybe this is why our movies want us to follow our hearts? Because it's on a par with such messages as "it's nice to share" and "do unto others etc". It's not really for our own good at all that we should follow our hearts. It's for everyone else's?

Alternate conclusion: it's 1am and I've gotten a bit carried away? Who can say, really?

Still, I feel better knowing that someone, somewhere, has made a better-structured defence of rationality over affect than a "Cheer Up Emo Kid" t-shirt, which, let's face it, is the same thing. Being a capital-R-Romantic is so the century before last. In theory.