I was talking to someone the other day about our treatment of sexual offenders. She seemed to be insinuating that I didn’t care about the plight of the victims because by proposed solutions were all aimed at reducing sexual violence rather than punishing the offenders.
I told her that the injustices visited upon the victims of sexual abuse made me very angry, which made me passionate about fixing the problem. Having set my goal of reducing sexual violence, it behooved me not to let my anger at the perpetrator distract me from the task of achieving that goal. If I’m ever presented with a choice where I can either punish the perpetrator or help the victim (or future potential victims), I chose the latter. You can’t always do both at the same time.
So I suppose emotions can be rational in that they can arise from truth, but they can also be very irrational in that they prevent winning your goals.
I was talking to someone the other day about our treatment of sexual offenders. She seemed to be insinuating that I didn’t care about the plight of the victims because by proposed solutions were all aimed at reducing sexual violence rather than punishing the offenders.
I told her that the injustices visited upon the victims of sexual abuse made me very angry, which made me passionate about fixing the problem. Having set my goal of reducing sexual violence, it behooved me not to let my anger at the perpetrator distract me from the task of achieving that goal. If I’m ever presented with a choice where I can either punish the perpetrator or help the victim (or future potential victims), I chose the latter. You can’t always do both at the same time.
So I suppose emotions can be rational in that they can arise from truth, but they can also be very irrational in that they prevent winning your goals.