Morality, Emotion Markers and Social Change

For most people, most of the time, emotions serve as the markers that bequeath value, virtually all value. Of course there are exceptions. Scientific formulae and systems have a value largely independent of emotions, at least for scientists. But in the mundane world for most people, most of the time, value seems to be generated by emotions, even in the mundane life of scientists.

These considerations help me now understand the utter boredom I felt in the various church services I attended in my youth in the southern U.S. In addition to the Jewish services when I was living with my parents, I was exposed to a variety of Christian churches at my private high school, since attendance was required every Sunday. Even though I tried, I could never get beyond the words. The one exception was a working class black church that I visited on my own, alive with a community of singing, shouting, and obviously underneath the entire service, feelings.

Emotions point us toward meaning in our lives. Moral codes unaccompanied by emotions, even weak emotions, are apt to become as meaningless as most of the other cognitions we carry around. Such codes become empty husks, leaving their holders without moral direction in real life, or importantly, providing excuses for destructive directions.

Repression of Emotions

If it is emotions that enliven moral codes, then there is a vast problem. In modern societies, spontaneous emotions are systematically discouraged, both in children and in adults. Boys, especially, quickly learn that emotions other than anger are usually taken as a sign of weakness. Women in the workplace know that crying is unlikely to be tolerated.

Hospice workers report that most families quickly become intolerant of normal grieving, to the point that mourners may be given psychiatric drugs to stop their crying. In the huge realm of medical research, emotions are usually portrayed as the enemy. Not just anger, but also grief, fear and shame. A new diagnostic label, Emotional Lability, is applied to what may be normal emotions. An even more belittling label is Emotional Incontinence. Perhaps these terms should make us more thankful for the diagnostic label of alexithymia (emotionalessness), which is probably far more widespread than too much emotion.

My father died a year ago today, the rooster started crowing when they carried Dad away

The pieces of my heart that have been ripped away from me

In his brilliant study of the modernizing process in six European countries over a period of five hundred years, Elias (2000) found that in the movements toward modern societies, shame not only became more and more important as a guide to social life, but also became more and more repressed. These findings support my sense that something needs to be done before our civilization collapses entirely.

Are There Any Remedies?

The completely repressive attitude toward emotions (except anger) in modern societies makes most moral codes problematic, mere trappings or lethal ideologies, and creates many other dysfunctions. Changing this attitude would be extremely difficult, since it is instilled in each of us from childhood. As adults it is a powerfully intrusive social institution, yet is more or less hidden from view.

Some time after the title change, a colleague suggested a more drastic step: for registration, divide the class into two, one for men, the other for women. But arrange that the two classes meet at the same time and place. This step proved to be effective. It apparently corrects for the different amount of interest in the seminar between men and women. It seems be a first option for many women, but a last option for many men.

However, when discussion turned to open references to emotions, such as anger, grief, fear, or shame/embarrassment, most of the men slowed down. Although the women were vitally interested, at least half of the men would grow silent. Occasionally one of the more vocal men complained about what seems to him excessive attention to emotions. Most of them just withdrew. What to do to get this group involved again?

Although the classes were wildly successful, the scale was so small as to make little difference in the larger society. The freshmen seminars were so small, by rule, that even if I taught in all three regular quarters, I would have dealt with only 60-80 students. So I began to think of a different format for that might enlarge the effect of such a class by extending it to a national level.

A New Class: Pop Songs and Life

The purpose of the new class would be to help the students compare the songs they love with real life, and in doing so, learn about real life emotions and relationships. In particular, the class would teach how alienated and repressive most Top40 songs have been in the past, and still are in the present. Even students who are not particularly interested in pop songs might be attracted to the course as a vacation from the usual classes. It would be an accessible introduction to the social science of the emotional/relational world.

The teacher would help the students to bring out the implications of the lyrics, especially the way emotions and relationships are represented, and how the situations described might be changed in real life. In the lively discussion that would probably ensue, the students might get ideas about the realities of love and romance.

My forthcoming book on pop love songs (Scheff 2010) could serve as a manual for the teachers, but a much shorter and simplified booklet could be available as a reader for the students. It would briefly outline the basic lyric patterns on the Top40 and the representations and distortions of emotions and relationships in most lyrics. In this way, popular songs could become learning songs, as well as being popular. Or at least, this possibility could be discussed in the classes.

The courses described above could lay the groundwork for a yearly national contest for new song lyrics. Cash awards would be made, of course, for the most creative and attractive lyrics. Guaranteed airtime would also be part of the prizes. The winning lyrics would need to be creative and attractive. Yet they would also point toward unalienated love and acknowledged emotions, in a way that the overwhelming majority of past lyrics have not. The classes and the contests could reinforce each other, spreading new ideas and practices in real life.

Conclusion

This note has proposed that emotions might play a major role in morality by serving as markers that distinguish important cognitions from the mass of unimportant ones. To the extent that this proposition is true, then we are facing a vast problem. Most emotions are thoroughly repressed in modern societies, emptying moral codes of sources of meaning, and creating havoc in individual and collective relationships. For the purpose of discussion, two suggestions are made for programs that might begin to lift repression. These programs or others for a similar purpose would require great effort, but our survival may depend on change from the discouragement of feeling in modern life.

References:

Haidt, Jonathan. 2003. The Moral Emotions, in Handbook of Affective Sciences, edited by Richard Davidson, Klaus Scherer, and H. Goldsmith. 852-70. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Scheff, Thomas. 2007. Hidden Emotions: Responses to a War Memorial. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology. 13 (2) 1-9.

Styron, William. 2009. Rat Beach. The New Yorker. New York: July 20.

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