Reason or Emotions

I have been reading about philosophy.  I have had some very interesting ideas.  During the middle ages scholars accross the board spoke about the emotions as being the most dangerous part of the human intellect.  The emotions tend to be very unstable, and lead to spontaneous and often selfish responses.  They held up REASON as the most important part of the human intellect.

However, in our American culture, if you look at pop culture, emotions are the most important, and reason is NOT very important at all.   Rather than telling a young person to use reason when making a decision, they are told to do what feels right, be yourself, follow your heart.  In other words, your emotions are much more important than your mind.  It is totally different from the medivel mindset.

Why the difference???   Here is my hypothesis.  I would love to hear your ideas and comments.   In the middle ages, life was much closer to the animal world.  Almost EVERYONE lived on a farm.  Animals would have been part of every persons life for food, for travel, and other areas.   Since animals were always present(Wild animals and domestic animals) people wanted to separate themselves from animals.  Animals appeared to just fulfill all their whims.    REASON separated us from the animals.

Today, we are no longer close to animals so we do NOT have to make that distinction.  Today we are surrounded by machines and computer.   Machines and computers are always present, and the thing that distinquishes us from machines is NOT our reason, but our emotions.    Our emotions separate us from computers.   Our emotions make us human (As Spock and Data both showed in the Star Trek programs.)

Emotions or Reason???  It seems to depend on how we want to define ourselves in our environment.   We are made up of EMOTIONS, REASON, and the WILL.   Perhaps it is the WILL that is really important.

peace