Breaking the stereotype of women ruled by their emotions and so, incapable of rationality.
I feel this story might not start the best way it should for I am already questioning myself about how should it start. Children question a lot. Scientists too. Questioning is in no ways a symptom of inner weakness… but it does feel that too much questioning goes against rationality.
There are norms, guides, structures that imply rebellion if you don’t follow them, but if they hadn’t been questioned in the Past, I would not have the freedom to write these words, I’d probably be living in world where women and men should live according to an unquestionable script and considered opposites, from weak to strong, emotional to intelligent. But before any thought happens we are energy, electric discharges and exchanges, opposites that interact with each other, and create denser energetic fields, magnetising one with another.
Still is there a difference between women and men? The quickest answer is yes.
Genetically, body composition and psychologically. Not energetically.
Embracing the theme Emotions vs Rationality, one can say that women and men feel things differently, but both feel. Less or more intensively, that depends on the subject, we all feel. Some might be better in staging control, others on letting their impulsiveness take the lead.
For some people staying in control represents strength of character, contrary to letting impulsiveness take over, but if your brain is wired to respond creatively towards events, you’ll probably defend impulsiveness as an healthier emotional response. To control or to let go? Is being Emotional the opposite of being rational? Staying cool or acting out? Usually is better to stay cool and let adrenaline levels lower down, before committing to any action.
Emotions, either in women or men, depend on so many factors that assuming that their presence is more prone to exist in women and therefore women are less rational than men, is to say that in face of a life threatening situation, despite the supposedly lack of emotions, a man will react smarter than a woman. Wrong. There's more to it.
Emotions are key in very important cognitive processes such as perception, reasoning and problem solving. Fear, an emotion, of an object, will provoke a response, fight, freeze or flight, that will help you avoid death. What lingers after, and that’s where the concept of Emotions starts to blur, is how Emotions outlast the event. And that’s where memory triggers anxiety and sends the requests to block deeper meaningful thoughts.
Emotions have a strong influence on our attention, as they modulate not only the selectivity of our attention as well as motivating us to action. Behaviour and intelligence, to a large extent, depend in these basic cognitive abilities: attention, perception, memory and language, which in turn define how one sees itself, as well as how one sees / feels the World. We are social beings, we need interaction, we learn from social situations, and Emotions, especially through empathy, help us to understand and navigate the world.
So are women, or men, who let their emotions flow freely, less rational than someone who shows absence of them? No.
Emotions are an important key in our cognitive retrieval process, a process which involves converting memories into conscious experience. This conscious experience is what directs us towards committing smarter choices.
When it comes to remembering where you parked your car you will use your visual memory to remember the floor and spot where you left it, and you’ll do this by telling yourself repeatedly the number or color of that specific spot, but to easier retrieve that information when it’s time to go back to your car, and probably to remember the specific number, there will be the memory of a story you told yourself to assist you in memorising it. This story we tell ourselves I believe to be very important.
Emotions are key to sustain our memories, and our own identity, as they not only bring to our attention what we believe to be important to focus on and later recall, as well as, for how long will that information be stored in our memories, and are we able to retrieve it.
A simple example, try to tell a story to a friend without any emotional input, and some days later ask them if they can retell it. Probably the story will not be recalled.
Emotions infuse stimuli in our brain storage, by labelling and organising experiences, almost as a photographic album cover, and being more or less emotional will not affect our rational thought process, but, and I need to highlight again this very important fact, negative emotions such as stress and anxiety may cause severe disruption and our memory will be affected by them.
Are women or men, whose emotions tend to be more at surface, less rational than others that keep their feelings to themselves and use techniques that diminish their presence? No.
Women and men, both feel. Feelings are the bodily states of Emotions, which play a huge role in both women and men cognitive ability as they are the pillars of our narrative memory.
If you are man, and you still wonder if it’s dangerous to let yourself feel, trust the science, and allow yourself to feel and express your emotions. The story you tell yourself now will determine who you’ll be in the future. Rationality will not bring you joy, just a strong sense of judgment and criticism.
Our ancestors were emotionally modern before they became rational thinkers. Language led us towards civilisation, but not without affection, which is present in the ancestral art of storytelling. In today’s fast paced world, unfortunately most stories appear disrupted and fragmented. Twitter, Instagram and any other applications that are supported by short phrases and content, corrupt a deeper sense of community, causing a superficial awareness of the world, but by connecting with others, and sharing stories, emotions, memories, we ensure our own health and security.
Rationality appeals to short sightedness.
Women and men that allow their Emotions rise to consciousness broaden their view of the world and experience life in its multitude of possibilities. Let’s call this the intelligence of Emotions.
Allow yourself to be immerse by Nature’s amazing beauty and feel its restorative and healing powers. The body and mind converge in any experience, for Emotions involve judgment.
“Nature, the soul, love, and God, one recognizes through the heart,
and not through the reason… Reason is a tool, a machine,
which is driven by the spiritual fire.”
Dostoyevsky
