emotions

Spring!

Oh I am really struggling with these posts! Everything I start seems to spiral out of control into a whole book that I do not have the time or expertise to write! Help! 

In the interest of keeping the project going, here's

Four Books I Think Are Relevant Here, Part 1: Between Us by Batja Mesquita

I picked up this book on a pilgrimage to Elliot Bay Books when we visited Seattle last summer. Mesquita is a Dutch researcher who worked in the U.S., and she studies emotions in cross-cultural contexts. tl;dr: If you subscribe to the romantic notion that deep down, all humans speak a common emotional language - that we all feel happy and sad and angry and proud - you should think again. There may well be a whole body of research supporting precisely this thesis, but that research just might have taken place in an exclusively Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic[1] context, and when we look at the world more broadly, it doesn't hold up.

According to Mesquita, what we feel has everything to do with how we were raised:

Becoming part of a culture means having certain kinds of emotions rather than others. Which kinds of emotions are foregrounded depends on the type of adult that is valued. In communities that foreground individual achievement, children need to feel good about themselves (pride). In communities that value obedience, or view the world as a dangerous place, children need to know fear. Communities focusing on propriety encourage shame. Inducing a given emotion is never good or bad in broad terms, but good or bad in a certain cultural context or community, depending on the goals of child-rearing. 

I think it could be argued that she swings the pendulum too far in the direction of moral relativism ("Beating, and inducing fear, are not bad in general, but bad in a culture that values self-confident and self-propelled children.") and ultimately I think the most compelling things she has to say come not from her research hypotheses, but from her own experience of living and working in different cultures. But her point is important: emotions are not just internal states; they serve a social function. I smile not just because I am happy but because I want to brighten your day. Yay! Except that if you come from a culture where smiling is more associated with humor, you might think I'm mocking you. Oops! The more culturally diverse the context in which we're living and working, the more we need to be cautious of assuming that our communication techniques - and our values - are shared and obvious. What do we do instead? There this book isn't so super helpful:

A first suggestion is to not assume you know or understand others' emotions. Instead, slow down, ask questions, and listen. In the field of mental health care, this is called an attitude of "not knowing" or "cultural humility." ...

The second is to face up to your own feelings and acts. ... Ask yourself what your own emotion wants you to achieve, and how this may be different from the direction that your interaction partner's emotion takes you. 

Or maybe that's the best we can do. Slow down. Look inside. Seems to be a refrain...

[1] WEIRD. Get it? This seems so gratuitous and also kind of great.