Recently I listened to Robert P. George, Director of the James Madison Program at Princeton University, on a podcast. As he discussed the importance of teaching students to marshal evidence for their positions and arguments, he observed that historians sometimes label eras the Age of This or That. The medieval era is sometimes called The Age of Faith; justice and righteousness were judged by their conformity to Biblical truths. The enlightenment era is sometimes called The Age of Reason; goodness and truth were judged by their conformity to science or reason. Then he mused, “How would we describe our age? My fear is that it is all too accurate to describe it as the Age of Feeling. … What’s the touchstone of goodness, justice, truth, right? It’s feeling. How you feel about something. Feelings are extremely unreliable.”
Unreliable, yes! Transient. Fickle. Skittish. Unpredictable. Opportunistic. Feelings are like stray cats (and I say this as a cat-lover).
You can wake in the morning with an anxious feeling, only to wonder in the afternoon what worried you so. Feeling excited about a future event, suddenly you inexplicably ache with nostalgia over an irretrievable past. You feel very lonely on a Monday, yet relish the solitude of a good book on a Tuesday. Feelings can change for nothing more significant than the sun breaking through the clouds.
I’m reminded of Ebeneezer Scrooge, in Charles Dicken’s Christmas Carol. He doubts his senses when confronted with the ghost of his former partner, Jacob Marley, “because a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You (Marley) may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.” Indeed, the swing between anger or delight, happiness or sadness, calm or agitation can hinge on a mere handful of peanuts in late afternoon when lunch is a distant memory.
So is Robert P. George right to describe our current era as the Age of Feeling? The recent pandemic provides several examples to support the claim. Whether the issue was school closures, vaccines, or the origin of the virus, plenty of people on the right and the left, the coasts and the fly-over country, the elites and the deplorables “felt” strongly about what was right, true and just. Three years later, actual evidence indicates everybody was wrong about at least something.
But of course, it’s not just the pandemic. Immigration, green energy, criminal justice, gun control, abortion…we all have Big Feelings (as my young grandson might say). But feelings are capricious, erratic and unstable. Evidence—inconvenient to both the red and blue tribes on every one of these issues—might provide a way forward, if we could just put our feelings into some proper perspective.
Eastern spiritual traditions encourage a detachment from feelings. They teach the letting go of feelings. They urge the practice of observing emotions as they arrive and leave without assigning them any particular meaning. (Don’t feed the stray cat; just watch him as he passes through your garden.) The eastern traditions seek to help people feel grounded, to free them from fickle feelings. Note the word: “grounded”. It is the very opposite of unstable, erratic, capricious.
So if feelings are unstable, our collective Big Feelings are a poor foundation for public policy. Eventually the foundation crumbles, and the edifice collapses with a good, strong smack. As a recent example, we can no longer ignore the evidence of the 2 million migrants who crossed the southern border in the past year. Our feelings about the situation are somewhat beside the point. These are 2 million actual people who need to eat, bathe, sleep, work, and exist. Where they exist, who pays for their existence, and how they exist are real problems that require real thinking. (A few weeks ago a Chicago alderman said, “We do have a plan, yet we cannot fund it.” Then it’s not a plan! Smack.)
Years ago, Capt. James C. Lovell, commander of the Apollo 13 space mission, was asked about his feelings after the explosion during that flight. “I wasn’t worried. We were too busy fixing the problem. Worry is a useless emotion.” When interviewed after receiving Illinois’ prestigious Order of Lincoln award, Lovell remarked, “Today people are not even thinking anymore. Their emotions run them various ways that don’t follow proper thinking.”
Even the United States—rich, powerful, and largely buffered by two oceans and the longest peaceful international border in the world—can only indulge in the decadent coddling of our feelings for so long. At some point, the evidence demands thinking critically. We set out the kitty kibble at our own peril, because eventually we will get scratched, and the cat will move on.
