As an educator, I’ve been hopeful that when people know better, they will do better. But with each passing day and incident by incident, I am losing that hope. I don’t want to become a cynical person, but it seems that the emotional side of humanity seems to overrule sound judgement and good decision making. Several incidents this week, some big and some small, made me question the role education actually has in moving humanity towards a better future.
I was involved in a simple conversation over lunch this past week with colleagues about the financial planners advice to keep a mortgage during retirement. Although the financial reasoning clearly demonstrates the benefits to keeping a mortgage over purchasing a new smaller house outright, the emotional pull one colleague felt over being debt free kept her from being convinced that paying a mortgage was the thing she would do in retirement.
Another small incident that contributed to my disappointment in education was when a colleague from a different department called me at home to ask advice about how to handle a situation in which she felt she was being unfairly treated by a superior. Both she and the supervisor have PhDs and advocate for social justice. They are highly educated and I personally have great respect for them both. Looking at the situation from an educated standpoint, the treatment made no sense. It wasn’t until the probable emotions were exposed that the ill treatment began to make perfect sense.
Humans are emotional beings. We are motivated by positive emotions like love, compassion and empathy to do good. However, we go to war, we steal, we kill, and we will even tear down our own house behind negative emotions like fear, jealously, blind ambition, saving face, hatred, and rage. When enough negative emotions are stirred up, people are willing to injure themselves in the process of destroying others. Sometimes we have to go to war to stop evil from spreading, like in the case of Hitler’s Germany. But other times, we are driven by the greed and ego of a few who in turn ignite the negative emotions of the masses to do their bidding.
The big events of the past week involving Iran and immigration make we wonder if we have learned anything from our history. This administration has stirred up enough negative emotions towards human migrants that too few people protest when he announces a round up of 11 million undocumented immigrants. The family separation and human suffering that such an act would cause would be unpresented. What did we learn from the recent war in Iraq? It was predicated on the lies of a few men in high places. We were easy to fool because of our collective emotions surrounding the horrific events on 9/11. What emotions will lead us to go to war in Iran? I’m convinced that war in Iran will not be based on logic or even truth, but on human emotions and we will all lose.
I don’t want to be cynical and I can’t give up on education entirely. But clearly education alone cannot win over emotions. So, I’m wondering if those of us of good will need to begin to combine education with positive emotions like love, compassion and empathy to try to combat the negative emotions this president is using to do harm to humanity. The very idea of tapping into the powerful human emotions of love, compassion and empathy in combination with education about our common humanity and lessons from history gives me a renewed sense of hope.