Why We Resist Our Emotions

When I grew up, my role models always stressed that I needed to be more responsible and mature. When I didn't live up to these expectations and acted irrationally, I was scolded. Teachers would say these things all the time, "You guys are in 4th grade, you need to act like it." This was usually because of minor irrational child impulses: fidgeting, yelling, throwing things and so forth. Fifteen years later at George Mason a classroom can often resemble a monastery, the professor talking at a quiet attentive classroom. Sounds like my 4th grade teachers dream, but why? What happened in the last fifteen years? Surely some of my fellow classmates want to do all sorts of crazy impulsive acts in the classroom, but most of them keep a lid on it.

This great transformation of behavior has much to do with a overhaul of how we are taught and forced to think. Truth be told, the day you left your mother's womb, you were as much an animal as the chimpanzee or dog, but our society works tirelessly during our socialization to kill this inner animal, and create a "rational" human being. This is because acting without logic and reason makes you unpredictable. An irrational person's behavior cannot be forecasted. It lacks the consistency of reason you get when you have a rational decision making process, which is learned during all those formative years. Moreover, a society with irrational people will not function, let alone thrive because no one could trust each other in even the most basic of dealings. We built the Pyramids, and put a man on the moon because we all gave up our animal instincts and desires to conform to the reason and rationality the civilized world demands of its members.