The Retirement of Emotion
By FORREST ZENG ‘26
On the fourth floor of The David Geffen Galleries, down the hallway, next to a large opening to the next room, is a huge canvas with a painting on it. Painted by artist Yves Klein, Untitled Blue Monochrome, 1961 is a 195.1 x 140 cm cotton over plywood canvas completely painted in just one color: blue.
Yves Klein, Blue Monochrome, 1961 Courtesy of Art Basel
To some people, it is only a rectangle on the wall, surrounded by a white frame. But when gallery visitor Joe Lloyd saw the painting, he described Klein’s work, saying, “blue is the color of the cosmos, of the skies and the seas, and this sense of endless space pervades each of the Untitled Blue Monochromes.” Many viewers might not know how monochrome reflected Klein’s life and explorations. He believed monochrome was an “open window to freedom, as the possibility of being immersed in the immeasurable existence of color.” How could this mere painting invoke such profound emotions in its viewers, propelling Klein to fame for his usage of deep, saturated, and vivid colors? To determine why this rationally dull and unaesthetic painting could be considered “art,” we will need to start with something seemingly unrelated: fiction.
Thousands of years ago, evolution gifted man with the ability to create fiction. That is, the ability to form ideas and concepts that are not tangible realities. Importantly, fiction is what sets men apart from other animals. By creating fictitious imagined orders, countries, religions, and companies, humans achieved mass collaboration. No longer did we have to rely on intimate social relations, we could simply create a concept and have other humans follow it.
Of course, fiction is a bit more complicated than that.
Fiction
Author Yuval Noah Harari describes what makes an imagined order such as the United States work. He identifies three core tenets.
1. Fiction is embedded in the material world.
We actively participate as citizens in our country not because it is necessarily a physical object but because it affects the physical world. Nothing can “harm” the United States of America. It is not a concrete, tangible object. But the people, the land, and the physical infrastructures “governed” by this fictitious object are susceptible to attacks. Wizards called “lawmakers” wave their magic pens, writing specific spells on paper, and send them off to become very real, material results.
2. Fiction changes our desires.
“Every person is born into a pre-existing imagined order, and his or her desires are shaped from birth by its dominant myths,” Harari says. In other words, our desires are shaped by our communities and our governing orders more than we may think. When a child is born into a religious family, they are immediately submerged into a fictitious liquid that marinates slowly into their minds. As they grow in this religious community, their thoughts and desires, and in turn their actions, are influenced by the religion which they practice.
“The expanse of blue reminds us of simplicity and vivacity at the same time.”
3. Fiction is intersubjective.
Intersubjectivity is the intersection of the subjective beliefs of many humans. It implies that an imagined order must be shared by many people. For instance, one day, I may decide that I no longer subscribe to “Big Red.” I will no longer chant along with my fellow Exonians at E/a day, and I simply do not believe in the spirit and community that Exeter has brought me. It would change essentially nothing. The inter-subjective belief in this fictitious “spirit” that pervades our excellent athletes will change nil. If we were to try and remove this spirit, we would have to change the beliefs of all students at Exeter.
Humans have evolved so that fiction and material are indistinguishable. Once you create fiction and enough people believe in it, fiction becomes extremely powerful.
The State of Nature
The philosopher Thomas Hobbes believed that in the state of nature, before civilization or government, life was “solitary, poore [sic], nasty, brutish, and short.” He believed that humans are, by their singular nature, motivated selfishly. In lieu, humans are motivated by the preservation of themselves and their own egos. Thus, in the state of nature, Hobbes argued, humans had the liberty to use all natural abilities (including murder, robbery, etcetera) to preserve their own lives. Without control of the usage of natural abilities, there could be no common health or security, and the life of a natural human would be shortened as a result.
He proposed, that to maintain health and security, humans formed a contract. In particular, a “social contract” between individuals and a government. Individuals would give up their natural rights and perform obligatory duties, and the government would supply them with security and health. For instance, in almost every country in the world, we pay taxes and promise not to murder or rob in exchange for government schools, roads, bridges, hospitals, and healthcare. If we choose not to pay our taxes and to murder and rob, then we do not get schools or roads but instead time in prison for our breaking of the social contract. In this sense, the social contract is also fiction. The entity involved that is giving services and security, which we call “the governmen” is the powerful imagined order that enforces the social contract.
Thomas Hobbes’ belief in the human state of nature is contrasted greatly by the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau believed that the pessimistic view of human nature propagated by Hobbes was tainted by the expectations of civilization. He believed that humans are naturally peaceful. They have neither expectations nor jealousies of other people and thus would not seek conflict for selfish means. In our societal world, we expect pleasures that we would not have expected thousands of years ago. When our pleasures are satiated, we are temporarily satisfied before moving on to the next, more unrealistically unachievable thing. But in the human state of nature, we are satisfied because there is no improvement in our lives.
From a Hobbesian perspective, fiction is excellent for public wellness and security. But, Rousseau argued, the development of such a radical pace is incongruent with our emotional desires. Both perspectives are, I believe, true. In our state of nature, our health and wellness depended on the decisions of our emotions. If we felt fear, it meant that our wellness was under threat. If we felt happy, it meant that our wellness was being benefited. If we saw a fruit and deemed it beautiful, it is likely that the fruit would supply the sweet, tasty nutrients that we, as creatures without reason, needed. In Rousseau’s state of nature, humans do not care about improving their lives but instead, living in peace. In this sense, if we brought “civilized” humans that have jealousies and expectations of higher pleasure onto a desert island, then Hobbesian anarchy would ensue. The core difference is that in the original state of human nature, we are not jealous of others’ properties — Rousseau argues that private property is not a natural thing — nor are we expecting perpetual pleasure.
Emotion vs. Reason
Eventually, there arose a dichotomy in man’s life between emotion and reason because of fiction. When humans began using imagined orders, human security and the ability for man to reproduce rose. The invention of agriculture, writing, laws, and arts could not have been used to better the lives of all humans without a fiction that they could believe in. We could use reason and thinking to influence the lives of millions of people, making sure that the human species proliferated across the planet. But I believe that when evolution gave man the ability to say, “the spirit animal of our tribe is the lion,” it began its own retirement. The decisions of powerful and rational people replaced any instinctive decision that humans naturally received due to evolution. And while natural selection itself goes faster than ever because it has given us the most powerful tool to allow humans to survive and reproduce, the emotions it developed so men could make decisions drifted farther and farther from the reason given by fiction. Emotion, decision-making wise, is a distant approximation of reason.
One example of the conflict we often have internally between emotion and reason is present in the question: “Do we have a born obligation to be a part of our nation?” In other words, should we still have obligations to participate in the social contract, even if we were born into it without consent? I believe this is a question entailing emotion and reason. Consent is often seen as a right people are given. The obligation you have to a social contract is then determined by whether you consented to it or not. Importantly, it is not about the contract itself. I propose that this argument of consent is emotive. Our emotions tell us that we need time to make a decision rationally or irrationally. However, this leads us to believe that if we don’t make any decision at all, then we should not involve ourselves at all either. I believe that if we evaluate purely through the status of whether we had given consent to join a social contract, then it is emotive. Social contracts should be imposed by rational, altruistic people — and if we one day decide that the contract we live in is no longer rational, then we may leave it (e.g. leaving the country). However, many people evaluate the contract they live in emotively, which leads nations to embellish mottos and create grand anthems to satisfy the public interest.
“Standing upon a scale burdened on one side by the responsibilities of fiction, and the other by the responsibilities of emotion, always remember that which makes us deeply human.”
Another example of an incongruency between emotion and reason is in agriculture. Agriculture may have first been discovered as a small luxury for a small hunter-gatherer tribe. When fiction came, eventually, huge civilizations of humans relying solely upon agriculture arose. We attribute the invention of agriculture to the huge boom in human population across the earth and their dominance among species. However, without a kingdom or a nation to farm for, agriculture would not be organized nor have spread to the extent it is today. Reliance on agriculture is rationally a good thing for human security. However, are we necessarily happier per se? What was once a luxury for a hunter-gatherer became an exhausting, daily, perpetual job that was unnatural, if not mentally, but at least physiologically. Rousseau writes, “Agriculture…leads to property, government, and laws, and gradually to the misery and crime that are inseparable for our species.” We see here the incongruence between reason and emotive desire and how fiction perpetuated this among almost all humans.
If Rousseau was alive today, he would vehemently argue against the usage of social media. Rationally, it is irresponsible and detrimental to your health to scroll social media for hours at a time. It is horrible for our mental health, physical health, as well as social health. Our emotions tell us otherwise. Communication with other people invigorates an instinct within our minds that releases dopamine. As a result, against all the rational recommendations of our health teachers, our parents, and experts across the world, we still decide to indulge ourselves. What started off rationally as an invention to bring people together became an irrational emotional stimulus. Reason tells us that we should be using social media moderately, enough to communicate with old and new friends and catch up on news. However, our emotions simply have not evolved to the point where we can handle the tidal wave of communication and content rationally.
Although Klein’s art does not grow crops, nor weave clothes or create weapons, it does remind us of something. The expanse of blue reminds us of simplicity and vivacity at the same time. It reminds us of consistency and satisfaction. It reminds us of a “window from freedom.” Freedom from expectation, from jealousy, from reason, and from fiction. We are in a school where we strive to be rational and reasonable, training our minds benevolently towards the security of humanity, nōn sibi. Standing upon a scale burdened on one side by the responsibilities of fiction, and the other by the responsibilities of emotion, always remember that which makes us deeply human.