I agree, emotions are fully human and entirely appropriate. Wouldn’t have it any other way. But this does not rebut my argument, which runs:
- All emotion occurs in brain centers which evolved prior to the neocortex.
- The neocortex is where intelligence happens.
- Emotional activity reduces neocortical activity.
- All emotion makes people less intelligent.
Carl Sagan doesn’t say this in The Dragons of Eden, but his discussion of brain function and evolution provides the physiological basis for my argument.
Anger and fear are so well understood as intelligence suppressors that we take the stupidity they cause for granted. Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice.
But consider also love, which enables charming sociopathic men to leave trails of abandoned children and broken hearts in their wake.
Consider sorrow and grief, during which time people needlessly and impulsively take their own lives.
No intelligent person would murder from anger alone.
No intelligent person would choose a sociopathic lover.
No intelligent person would grieve to death when a good life might be had tomorrow.
All emotion makes people less intelligent.
