It's Time To Get Emotional

In this episode, I reflect on the power of emotion in shaping social change. After receiving a five-year sentence, I explore how modern culture is evolving to embrace emotionality, moving beyond the cold rationalism of past centuries. Through the lens of personal experience, feminist thought, and revolutionary activism, I argue that reason and emotion are not opposites but inseparable in decision-making and social confrontation.

From courtroom outbursts to the legacy of activist Larry Kramer, I discuss how feelings—not detached logic—drive change and why it’s time to reconsider the role of emotion in our collective movements. This episode is an exploration of what it means to fully engage in the messy, emotional reality of being human, and how that very engagement can be the catalyst for deep cultural transformation.

Join me as we break down the false dichotomy between reason and emotion and chart a new path towards a more connected, emotionally aware civilization.

You'll get a free copy of his book, Common Sense for the 21st Century, and his film, The Troublemaker.

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[joturner]

Such a complex subject.. humanity has compartmentalized reason vs emotion via philosophical theories for eons, as well as exceptionalizing us from the animal kingdom via the concept of the spirit. As you say, it is impossible for so- called 'reason' and emotion to exist on their own. I think the relatively recent idea of activists, environmentalists and climate scientists expressing emotional attachment to our natural world, vs. restricting their warnings to 'datIsland cold statistics is a better way of engaging the larger public, as Peter Kalmus has noted. As you say, it is best the part of our humanity. Sending very best wishes, and appreciation to you for sharing wisdom and acting upon your (*beyond definition.. words inadequate: moral compass, principles, deep attachment to Nature). Take good care.💚

[JugglinJellyTake]

Antonio Demasio covered the interdependence of the rational and emotional mind in his book, Descartes' Error.

[joseluisgomezsoler]

THE EMOTIONAL DARK AGES
As a culture we are just now emerging from the emotional dark ages. We are emerging from a time when feelings were to be performed (or suppressed) by rote, without individual attention, style, uniqueness, without the freedom to explore that dimension, that window, as a way of knowing the universe. And the same is true for imagery. The imagery that has been allowed has been a standard imagery, an imagery having to do with the origins of one's nation or one's family, and with one's relationship to the universe, to God. Not a freedom to explore one's own imagery, as it presents itself, as one discovers it to be, uniquely individual, but an imagery that was standardized and approved, an imagery that was dictated and dominated by thinking and control.
Let us hope that the opening of the windows of imagery and feeling will be as fruitful and as freeing of our natural humanness as opening the window of thinking was for our natural creativity and invention. In fact it will probably be more so, because it will also entail our coming into balance, where our four windows [thinking, sensing, feeling, deep imagery] will all be open, and so our center will be true, and we, for the first time as a living organism, will enter into our true fullness and aliveness.
- Eligio Stephen Gallegos PhD, Animals of the Four Windows: Integrating Thinking, Sensing, Feeling and Imagery

[ReesCatOphuls]

Average temperature since the zoom call that landed you in prison is 1.50C
(Dataset: Copernicus ERA5, Baseline:1850-1900. Average GMST 2-nov-2022 -> 23-nov-2024 = 1.50C)

[antonyjh]

Emotion would have meant stop oil would have been able to change themselves. They didn't : Just stop "new" oil would have got public on side more and given people a direction, just stop oil, made it "us or them". Just stop new oil and Roger might not be in jail and the process might be further along the path but emotion hasn't furthered the cause, it set us further behind.