Emotional Negligence

In a world of white and black, only a limited range of feelings is detectable. Binary feelings: joy and sorrow, peace and anger, wholeness and emptiness. Ambiguous feelings are conveniently mislabeled and forced into one category or another: if you’re not happy, then you must be sad, and if you’re not angry you must be blissfully peaceful. If you’re not feeling strongly one way or another, then something must be wrong with you, you must be empty after all.

Emotions are the compass in a fundamentalist’s universe. They serve to determine one’s position on the cosmic plane, where ideals are the cardinal points. You either love something righteous and hate what is wicked, or you’re wrong. You either rejoice in justice and despair at the sound of its defeat, or you’re wrong. You either feel completely alive and whole in your belief system and completely empty and barren outside of it, or you’re wrong. And so on.

Emotions are not the expression of one’s feelings, but they are a tool in the fundamentalist’s hands to reveal the truth about one’s own standing in the ideal world. They are a unit of measurement and need to be exact, discrete — the same way truth and falsity stand in binary contrast. There is no time or consideration for nuances, for the fundamentalist mind cannot act or move or think without coordinates, but it needs to keep up with the incessant unravelling reality.

For this reason the fundamentalist prefers extreme emotions, those which are easy to categorise, that make navigation easier, and strives to feel strongly one way or another. And this way the world becomes flat and simple. Simple as black and white.

And when and if the ideal backdrop crumbles down and your life is no longer determined by love and hatred, you are left with a myriad of nuances and shades of emotions, which you are unable and unwilling to label anymore, and whose purpose you cannot really begin to understand… You are left blank and faceless, featureless — you become grey.