Feelings, nothing more than Feelings

October 27, 2007 |

Consider this excerpt I pulled out of my book notes from Stumbling On Happiness:

Nothing more than feelings? What could be more important than feelings? Sure, war and peace come to mind, but are war and peace important for any reason other than the feelings they produce? If war didn’t cause pain and anguish, if peace didn’t provide for delights both transcendental and carnal, would either of them matter to us at all? War, peace, art money, marriage, birth, death, disease, religion — these are just a few of the Really Big Topics over which oceans of blood and ink have been spilled, but they are really big topics for one reason alone: Each is a powerful source of human emotion. If they didn’t make us feel uplifted, desperate, thankful, and hopeless, we would keep all that ink and blood to ourselves. As Plato asked,”Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good? Indeed, feelings don’t just matter — they are what mattering means.

Huh.

Mugsy

I hate how Dan Gilbert misused this song to segue into the giant role feelings play in our lives. The song isn't saying feelings are insignificant, in fact quite the opposite. Gilbert taking a literal interpretation of the first sentence is ridiculous and left me with a disgusted feeling in my stomach (head).

Is that "Huh." written as you wanted it wriiten with a period at the end? Like "Huh." for emphasis? Or did you mean "Huh?"?
Steffan Antonas

@Mugsy - I wrote the Huh with the period intentionally. "Huh." As in
"interesting/thought provoking", not Huh? as in "What does THAT mean?". I
actually thought that Gilbert used the song as a segue quite well, and think
that he was clearly trying to show that feelings are extremely important, as
the last line of the quote suggests. Maybe I'm missing something?