The culture in which I was raised has a truly awful understanding of emotions.

Emotions are seen as the enemy. While it is only a minority who consciously proselytize the Virtue of Pure Rationality (of whom, disappointingly few are Vulcans), one can easily perceive the antagonism against feelings spread far and wide throughout the culture. The stable of acceptable emotions for a man to feel in modern American culture are as follows: angry, hungry, horny. A man may also feel sorrow, but only in such few instances as the untimely death of his child or, most acceptable of all, if his favorite team loses.

Likewise, you may have heard the argument that women are "too emotional" when a woman dares to seek public office or another position of leadership. This is flimsy mysogyny - for many reasons - but you may falsely infer from it that women are less restricted in their emotional expression than men. This is, as stated, a lie; all genders, all sexes, are taught from a young age to disconnect from their emotions; that no emotions are REALLY acceptable, and that there will be punishments for feeling, let alone expressing. The difference exists mainly in that a man who expresses his feelings is seen as lesser, where as a woman is already seen as lesser, and so the expression of her feelings only serves to reinforce her existing classification as a subordinate.

(The insightful among you may now be meditating on the many hypocrisies and contradictions present in American culture; for example, that men are meant to be beings of Pure Rationality whose emotions are both few and strategic, yet men also, supposedly, lose all control the moment they see a woman's bare shoulder, like a werewolf who spots the full moon. Remember - any argument designed to allow dominant social classes power over their social inferiors will not be based on coherent logic. All such arguments are flimsy excuses for aristocrats too cowardly to say "I just think I'm better than you.")

Of course, all societal norms are other-taught, but often self-perpetuating. There are many expressions of the sentiment that "emotions are the enemy," from societal top to societal bottom. We don't have time to get into all of them. Spend enough time with Americans and you'll start to see it manifest in diverse forms: from "men don't cry" to concepts of "emotional regulation," and many more. Worst of all, I think, is the denial that anger exists as a discrete feeling. We'll return to that in the future.

The origins of this misunderstanding are not entirely clear to me. It's easy for my semi-knowledgeable peers to lay the blame on a capitalist economy; capitalism loves machines, and it would love for its human labor to be machine labor, so the logic goes that capitalism drives a wedge between you and the truth of your emotions in order to extract value from you. As with many times the blame is laid at the feet of the capitalist, this is probably a partial truth - more likely that capitalists make opportunity of and reinforce this social norm because it allows them to extract more profit from labor, but they are not the conspiratorial cause of it.

If anything, the problem appears to derive from the peculiarities of British patriarchy that the US inherited as one of her former colonies. In any case, the origin of this problem does not much affect the solving of it. The American people need to learn that emotions are not the enemy. And for that, it is import to say what emotions are.

Imagine yourself a King (or Queen, or Boss. Whatever makes you comfortable). Your emotions are your royal advisors: they each have their expertise and their biases, and their sole job is give you information that suggests a course of action. Sorrow tells you to grieve; anger tells you to rally the troops; joy tells you to relax. They don't command your kingdom(/queendom/etc). You do. You listen to your advisors' reports and their advice, but you make the final decisions on how to rule.

It really is just that simple. An emotion is just information and a suggestion of action. It does not - it cannot - command you.

An equally important lesson is this: all of your emotions are equally useful and important. Our culture often divides emotions into "positive" and "negative" emotions - which is, again, making them antagonists, especially because the majority of emotions fall under the "negative" category! Sorrow, fear, anger, disgust, embarrassment, shame - all these emotions we are taught to avoid, for their "negativity!" Indeed, they are called more than "negative," but anger most of all is called "useless." How angry that makes me!

All emotions are equally valuable, and equally useful. Joy rewards you for goodness in your life, and begs you to cling to it; fear advises you of danger ahead, and warns you to prepare for it; anger advises you that injustice is a foot, and insists you do something about it! The list goes on. There are no positive or negative emotions; no useless emotions; it is merely how you have been taught to (dis)engage with them that you think of them so.

You may say, "but sometimes they are wrong!" Indeed. Sometimes fear jumps at shadows and warns of danger where none exists; sometimes anger rallies itself too soon, and causes the injustice it seeks to avoid; sometimes joy begs you to cling to that which is killing you. Remember: they are your advisors. They have your best interests at heart, but they have their biases and shortcomings. It is your role as monarch to decide when you will listen and how you will respond. You are in command.

So I implore you, you Kings, Queens, and Monarchs Between. I implore you to acknowledge the work of your advisors; I implore you to engage them in conversation, learn from them, build relationships with them. No longer should you ignore your advisors; no longer should you hate them or disparage them. You have within you much wisdom with which to navigate the world. It is time to you take the reigns and use it.