The emotion

“I wish to endorse emotion as an important political factor”
“I am aware of the dangers of emotion, although I am also aware of the dangers of lacking it. We recognise the dangers of emotion, we know and speak about irrationalism, about seduction, but let’s seek value in the heart of the word “emotion”. This is my proposal: let’s get to the bottom of the word: we need to seek the word “motive” in the word “emotion”. Emovere, movere, motivate and move have the same root: movement; to move; to move someone to do something. And naturally, if one wants to move, to motivate, that is, to provide motives to move someone to do something, it is indispensable to unify a good line of reasoning with good emotions. And they are not incompatible, in the same way that taste is not incompatible with enjoyment. “This dish must be awful because I thoroughly enjoyed it.” No. I hold that taste is not incompatible with enjoyment, and that the political speech must not elude but appropriately convey the possibility of causing a commotion, a shared emotion, a common sentiment as a result of the capacity to mobilise and motivate a people”.

Professor Gabilondo expresses very well what we have said on many occasions in this bulletin. Or what we have sometimes published quoting other figures. For example, when we have said that a country that solely focuses on technical or management projects, or on comfort and material well-being, will not advance. Projects that the former rector of the London School of Economics, Dahrendorf, qualified as “icy”, incapable of presenting a motivating vision of what we want society or the country to be. According to Dahrendorf, they are incapable of moving Europe forward.

It is tiresome that in order to defend clearly obvious things, but often denied in Catalonia – in this case the need for sentiment and emotion – we have to seek authoritative arguments from abroad. From Madrid, London or Harvard. Or recall the acceptation of a book such as Goleman’s “Emotional Intelligence”, which in fact says something we already know: namely, by relying solely intelligence or rationality, the capacity to triumph and overcome obstacles is often limited. We also need sentiment, emotions, which facilitate enthusiasm, motivation, self-awareness, self-respect and empathy, that is, something as important as the capacity of coexistence.

This has always been so. We have always had the need to move and be moved, both on a personal and a collective level. We have to create a commotion, as Professor Gabilondo argues. But, in order to move, he argues, people need to have faith in themselves, and in their own ideas. And thus we need sentiment to help this faith along. There could be a people, a collective or individuals that reject this sentiment and faith. In this case, they will experience smugness, narcissism, and a superiority complex for some time. But they will quickly fall because nothing will not move them.

This is currently a very timely theme in Catalonia. Because there is a need for management, but we continue to need optimism, emotion, sentiment, and very much so. The emotion and sentiment of a country. We need to know how to unify good sentiments with good emotions.