There is a certain response to questions that considers it more important to validate feelings, and the intuitions they represent, than it is to resolve them. That it’s more important and more kind to a person to agree with and respect their intuitive response than it is to test whether they are actually appropriate, potentially freeing the person from them or bringing fulfillment to the concern or interest that the feeling represents.
There is, of course, also a school of response that spends far too little time sympathizing and validating feelings and intuitive reactions (the instinctive judgements that this is dangerous or that is desirable), fails to really comprehend the full nature and import and concern the feelings represent, and seeks only to hastily resolve them. Feelings are intuitive reactions, instinctive subconscious responses to push us toward or away from things, that drive us to action (to fight, to flee, to grasp, to pursue, to embrace). But because they arise instinctually, without our prior permission to a certain degree, they require testing to validate or correct or fine tune those responses.
Neither fear nor fearlessness are by themselves good not bad. They are good or bad insofar as they are appropriately tuned to their object and the situation (and appropriately balanced with other pertinent values and concerns). Emotions provide an invaluable amount of information, much like physical pain or pleasure. They let you know when something is good for you or bad for you or helpful or dangerous, even when you haven’t taken the time to do the conscious work to sort such things out in detail. They’re like an early warning system, or a sort of programmed shorthand response system. Like any such system though, occasionally (if the matter is very serious) you need to do a little extra reconnaissance and study to determine if your initial assessment was accurate.
So there is a sense in which feelings are subjective. They’re the accumulated systems of reaction and valuation that a person has accumulated from their experience combined with their predispositions (their personality). So you can’t ignore them or dismiss them without dismissing the inherent nature and collected experience of a person and the responses they have developed as a result. But emotions are actually about something, they have an object, they are theoretical and practical. They are about something. And that something can be tested and explored, the thesis tested, the conclusion altered and refined and improved. And that’s a good thing, in fact the best thing. An emotion that has been proved a trustworthy signal is a great thing indeed. And it’s hard to underestimate the damage that can be caused by a faulty response system. You might fear what you should embrace, fight enemies that aren’t your foes, love what you should run from. Your wellbeing depends enormously on having emotions that are not only validated, but valid. And because the world is complex, people are complex, and life is terribly uneven in its composition, it’s enormously important to constantly seek to challenge and revise our responses or risk stagnation and distortion. You risk becoming trapped by your own instinctive patterns. Still, it hurts to challenge or revise or even lose those patterns, those structures you’ve built so carefully to protect yourself and direct yourself.
Emotions aren’t a test of truth, but they are an indicator of truth. For this reason, they need to be understood and respected and valued, but they also nerd to be restrained, balanced, and questioned.
Emotions as unconscious, instinctive, low-resolution analysis. A quick way to respond to situations that might present a threat, danger, or opportunity. They’re wonderfully useful and impressive, but fallible just because they are instinctive and low-resolution. They require testing, elaborating, revising, training.
Making Nobody Happy 