The ability to feel, I don't mean touch with your skin I mean feel with your heart. When evolution happened and we as humans developed from apes, I wonder what was the trigger that actually caused us to develop emotions. It could have been that the survival of the species depended on people actually caring for one another's welfare. What I think is nature realized that a human can only produce one other human once a year if they really work at it and since the life expectancy was low and infant mortality was high back then it only meant that they needed to take better care of each new member. In a nutshell you only take care of something you truly care about. In comparison ,a snake is seen to be a heartless being that kills without provocation etc. How it reproduces doesn't really speak well for it either, most if not all snakes lay eggs in a burrow then leave them to incubate. Then the baby snakes hatch and from that moment they are already ready to take care of themselves. One could defend the snake by saying that they lay the eggs in a somewhat secure place out of harms way and thus gives the next generation a fighting chance. Don't want to waste my breath on that one.
With that being said ,does your ability to feel make you a better person or does it make you worse. Well you can argue both sides to that one. First of all you need to differentiate between emotion and passion, a passionate person believes in something and has a constant drive towards it. An emotional person lets his heart into the thinking process and more often than not overruling the mind. A successful person is passionate about something and thus won't let anything come between him and his goal.
Here is a situation that you can chew on, you are a very wealthy man and your grandson is kidnapped. The kidnappers demand millions in ransom that you can easily afford, what do you think you would do? I am sure that most people would pay the ransom to get their grandson but Paul Getty in 1973 didn't make it that easy, he believed that his grandson had planned the whole thing. After a lock of hair and an ear was sent to a local daily newspaper the grandfather haggled the ransom down from 17 million dollars to 3 million dollars. He paid 2.2 million, the highest amount that was tax deductible then loaned his son the 800,000 at 4% interest to pay the rest of the ransom. So good father or not? In his reasoning, the boy was probably orchestrating the whole thing and even if he wasn't then people would start kidnapping other members of his family if he paid the ransom. Can't defend or say much about this guy but here is an article if you want to read further.
Anyways back to the subject matter, did you know that rich people are actually less empathetic than poor people. You hear stories about charitable donations or foundations to battle this and that but in reality most people who do that have either been affected by what they are fighting or just need a way to get tax rebates. By affected I mean there is a possibility that a member of their family has some disease and thus they pioneer some foundation to raise awareness about it.
Look at it in a different angle, the head of a company has 10,000 employees under him. When he looks at the figures in his companies profit and loss column he realizes that the company can be making a lot more money. How is this possible, he will need to get rid of 2,000 members of staff and outsource their functions to China. When you go down to the hard numbers ,this may be the only way to make more profit . A more emotional person asks the question ,why more profit for a few individuals but throw 2,000 out in the cold. Well if you look at things in that way then you probably won't make it far in the corporate world. Don't look at the people as 2,000 people with 2,000 family and probably at least 4,000 children, all of whom have needs and may not have a bright future because of your actions. Look at them as what they are to your company, human resource that is consuming possible profit. That same CEO will get a big fat bonus for that and continue looking for ways to slim down the company.
You are less likely to succeed in life if you are emotional and that is a fact. Look at yourself now and tell me, do you feel like you are a better person because you feel.
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