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Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, we do things we later regret. Perhaps, you got angry and said something hurtful that you could not take back; or else, against your better judgment, you responded to a comment on social media, thereby initiating a long and unpleasant exchange that spoiled your entire evening. Or maybe, under the spell of a passionate night, you made promises to a lover that you knew you wouldn’t be able to keep.
When something like that happens, it often feels as though our own emotions take control of us. We say we got provoked, a button was “pushed,” and we lost charge. Self-control seems difficult in those moments. But is it, really?
Our emotions themselves are, of course, not directly responsive to our judgments. We cannot simply tell ourselves to be less anxious or more gregarious, or more confident, and thereby make it so. This has to do with the unconscious origin of emotions in the brain, and the role of brain processes we cannot directly control or observe.
However, we have some control over our emotions, and we know it. If, for instance, you find yourself having negative thoughts about someone you love, you know you can stop that by focusing on what you love about the other or on how bad it would be if you lost him or her. You can make anger subside in the same way, by refocusing and looking at the issue from a broader perspective. Is it worth the anger you feel? How much does it matter, really? And will anything good come out of feeling the way you do?
More importantly, even when we cannot mold our emotional lives to our liking, we can control our actions. You may not be able to immediately make yourself feel less angry or hurt or elated, but you can decide how to act given the way you feel. There is, after all, a big difference between, say, a somnambulist sleepwalking or a person who has lost his or her mental capacities as a result of Alzheimer’s disease, and someone driven by emotions. In the first two cases, people truly are not in control (and the law recognizes this), but in the third, they have quite a bit of control, though perhaps, not as much as they would have in a cool hour. The question is, how difficult is it to exercise control in such cases?
I wish to suggest here that the reason it seems difficult to take charge is that we simply don’t want to do it. The problem lies inside our own will. We fail to take charge because we want the opposite of control: We want to fully give in.
This situation is quite unlike that of overcoming ordinary obstacles. When facing obstacles, we have a goal, but we cannot achieve it because the world refuses to cooperate. Say you want to move to Florida, but you cannot persuade your family to move, or you want to unlock the door, but the key is stuck. You really do want to move to Florida or unlock the door, but you can't.
The case with self-control is quite different from these other cases. It's not that you want to control yourself but you cannot. Quite the opposite: While in the grip of a strong emotion, you want to be ruled by the emotion you feel. But why would you want that?
The answer is that we anticipate a short-term reward. For instance, the person who feels hurt or angry and wants to lash out expects a reward such as emotional cleansing, getting negativity out of his or her system, so to speak. Lashing out can be cathartic, and catharsis is appealing.
Similarly, the one who feels elated after making love to someone new for the first time and who is currently strongly motivated to make promises of undying love doesn’t try but fail to take charge. Things are likely to look rather different tomorrow, in the light of day. The promises probably won’t be kept, which may lead to hurt feelings, but we don’t want to think about that now. Now, we want to talk about undying love. If we actually want to control ourselves, we will often find that we very well can.
These sorts of cases are different also from what we think of as instances of weak will. Weakness of the will involves conflicting desires. If we experience inner conflict, the will may be said to be divided against itself. You want to finish the project you are working on, but you also want to continue watching the crime thriller. Your desires clash. When a person’s more rational desire does not prevail, we say the will is weak.
There need be no weakness of the will in the cases under discussion. No, because there may be no conflicting desires at all. We want to lash out, and that’s all we want right now. We may regret acting on that desire later, but for the moment, that is not a concern.
What would happen if we did take charge? It is true that self-control will come at a cost, at least in the short-term. If you resist the urge to act, you won’t get the immediate reward you would get if you didn’t resist. That is just why you don’t want to resist.
Self-control seems difficult not because our passions have some extraordinary power over us—like a tornado that can easily move us to a place where we didn't want to go—but because we’d rather let them rule than take the reins. Emotions are not like a powerful force of nature but like a candidate-king who promises gifts. We willingly hand the keys to our kingdom in order to get those gifts.
I wish to suggest, however, that there are very good reasons to take charge. One reason has to do with the obvious risks associated with doing something rash, hasty, and not well thought out whereby we may purchase a five-minute pleasure at the cost of a five-year regret.
No less importantly, though, it is simply better to be the sort of person who is in control of him or herself. While acting on emotions can bring some rewards, it can also make us feel passive and powerless. Passivity and powerlessness equal a lack of freedom. And who wants to be unfree?
There are two complications I wish to note before closing this discussion. One is that there is such a thing as too much control. A person may grow so accustomed to exercising control as to become unable to be spontaneous or to express his or her emotions.
This may happen due to external pressure or for reasons that have to do with individual psychology. We see the former case in cultures that discourage both public display of emotions and acting on emotions.
Consider, for instance, the Victorian ideal of self-control and self-mastery. While there is much to be said for that ideal, we must note also that it led to diagnosing shell-shocked soldiers who (understandably) displayed fears and stronger emotions more generally with hysteria. [1] I would conjecture that many people whose upbringing reflected that ideal would have been largely incapable of genuine emotional expression even if they wanted to. This suggests a problem with the ideal. We should not insist on self-mastery in any and all circumstances. Soldiers should be allowed to cry.
Sometimes, we become unable to act on emotions or to act spontaneously for reasons that have little to do with social pressure and much with temperament. Some people find themselves unable to dance, for instance, because they cannot “turn off” self-control mechanisms. (Unfortunately, a person like this may get the downsides of self-control without the benefits. It is perfectly possible that while you are too self-controlled when trying to dance, you act rashly in other circumstances.)
The second complication has to do with a proper understanding of motivation. As Oscar Wilde notes in An Ideal Husband, what looks like self-control may in fact be fear. Sometimes, we don't yield to temptation not because we are in control, but because we are afraid to. Wilde (through his character Sir Robert Chiltern, who is talking to Lord Goring) says this:
Weak? Oh, I am sick of hearing that phrase. Sick of using it about others. Weak? Do you really think, Arthur, that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. To stake all one's life on a single moment, to risk everything on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure, I care not—there is no weakness in that. There is a horrible, a terrible courage. I had that courage. I sat down the same afternoon and wrote Baron Arnheim the letter this woman now holds. He made three-quarters of a million over the transaction. [2]
Wilde is right that it sometimes takes courage to yield to temptation. Fear and self-control may, upon occasion, produce one and the same result, and when they do, it may be difficult to tell whether a person did not yield to temptation because he or she was in control or else due to timidity and fearfulness.
I would say, however, that there is generally no shortage of opportunities to show courage in life. For this reason, while one may show oneself courageous by yielding to a terrible temptation, it is ultimately the attraction of the temptation itself that leads us to yield to it (if we do). There is thus passivity in following temptation, though Wilde is right that there may be bravery, too. For if the attraction of the temptation isn’t what moves us in the end, why not choose a different opportunity for bravery?
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References
[1] Showalter, E. (1987). The Female Malady. London, UK: Time Warner Books.
[2] Wilde, O. (1895/2001). An Ideal Husband. London, UK: Dover Publications, p. 27.
