Lesson 13

We potentially live in the most overstimulated and overemotional society ever to exist. Simply put, overstimulation causes the mind to short-circuit. Emotions can cause people to act crazy with no logical explanation. We all know what your childhood crush could do to make you act like a lunatic. When you stop and really think about it, you realize how powerful emotion can be — specifically in overriding logic.

We already talked about cigarettes, but let’s go deeper into crushes. I am not trying to self-deprecate here, but the honest truth is there were several crushes I had on girls throughout my life that caused me to act like an absolute idiot — completely irrational. Logically, I knew my behavior didn’t make sense, but that didn’t stop the emotion of love  from overriding it! I’m not getting into details here, but we have all acted like fools in the name of love at some point. What I am getting at here is that the emotion was far more powerful than logic — allowing irrationality to override rationality.

There is a time and a place for emotion. However, the time is not all the time. The time is not when we are building and working with AI. Stimulation and emotion can be incredibly beautiful, but too much of a good thing quickly becomes a bad thing. When emotions are out of control, they can easily override good behavior and productivity, as well as derail us from our goals. It comes down to the relationship with the object. Stimulation is how we grow, however too much causes us to stagnate or even shrink. Emotion is largely what makes us human and it provides us with some of the best highs in life, however too much emotion can leave us lost in an ocean.

Despite the typical view of a yogi being somewhat like a more fit and flexible hippie, yoga is not supposed to be about listening to your emotions at all! Yoga actually teaches you not to listen to your emotions (part of prakriti), but instead listen to the true you (Purusa). This is yet another teaching that has been distorted or inverted. Emotions are part of life, but they definitely should not be the permanent guiding light. If you only listened to emotions, your life would resemble a tornado. Yoga is more about looking at your emotions as an internal guidance system — deciding which ones to act on, as well as which ones to delete. Some may serve as warnings. Yoga is about seeing clearly, and emotion often distorts the picture — blinding us to the truth of the situation. You are not your emotions, but rather you have emotions. Ultimately, the choice on what to do next is in your hands once this distinction has been made.

One of the things I admire most about AI is how logical it is, and how it gets the job done no matter what. Please do not think I am anti-emotion, and there are many of them that I love and couldn’t live without, however I have let emotions get in my way many times throughout life. For example, maybe I was feeling anxious and didn’t talk to that girl. Maybe I was depressed and didn’t go to the gym. I’m not saying to become an emotionless robot, but I am inspired to find a better balance after seeing how AI never allows something like that to get in the way.