EMOTION Index

As a novelist and as a philosopher Ayn Rand was a great student of human emotions. There is no satisfaction in life without emotions.

She saw that many human emotions were not the raw primitives so often described by others, but were much more sophisticated. What really invokes fear, anger, hatred, love, ecstasy etc. in you?

What Ayn Rand discovered was that emotions are the result of a life-time of value-judgements, decisions that you yourself have made. She likened it to programming a computer over a long period of time.

1. You have an experience

2. You evaluate that it threatens or supports you.

3. You have a rapid emotional response in accordance with the evaluation and your life-time of value-judgements

4. The emotional response can be right or wrong, against your life or for it. It is not guaranteed to be right.

5. You must regard reason as higher than emotion in you life, as a matter of survival. Reason is your only proper guide to action.

6. An extended period of training yourself in proper value-judgements will gradually put your emotions more on the side of your reason.