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life. It turns shyness, sadness, worry, exuberance, restless-
ness, self-criticism, laziness, lust, greed, boredom, neediness,
resentment, and “feeling off” into pathologies that need to be
addressed and corrected, primarily through medication. One
excellent book critical of the DSM approach alludes to this
drift toward mass insanity through its title: How Everyone
Became Depressed.1
The fifth edition of the DSM ( DSM-5) has been spectacu-
larly ridiculed for its pathologizing tendencies, not least by
Allen Frances, the chairman of the previous edition, DSM-IV.
In the introduction to his 2013 book, Saving Normal, Fran-
ces said, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions
and unexpected consequences.” He continued, “Despite our
efforts to tame excessive diagnostic exuberance, DSM-IV had
since been misused to blow up the diagnostic bubble and cre-
ate ‘false epidemics.’”2 He also said that DSM-5 was likely to
tip tens of millions more people from “normal” into “sick.”
When he was at a party with the DSM-5 writers, Frances
writes, he realized that he personally qualified for many of
the new disorders that appeared in the new book: “My gorg-
ing on the delectable shrimp and ribs was DSM-5 ‘binge eating
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disorder.’ My worries and sadness were going to be ‘mixed anxiety/depressive disorder.’ The grief I felt when my wife died
was ‘major depressive disorder.’ My well-known hyperactivity
and distractibility were clear signs of ‘adult attention deficit
disorder.’ And let’s not forget my twin grandsons—their tem-
per tantrums were no longer just annoying: they had ‘temper
disregulation disorder.’”3
The DSM approach can seem extreme to the point of Monty
Pythonesque absurdity, but it is not without precedent in his-
tory. The search for emotional purity knows no bounds. Medi-
eval monks were expected to exert continual vigilance over
their wicked minds. Paranoid totalitarian states such as Russia
and China demanded an impossible degree of self-criticism
from their citizens. Psychology and pharmacology both have
a history of inventing diseases they claim to cure. And we see
this distrust of normal emotion prominently in Buddhism.
Because the Buddha regarded stillness and serenity as the
highest good, he saw every emotion as potentially painful, a
sliding away from equilibrium. The word “emotion” is based
in the French and Latin that literally means “movement out.”
Emotions are ultimately prompts for action. They take us out
of stillness.
But is it really fair to stigmatize emotions this much?
Are they always inherently destructive, interfering with the
smooth working of the rational mind, or is the problem only
one of excess or deficit? Do emotions always create a cogni-
tive bias that prejudices clear sight, as some psychologists
suggest? Are fear and anger always negative, or can they
be rational and adaptive? Surely we can make a distinction
between the toxic fear of chronic anxiety and an appropriate,
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optimal level of concern regarding the future and one’s
health. Nor is the complete absence of fear desirable. The joy-
ful and foolhardy behavior of teenage party animals suggests
otherwise. Many die from a deficit of fear.
EMOTION IS NECESSARY FOR GOOD JUDGMENT
The Western philosophic tradition takes a more nuanced
approach to emotion than did the Buddha. Despite the diffi-
culties inherent in researching emotions, many cognitive sci-
entists now argue that they are crucial for a well-functioning
mind. Above all, emotions are necessary for intelligent, adaptive
thought.
Emotions do several things: (1) They make us move. No
emotion, no valence or action tendency = no action. (2) Emo-
tions contribute to our ability to evaluate the importance
of things and determine our choices. A judgment devoid of
emotional input is emasculated and adrift. (3) Emotions are
the source of every kind of pleasure and satisfaction, from the
simplest to the most complex.
Western philosophy has always tended to value reason
over passion, but not exclusively so. Aristotle was a great
believer in an active, well-directed life, but in the Nicoma-
chean Ethics, he also recognized that “intellect itself moves
nothing; choice is the efficient cause of action.” He saw choice
based on desire as the source of all behavior for good or bad.
The Enlightenment philosopher David Hume seconded this
point in A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740), saying,
“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and
can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey
them.”
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The great neurologist Antonio Damasio (born 1944) has
convincingly argued that emotion is essential for good judg-
ment (and for the optimal biological state of homeostasis, and
for our fundamental sense of self). His insights stem from
the clinical study of brain lesions in patients unable to make
good decisions because their emotions were impaired but
whose reason was otherwise unaffected.
In his 1994 book, Descartes’ Error, Damasio describes his
landmark case study: a patient named Elliot, a highly intel-
ligent man who turned out to be “an exceptionally pure
version of this condition.” The removal of a brain tumor left
Elliot emotionally inert, although his reasoning powers were
undamaged. His IQ remained superior. “His knowledge of
the business realm he had worked in remained strong,” says
Damasio. “His skills were unchanged and he still had a flaw-
less memory.”4
Elliot’s loss of emotion, however, meant that his capacity
for judgment vanished overnight. He lost all instinct for what
needed to be done or what was worth doing at all, and he
deliberated endlessly over the tiniest decision. He eventually
lost his job, his wife, and his second wife, and went bankrupt
through absurd speculations. He finished up living in the
care of a sibling.
Damasio argues, “Emotion is integral to the process of
reasoning, for better or worse.” He adds: “Selective reduction
of emotion is just as prejudicial for rationality as excessive
emotion.”5 In other words, too little emotion is just as destruc-
tive of clear thinking as too much emotion. This conclusion
mirrors Aristotle’s belief that the intelligent citizen should
aim for an ideal state of optimal emotionality: the “mean”
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between excess and deficit. Damasio did the research for an idea that Aristotle only theorized, but they came to the
same conclusion. Please read Damasio’s elegant and masterly
books for a full explanation of why emotion is essential for
rational thought, but here is one simple reason.
Conscious thought has limited capacity. It can see with
great precision, but it can process only two or three aspects of
a situation at once. It can’t see the forest for the trees. It is too
narrowly focused, too dominated by language, and too disem-
bodied to evaluate a complex issue, unless emotion is guiding
its deliberations.
Emotion, on the other hand, draws on a truly colos-
sal library of memories, somatic behaviors, and habitual
responses. Its database is much vaster than what conscious
thought can call on. It doesn’t present an argument, however. It
presents a conviction and an opinion: This is how I feel about X.
This emotional response may not be perfectly accurate. It
is likely to be heuristic and approximate. It relies on pattern
recognition and memory, both of which can be faulty. But its
tone is likely to be basically right. The emotional networks in
our brains know how we’ve responded to similar situations in
the past and what happened thereafter, and they can print all
that out as an emotion. The purpose of being mindful of an
emotion is to fine-tune this initial judgment.
The language of valences—positive or negative, strong or
weak—is not that sophisticated. The valence just suggests what
to do: it works at the level of immediate action. Emotion goes a
lot further. Like a valence, an emotion is also a value judgment,
but it is profoundly anchored in our bodies, our life histories,
and our sense of identity. If we have to make a hard decision,
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recognizing the underlying emotions and their accompanying stories will give us a perspective that reason or the valence
alone cannot. The valence tells us what to do and how import-
ant it seems to be. The emotion tells us why.
OPTIMAL EMOTIONALITY
Many writers and moralists blithely talk about “negative emo-
tions,” of which anger is the poster boy. The new science of
evolutionary psychology has seriously challenged this view.
It argues that any emotion that was truly maladaptive would
have been selected out of us over time. The men or women
who expressed it would be handicapped in the race to breed,
and that trait would die with them.
Evolutionary psychology argues that there are no inher-
ently negative emotions. What has survived the evolutionary
winnowing process is basically good. The immense problems
that the passions cause come from excess or deficit, or expres-
sion at the wrong time. Even the most unpleasant emotion
can be adaptive if it is optimally expressed in the appropri-
ate situation. A single eruption of berserk rage at the right
time could save your life or someone else’s. If you are being
attacked by drug-crazed thugs, you want Rambo at your side,
not the Dalai Lama. With this in mind, we can start to see the
potentially positive value in any emotion.
For example, anger is essential for defense, attack, and the
fight against personal and political injustice. Fear is an appro-
priate response to danger, uncertainty, sickness, and aging.
Sadness tells us when to give up on a futile or lost hope, and
it is a very appropriate response to global warming. Jealousy
defends against threats to the family and holds relationships
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together. Envy can prompt the competitive spirit that leads to extra effort. Shame is crucial for recognizing social norms.
Disgust and self-disgust is the basis of many moral judg-
ments. Pride is an immense boost to confidence and further
effort. And where would our familial and social networks be
without at least some lust? Where would the world economy
itself be without greed? Trade in unnecessary luxury items
has fueled the growth of civilizations for thousands of years.
It is hard to imagine getting through life at all without this
bundle of sharp-eyed instincts guiding us along. Every one
of these emotions can be positive, adaptive, and productive.
Nor should they be any more unpleasant than a pain such as
childbirth or physical training that leads to a good outcome.
Productive emotions above all are rational. They determine
the judgments that lead to our best and most adaptive actions.
They lead us to a good life.
Aristotle gives us what is still the subtlest interpretation
of emotion. He took the Greek and Roman motto “Nothing in
excess” very seriously. An appropriate emotion was the “mean”
between extremes. There was an optimal level of emotionality
in any situation. Too much courage was foolhardiness. Too lit-
tle courage was cowardly. Nor was this a universal fixed norm
for everyone. What was optimal for a strong young man would
be excessive for an older, weaker man. In the Nicomachean
Ethics, he says, “Anyone can get angry. That is easy. But to get
angry to the right degree, at the right time, with the right per-
son and for the right outcome, that is not easy.”
And he went on. Too much pride was arrogance, but too
little was false modesty. Too much generosity was profligate,
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but too little was miserly. Too much self-control is rigidity, but too little is incontinence. Too much sensual enjoyment was
debasing, but too little was prudish. Too much conversational
wit was buffoonery, but a deficit was boorish. A well-bred
man could and should express emotion intelligently. A few
centuries later, the emotional repertoire of the well-rounded
Renaissance man also required that you could talk well, sing
well, fight well, and know how to entertain the ladies.
Aristotle said that a satisfying, well-directed life
( eudaimonia) was not a passive possession. He said that you
couldn’t develop the mind without actually using it in prac-
tical situations: “A man becomes just by doing just things.”
We develop our compassion only by actively helping others.
Eudaimonia depended on continual training, on seeking
excellence in those social and intellectual skills that make us
human. In practice, it meant seeking the appropriate level of
emotional expression in this situation, today, for us, until we die. As Aristotle said, “This is not easy.” Despite this, he knew
that well-expressed emotion would give us a richer and more
rational life than trying to eradicate the passions entirely.
In this context, the Buddhist ideal of tranquility under all
circumstances looks rather shallow and antisocial. I imag-
ine that Aristotle would regard it as boorish and uncivilized,
and certainly of no use in ancient Athens. Even the mod-
ern positive psychology movement, which is often linked
with both Buddhism and mindfulness, seems selective and
moralistic in the virtues it promotes. Happiness, compassion,
self-control, and resilience are certainly valuable, but they
are a pale shadow of our full emotional range.
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IS SADNESS ALWAYS BAD?
According to some media reports, a quarter to a half of all
Westerners are staring depression in the face. This is ridicu-
lous, of course, but should we always regard sadness, melan-
choly, grief, regret, shame, and despair as psychological toxins
to be purged? Are they incompatible with the ideal of mental
health, or are they just an unavoidable part of being a feeling
human being?
In the Bible, the author of Ecclesiastes, said to be the high
priest of Jerusalem sometime around the third century bce,
memorably expressed nearly every one of the painful emo-
tions in the paragraph above. Despite his thoroughgoing pes-
simism, he still proclaimed what Friedrich Nietzsche would
have called “a joyful wisdom”: “A man has no better thing
under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry.”
Although he was a Jew, the author of Ecclesiastes was cer-
tainly aware of the Greek ideal of the “mean,” and he prob-
ably knew his Aristotle. In Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, we read:
“To everything there is a season. . . . A time to be born, and
a time to die. . . . A time to kill, and a time to heal. . . . A time
to weep, and a time to laugh. . . . A time to love, and a time to
hate; a time of war, and a time of peace” (Eccles. 3:1–8). He also
said, “Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the
countenance, the heart is made better. The heart of the wise
is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the
house of mirth” (Eccles. 7:3–4).
The controversial twentieth-century guru Bhagwan Shree
Rajneesh had an almost identical opinion. “Sadness has
something of depth in it which no happiness can ever have.
If you want to be happy always, you will become a shallow
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