ESSAY

The Lion and the Lamb

Despite what modern culture proclaims, kindness is not a weakness

In American culture, we have a tradition of equating power with heartlessness. We have grown to expect our leaders to have a no nonsense, logical approach to solving problems without allowing their emotions or personal histories to influence them. The accepted theory is that it takes strength to make the hard decisions, and that we can’t expect to be ruled by our emotions when making tough choices.

Science, if you actually believe in such things as a logic and hard truths, tells a different story about how we make decisions. In 1995, Antonio Damasio, one of the world’s leading neurologists, challenged traditional ideas about the connection between emotions and rationality. In his book “Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain,” Damasio demonstrated what many had long suspected, that emotions are not a luxury, they are essential to rational thinking and to normal social behavior.

One of the stories in the book was of a man who had a brain tumor. Doctors were able to remove the tumor and the patient fully recovered, seemingly perfectly healthy in every way, except one. The part of his brain that controlled emotions had been damaged, such that he no longer had any contact with his emotions. You would…