The Problem of Emotions Directed Towards Others

In this unit, we will tackle how to recognize our emotions and manage them
successfully to our own advantage. Some treat this emotion as a hindrance in achieving
their goal, and some think that emotions make the achievement of the goal prolong and
exhausting.

Emotional Literacy

Emotional literacy is the term used to describe the ability to understand and express
feelings. It involves training our self-awareness, recognizing our own emotions or
feelings, and to manage them. Examples of improving emotional literacy are
suppressing violent actions, keeping calm, or reassuring oneself when in times of doubt.
It also helps you in practicing empathy like implying sensitivity to the feeling of others
and self-discipline in picking the right word or language that is universally accepted and
promotes harmonious relationships while reaching your personal goals.

Below are the parts of incorporating Emotional Literacy:

1. Knowing your feelings.

2. Having a sense of empathy.

3. Learning to manage our emotions.

4. Repairing emotional problems.

5. Putting it all together: emotional interactivity.

Some of the methods of repairing emotional problems that you may use are the:

1. Emotional thought method - develops a group of activities that can be used in a

personal or group-oriented way.

2. A life skills program enhances our abilities for adaptive and positive behavior. It
enables us to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of life

3. Hope Theory - the usage of goal, pathways, and agency (believing) to create a
perceivable capability in driving your desired goals and achieve hope and forgiveness

4. Main Frame Reframe - an approach of accepting reality and reframe the obstacles in
a positive approach such as "all these things are done in your own good (Romans 8:28).

“Effective altruism is a philosophy and social movement that uses evidence and
reasoning to determine the most effective ways to benefit others. It encourages
individuals to consider all causes and actions and to act in the way that brings about the
greatest positive impact, based upon their values.” (Wikipedia)
 Altruism gives us a lesson of sense self-sacrifice. If you may recall the basic
doctrines in our elementary days, our teachers always taught us to love others just as
we love ourselves. The pattern or model that we will use to love our neighbor is how we
love ourselves after all, how will you love your neighbor if you cannot love yourselves
either. It teaches us how to be humble, be more cooperative, and make a sound attitude
to live harmoniously in the same community.

Essentialism by Greg McKeown introduces a type of philosophical essentialism

towards a good balance between the relationship with others and us in the context of
essentialism. Essentialism is a belief that things have a set of characteristics (essence or
value) that make them what they are and that the task of science and philosophy is their
discovery and expression; the doctrine that essence is prior to existence. (Lexico.com,
n.d.) The view that all children should be taught on traditional lines the ideas and
methods regarded as essential to the prevalent culture. And also, “the view that
categories of people, such as women and men, or heterosexuals and homosexuals, or
members of ethnic groups, have intrinsically different and characteristic natures or
dispositions.” (Lowe)

To explain the version of McKeown's (pronounced as /makyown/) essentialism, let

us visualize this given scenario. A father had undergone a moral dilemma of choosing
between his wife who is undergoing labor for their first-born child and a company
meeting with a valuable client, both occurring at the same time and date. Because the
father wanted to be there for both events, he first helps his wife safely deliver the baby,
and then he rushes to his meeting. When he arrived in the meeting on time, his client
was very disappointed that he left his wife to attend the meeting. The decision seemed
like a big mistake, hurting his integrity, dignity, and relationships. What he experiences is
what we call "Fool's Bargain,'' meaning that taking everything may make us worse off
than if we took chose only one of the two choices. McKeown pointed out that
"overstating the point to make it. The pursuit of success can be a catalyst for failure.
Success can distract us from focusing on the essential things that produce success in
the first place." (McKeown, 2018)

McKeown tells us we feel a "Learned Helplessness" that we feel that we don’t have
a choice even if we do have a choice. Choice-making may be between short-term
comfort vs. long-term satisfaction. Usually you will choose the short-term comfort
because it manages to get your needs promptly rather than the long-term satisfaction.
But the consequences of dissatisfaction follow because saying YES just due to it's an
easy reward rather than we run the risk of having to say NO to a more meaningful one.
This led to the essentialism's question regarding those many options "What trade-off Am
I Willing To Make?" and "What Problem do I Want to Solve?"

The Way of the Essentialist

 ● New Perspective on "NO" - learning to see NO in a new way or else you will die
in the other form called Exhaustion or Burning-out.
● Essential Habits - learning essential habits and prevent the non-essential from
entering your life
● Protect the Essentials - protect your ability to prioritize and reserve time for things
that are truly essentials. Create space to breathe on and engage in playtime.

Discrimination

Morality demands that individual acts or states of affairs that are the same should
be treated the same. Discrimination is the favoring of one group by using an illogical
measure that is not relevant to the situation. For example, women can be barred from
trucking jobs even if they can be as excellent as male truck drivers.

Now, to discuss the really weight of the discrimination that matters. Let us see the
given scenario by Peter Singer, "A restaurant owner who does not want to hire an
African American because his clientele is racist. He is afraid that many of his customers
will stop coming to his restaurant rather than be served by an African American. So the
restaurant owner himself does not hold racist (discrimination in terms of race) beliefs, but
he worries the decision to be 'color-blind' in hiring will harm his livelihood". How about "a
woman refuses to be treated by a highly qualified gynecologist simply because he is
male’; "a woman refuses to be treated the same qualification above but refuses because
he is Asian-American?" or "say there is an all-male company that hires a qualified
woman over an equally qualified man, in the interest of fostering diversity in their
workplace" or a Seventh Day Adventist Chef who refuses to cook dinuguan to a Catholic
customer even he can cook it because of religious belief that blood must not be taken as
a food."

What is the Acceptable Discriminatory Practice?

Judith Jarvis Thomson, a modern philosopher used this rule of thumb in

Discriminating Discriminatory Discrimination says,

"Discrimination that favors a historically underprivileged class is more likely to be

acceptable than discrimination that favors a historically privileged class. The reasoning
is that those who have historically been denied privilege could use the advantage."
 So, if women get hired over men, the action is justifiable considering that men have
historically more job opportunities than women. Thomson agreed that a special
treatment to a less privileged class may be given to augment the experience of
inequality during the history of mankind.

DISCRIMINATORY MINDSET BASIS

Labelling theory uses the so-called stereotyping that describes the difference of the
group/member to the standard of norms may result in an internal devaluation and social
stigma (disapproval) Example, men are stereotyped to wear pants while women must
wear palda.

Game theory argues that “the individual player does not have a prior knowledge of
the structure of the game that he plays repeatedly. Instead, he accumulates experiences
induced by occasional random trials in the repeated play.” (Kaneko & Matsui, 2002) This
game theory is also known as the hawk-dove game where the hawk is more
advantageous in terms of strength, power, agility than a meek dove. The games came in
favor with the dove when its numbers came to increase and subdue the number of
hawks in pursuit of their survival. Discrimination reflects in this theory when the
disadvantage society came to unite and accumulate their force to win against the group
that discriminates them. Or in other cases, the hawk group will continue to suppress the
less advantage to continue to be on top of the food chain.