Emotional Justification

In Stephen Covey's Seven Habits for Highly Effective People he talks about his children and raising them. One of the things he suggests is to never assign punishment when you're angry.  What this does is tell the child that it's the action that was wrong and that consequences and punishment are the rational reaction to committing a wrong.  Too often children are punished because of the rage of a parent, which may be irrational response to things simply not being as the parent liked.  This only teaches the child to avoid angering the parent, whose rage may seem erratic and inconsistent. The result is a child who doesn't correlate punishment with bad behavior but with a parent's rage.  Therefore it discourages honesty because of the parent's erratic responses.  When you never know how the parent will react, most children will be afraid to act. More than that, the child learns from the parent's behavior that emotions are justifications for actions.

When Emotionally Justifying, a person is capable of any
number of atrocities to others, because it's only subject to
their feelings, and their feelings are the only ones that matter.

This is a terrible concept.  If someone can justify an action by their emotions, they can justify anything!  Anyone can commit an atrocity because they were angry, insulted, offended, or any emotional state.  In fact many people do commit crimes against others for that very reason. Therefore a perceived wound has little to do with any committed crime but the feelings of a person which may be erratic, inconsistent, or unjustified. Although crimes may cause emotion, causing an emotion is not a crime.  Therefore people tend to confuse one for the other and use that as a justification for action.  It's not...

If you have ever taken the Meyers Briggs personality test, I am INTP.  The T is for Thinking. The opposite of that is F for Feeling.  This is how people may sway you in an argument by appealing to reason or emotion.  Although I've always been a bit T, I think when I was younger I was more of an F.  Often the abusers in my life wielded emotional persuasion.  In fact, most abusive techniques employ the manipulation of emotions through guilt or compassion.  Neither of these qualities are really bad things, but other people manipulating them is bad.  Ted Bundy was known to make people feel sorry for him by wearing a cast, which he would use to get close to people then hit them over the head with it.  That is the core of emotional justification, using a person's natural empathy to bludgeon them into submission.

Two-thirds of people never reach the final stages of mental development such as developing abstract thought, which basically allows them to put themselves in others' shoes. Most people are therefore immature, and with that comes cowardice, because they are not mature enough to cope with emotions and so they hide from them... like they probably did from their parent's rage. Emotions were something to be feared instead of understood and dealt with, because they grew up with uncontrolled anger and therefore probably did not know how to control it themselves.  I've seen many people where anger was the only emotion actually sanctioned as masculine, and therefore the only emotion they allowed themselves to display.  Until a person can fully contend with their dark and light, they will be ignoring or denying an intricate part of themselves that will remain undeveloped, and thusly avoid reaching the final stages of mental development. Character is a rare thing, but not something often seen in children...

no matter how old.  It has to be developed and maintained. You aren't born with it.  Emotional maturity not only acknowledges emotions but also knows their place.  It's an alarm system to let you know that something is wrong. It is not a big red self destruct button that needs to be pushed every time it goes off.

The problem with emotional justification is that emotions are not always a direct reflection of reality, and just because someone made you feel bad does not mean that they are bad and need to suffer.  Sometimes they are bad, but that's not an evaluation to be made by emotions, but by their actions, which is a rational, logical, and provable concept regardless of emotions.  Many of the policies being passed now are based on emotional reasoning and tend to ignore the rational arguments.  It's been said that for the sake of the good of children you could theoretically pass any number of laws that infringe upon liberty.  Because children create in most humans a normal protective response.  We've all been children and wanted to be protected, so people longing for action when they feel their security threatened will pass laws that do nothing but infringe upon the rights of good citizens and do nothing to curb the criminal populace who have no problem with breaking laws.

Emotional justification is shaky logic. It may get someone passionate and all fired up, but it's flash in the pan. It's as insubstantial and unstable as emotions themselves. Emotions are like horses carrying you forward in a chariot. They are for you to direct and command, but if you let them run wild it's dangerous. 

The most unbalanced aspect of emotional justification is that it often has no concern for the emotions of others.  If emotions are valid and a reason for action than it would make sense that someone else's emotions are just as valid.  However those who wield emotional justification rarely have an equal value to the emotions of others. Like the parent raging at the child, the object of their rage is just to be dominated, not valued, not taught.  There is not reason to emotional rationalization and therefore there are also no limits to what can be justified by it.  It's this that justifies spousal and child abuse because of the rage of a parent.  It's this that justifies crimes of passion, because they made the perpetrator jealous.  It's this that justifies killing a wife for leaving.  It's this that passes laws that spawn the German holocaust, because the jews had all the money and the lower classes were jealous.

Feelings are important.  Understanding and coping with feelings are important.  But feelings are not valid justification.  An action is bad because of the damage that it does, which is why emotional justification is bad.  It causes damage inscrutably to others.  There is no reasoning with unreasonable people.  Therefore when people try to sway me with emotions instead of facts, they will find me unmoved.  This has been perceived as being cold and heartless, which those who know me also know that's not the case.  Too many times I've had people whose emotions were out of control use them as a way to bludgeon me emotionally and excuse their behavior, while I was not allowed to express emotions at all.  It's that duality, that double standard that gives away the emotionally abusive, and to cross them, they can justify all manner of damage to you, while excusing their own.  It's a dangerous dance, and one that can't be won.  Because how can you sway someone who is emoting and will not listen to reason?