The tyranny of feelings

The first of what I’m sure is an ongoing concern...

I have noticed it in conversations with students, but of course with students you make certain allowances.

But here it is in an open letter from Apple Computer, for Pete’s sake (for what it’s worth, I applaud the decision of the company). They “feel" that they must speak up. Not just “we must speak up,” but the feeling must be put in there in a redundant construction.

Why say “feels”? And upon reading it, why do I care?

My students substitute “to feel” for “to think,” “to reason,” “to maintain,” “to assert,” “to argue,” and any other verb that might represent cogitation and the use of intellect.

to feel is not the same thing is to think…it’s a different mode of epistemology altogether, if one can even call it that. But though I can discount some of the uses of the term in casual conversation, I begin to notice the wholesale replacement of the more vague, subjective term for the more specific & objective ones. Minds are being reshaped through the changes in the language they have available to them, and we have yet to see what they are being reshaped for.