NEWTON’S SECOND LAW OF EMOTIONOur Self-Worth Equals the Sum of Our Emotions Over Time
Let’s return to the punching example, except this time, let’s pretend I exist
within this magical force field that prevents any consequences from ever
befalling me. You can’t punch me back. You can’t say anything to me. You
can’t even say anything to anyone else about me. I am impervious—an all-
seeing, all-powerful, evil ass-face.
Newton’s First Law of Emotion states that when someone (or something)
causes us pain, a moral gap opens up and our Feeling Brain summons up icky
emotions to motivate us to equalize.
But what if that equalization never comes? What if someone (or
something) makes us feel awful, yet we are incapable of ever retaliating or
reconciling? What if we feel powerless to do anything to equalize or “make
things right?” What if my force field is just too powerful for you?
When moral gaps persist for a long enough time, they normalize.^16 They
become our default expectation. They lodge themselves into our value
hierarchy. If someone hits us and we’re never able to hit him back, eventually
our Feeling Brain will come to a startling conclusion:
We deserve to be hit.
After all, if we didn’t deserve it, we would have been able to equalize,
right? The fact that we could not equalize means that there must be something
inherently inferior about us, and/or something inherently superior about the
person who hit us.
This, too, is part of our hope response. Because if equalization seems
impossible, our Feeling Brain comes up with the next best thing: giving in,
accepting defeat, judging itself to be inferior and of low value. When
someone harms us, our immediate reaction is usually “He is shit, and I am
righteous.” But if we’re not able to equalize and act on that righteousness, our
Feeling Brain will believe the only alternative explanation: “I am shit, and he
is righteous.”^17
This surrender to persisting moral gaps is a fundamental part of our
Feeling Brain’s nature. And it is Newton’s Second Law of Emotion: How we
come to value everything in life relative to ourselves is the sum of our
emotions over time.