After listening to the NPR Invisibilia podcast “The Problem with the Solution,” we were struck by the concept that what society considers a problem based on its ideals of normality may not really even be a problem in the first place. Our thought process led us through conventional ideas of normality and how those concepts are formed; eventually our group came up with the question: To what extent are emotions the key catalysts to problems? To answer this question, we located two secondary sources: “What is a Problem?” by Thomas Osborne and “Norms for experiencing emotions in different cultures: Inter- and intranational differences” by Michael Eid and Ed Diener.

In “What is a Problem?” Osborne recounts the ideas of various French philosophers on the notion of the problem and the study and controversy of problematology. He writes of the importance of problems in daily life, as well as the emphasis that French philosophers placed on this importance. Osborne first recounts the work of Gilles Deleuze, more particularly his work Difference and Repetition. Difference and Repetition is about the essence of problems. Deleuze even goes so far as to define stupidity as the capacity for fabricating false problems. Thus, according to Deleuze, there is a smart way of thinking about problems and a detrimental way of thinking about problems. This sort of thinking relates directly back to the podcast, as it forced us to consider whether mental illness could be a fabricated problem. Next, Osborne discusses the ideas of Canguilhem, who believed that life should be defined in terms of human interaction with the environment. Canguilhem wrote that because life is the confrontation of problems, there is no single definition for normality itself, but it can be defined based on the problems posed by a certain environment. This means that normality could essentially be defined based on the experiences one has throughout life; with experiences come different and new emotions which could serve as the source of new problems. Osborne then discusses the ideas of Bergson, who similarly to Canguilhem, wrote that life can be synonymous with the overcoming of obstacles— life is just a series of responses to surrounding stimuli that we perceive as problems. Bergson too considers certain problems to be useless and proposes that those problems be discarded in favor of “new, more productive ones” (Osborne 7). This style of thinking is important in answering our question because life is lived through the experiencing of emotion daily; thus what we perceive as problems may only look that way because our emotions tell us so. This reading can also help us define what we think of as a problem— it is important to define what “problem” means before we can determine if emotions are catalysts for problems.

“Norms for experiencing emotions in different cultures: Inter- and intranational differences” discusses the immense influence that culture has on the emotional process. Culture largely establishes the social consequences of expressing or suppressing a certain emotion, the normality of feeling a certain emotion, and the social value of expressing a certain emotion. Eid and Diener conducted a cross-cultural study in which they analyzed the differences in norms for experiencing emotions between two individualistic nations— the United States and Australia— and two collectivist nations— China and Taiwan. They found that individualistic nations were the most strict in keeping a standard norm for emotional behavior. This reading can be important for answering our question because it can aid us in deciding whether emotions fuel problems based on the emotional norms in our own society. Based on the results of the individualistic United States, we can detect whether (to what extent) social consequences of emotional expression and suppression, and the social norms behind emotions fuel what we consider to be problems in our society.

Works Cited

Eid, Michael. “Norms for experiencing emotions in different cultures: Inter- and

intranational differences.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 81, Issue 5, 2001.

Osborne, Thomas. “What is a Problem?” History of the Human Sciences, Volume 16, Issue 4, 2003.

Rosin, Hannah. “The Problem with the Solution.” Invisibilia, NPR, 2016.