How I Met Your Mother and Philosophy (4 page)

So being bad has its appeal—but an indirect and vicarious one. Part of why we enjoy TV shows, movies, and other fictional works is that we can have experiences we would never have otherwise. And this doesn't merely mean that even if we never travel to Turkey, we can have a vicarious experience of being in the Istanbul bazaars by watching the latest James Bond movie. It also means that we could have experiences vicariously the real equivalent of which we would never choose to have—and the vicarious experience of being Barney is a perfect example for this.

The creators of
How I Met Your Mother
gave us a character who is a terrible person, but we still love him. This is quite a feat to begin with and it also highlights a not immediately obvious aspect of our identification with fictional characters—that identification is mainly devoid of any moral overtones. Further, identifying with an evil character, like Barney, has an appeal that is difficult to resist. Does this mean that if we identify with Barney, we are bad or irresponsible or immoral people? It most certainly doesn't. It means that we like to do some virtual tourism into the realm of immorality. As Robert Musil says, “art ought to be permitted not only to depict the immoral and the completely reprehensible, but also to love them.”
⁷

¹
Here are some examples: Richard Wollheim, “Identification and Imagination,” in Richard Wollheim, ed.,
Freud: A Collection of Critical Essays
(Anchor Press, 1974); Murray Smith, “Imagining from the Inside,” in Richard Allen and Murray Smith, eds.,
Film Theory and Philosophy
(Oxford University Press, 1997); Murray Smith,
Engaging Characters
(Oxford University Press, 1995); Alex Neill, “Empathy and (Film) Fiction,” in David Bordwell and Noël Carroll, eds.,
Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies
(Wisconsin University Press, 1996); Gregory Currie,
Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science
(Cambridge University Press, 1995).

²
François Truffaut,
Hitchcock
(Simon and Schuster, 1967), p. 73. For more on the phenomenon Hitchcock draws attention to here, see Bence Nanay,
Aesthetics as Philosophy of Perception
(Oxford University Press, 2014).

³
A couple of examples: Tamar Szabó Gendler,
Intuition, Imagination, and Philosophical Methodology
(Oxford University Press, 2011); Fred Dretske, “Perception and Other Minds.”
Noûs
7 (1973).

⁴
Boris Bornemann, Piotr Winkielman, and Elke van der Meer, “Can You Feel What You Don't See? Using Internal Feedback to Detect Briefly Presented Emotional Stimuli,”
International Journal of Psychophysiology
85 (2012).

⁵
A line taken almost directly from Oscar Wilde; see
The Picture of Dorian Grey
(Barnes and Noble, 1995), p. 119.

⁶
On a related concept of vicarious emotional engagement, see Bence Nanay,
Between Perception and Action
(Oxford University Press, 2014), Chapter 6.

⁷
Robert Musil,
Precision and Soul
(University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 5.

2

You Too Can Awesomize Yourself

K
RIS
G
OFFIN

K
ids, Barney Stinson is awesome. Not even the most erudite philosopher would refute this claim. But Barney wasn't born awesome. He became that way. On top of that, he awesomizes his existence every day. Being awesome is not something that overcomes you, it is something you have to do yourself. And Barney knows how to do it. He has shared this knowledge in various ways, most importantly through his blog and his book
The Bro Code
.

Barney's skills are so strong that his awesomeness can even overcome the little misfortunes of life. He calls this overcoming “mind over Barney,” which is best illustrated with his quote: “When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. . . . True story.” Barney can even control his emotions and turn a negative emotion into a positive one. He can awesomize his sadness.

Is “When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead” really a “true story,” or is Barney deceiving himself and others? Can you have full control over your emotions? Can you simply stop feeling what you feel and be awesome instead? Or is Barney disguising his true feelings by stating his awesomeness? Is saying, “I'm awesome!” maybe a masquerade for a deeply hidden sadness?

We are likely to think that emotions overcome us and affect us beyond our control. As a Stinsonian philosopher, I refuse to believe this. I think that we can partly transform emotions or at least, in Barney's words, awesomize them. Barney's attitude can teach us how to stop being sad and start being awesome instead.

How to Stop Being Sad and Be Awesome Instead

After analyzing Barney's attitude towards everyday life, we can extract the following guidelines to stop being sad and be awesome instead.

1. Discover yourself
.

Learn to recognize a negative emotion. It is a great achievement to acknowledge the fact that you have a problem that needs to be solved. You must have a grasp on the emotion you want to change.

2. Avoid the path of self-reflection
.

Once recognized, you don't need to reflect on the negative any further. Don't reflect on how your childhood made you the way you are. Don't bring in your daddy or mommy issues. Self-reflection may elucidate why you have this emotion, but it will not help you to change it. On the contrary, self-reflection makes you drown in your emotions. And drowning isn't awesome.

3. Choose the path of awesomeness
.

This is a crucial part. Say “STOP!” to your negative emotion and the train of thought that it brings about. Feel the power you have. You have the power and the potentiality to be awesome. It's your decision. Don't let the emotion take over. You are not the slave of your emotions. You're in control.

4. Express your awesomeness
.

Say: “I was feeling sad, but now I choose to be awesome instead.” Now you have made the choice to be awesome and you are proud of it. It's
you
who did it. You need to show off your awesomeness. It's important to realize that you have the full responsibility to be who you want to be. It is not something that happens to you, but something you do. It is
you
who is upgrading yourself.

5. Be awesome all over the place
.

When you have said you're awesome, act accordingly. Don't let your statement become a lie. Lying about your emotional state is not awesome, it is a weak sham. You have to actively be awesome, which can be best described as: be like Barney.

“When I get sad I just stop being sad and be awesome instead!” Barney reveals himself as an extremely optimistic person who actually believes that he can control his emotions, and choose to stop being sad. When you feel sad, just choose to be happy and your emotions will follow!

But is it really possible to choose how you feel? Can you just pick an emotion and start feeling it? Intuitively we wouldn't believe that we have this much control over our emotions.

However silly this may sound, the most prominent philosophers who discuss emotion seem to agree with Barney in saying that we can actually control our emotions. During the past century there has been a dispute between philosophers arguing for two different ideas about what emotions really are.

Some philosophers argue that emotions are essentially bodily. They are physiological responses, perhaps caused by your glands. Other philosophers claim that emotions are really about the way we think, since we don't seem to have emotions unless we judge things to be a certain way. I'm going to call the first group of philosophers
somaticists
and the other group c
ognitivists
. Despite their difference of opinion, both of these two schools of thought seem to agree with Barney's theory that we can choose how we feel.

Are Emotions Bodily Feelings?

Somaticists claim that emotions are nothing but bodily feelings caused by physiological changes. For instance, being angry is nothing but the feeling of your heart beating faster combined with an adrenaline rush. The famous pioneer of psychology, William James, defended this theory. Up till the 1960s and 1970s most psychologists agreed with his idea that emotions are nothing but physiological changes.

Reducing emotions to bodily changes has some radical implications. According to this theory, you must be able to manipulate your own emotions (to some extent) by acting as if you experience a certain emotion. The logic behind it is:

       
1.
  
Emotions are bodily feelings caused by physiological changes.

       
2.
  
We can control our body to some extent.

       
3.
  
Therefore we can control our emotions to some extent.

This theory implies the ‘fake it till you make it' idea. Forcing a smile when you feel sad, for instance, can help you feel happy. We can control our bodily changes that give rise to our emotions. Therefore we're able to control our emotions. So Barney was right. We can just stop being sad and be awesome instead. In moments when Barney is in pain, he takes control over his body in order to look cool. Then he mostly screams a high pitched catchphrase. He forces his body in such a way so that he can change his emotions.

Nowadays, most of the cognitive scientists who still agree with James defend a theory that is far more nuanced than James's original claim. Most contemporary emotion theorists, however, think that James's theory is not useful anymore. They think it is rather naive to reduce your emotions to the body alone. Emotions aren't things of the body. An emotion isn't something like hunger. It is more than a bodily sensation. We feel things for a reason.

Are Emotions Judgments?

The thinkers I'm calling cognitivists say that emotions are not something of the body, but of the mind. Emotions are not bodily; they are aspects of thinking. The famous philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre argued against the psychologists of his time that emotions are some kind of judgment. Robert Solomon systematized this idea into the so-called ‘judgment theory of emotion'.

According to philosophers like Solomon, emotions are judgments. If you're angry, you're angry for a reason. At the end of the third season, Ted finds out that Barney has slept with his ex-girlfriend, Robin. Ted becomes so angry with Barney that he doesn't want to be friends with him anymore. His anger is not just a bodily sensation, but a cognitive judgment. Ted's anger proves that he doesn't approve of Barney's actions. Barney fails to respect one of the most important rules of the Bro Code: no sex with a bro's ex. And even more than that, Ted is disappointed in Barney. He wants to believe that although Barney is known for his disrespectful way of treating women, he would never be disrespectful to Ted. But apparently, Ted has misjudged
his friend; he was wrong, and that's why Ted becomes angry with Barney. He becomes angry because of how he judges the situation. According to cognitivists, every emotion functions in this way.

However, some cognitivists also agree with Barney's optimism. Solomon argues that we choose our own emotions. The logic behind this is:

       
1.
  
Emotions are judgments.

       
2.
  
We ‘make' judgments.

       
3.
  
Thus emotions are activities or things we do.

       
4.
  
Things we do are voluntary.

       
5.
  
What is voluntary is chosen.

       
6.
  
Therefore, emotions are chosen.

If emotions are judgments and that we make judgments, then an emotion is voluntarily chosen. We can choose to stop feeling sad and just be awesome instead.

But is it really true that every emotion is a judgment? Ted's anger with Barney can easily be explained with the judgment theory. But is every emotion a judgment? We do sometimes seem to have emotions that don't fall in line with our conscious judgments. You could be afraid of flying although you're perfectly well aware that it's far less dangerous than traveling by car. Or you could be afraid of a poisonous snake although you know that it's safely behind glass.