Happiness Hypothesis- Jonathan Haidt.

The passion of our emotions.
Are we rational beings and our decisions based on informed reason and pure logic? Jonathan Haidt focused on the role of emotions in human life, hoping to rescue them from the dogmatic disdain of Western philosophers and religions that, he said, have been “worshiping reason and distrusting the passions for thousands of years”. But recent work in cultural psychology showed that the priests, Mystics and philosophers had got it wrong:
Emotions are not stupid distractions from truth, but indispensable forms of perception. They are “filled with cognition”, and the ancient prejudice against them was no more than a professional myth – a conspiracy designed to “make priests/ philosophers look pretty darned good”, and “justify their perpetual employment as the high priests of reason.

The mind, he said, is not a peaceful philosophical realm where reason and consciousness reign, but a battlefield of conflicting impulses largely beyond our knowledge and control: or rather, it is like a mighty elephant crashing through the forest with a would-be rational rider perched precariously on its back. That we can be tempted to do something, though we know it to be wrong; or that we can yield to temptation, and regret our weakness bitterly.”.-