[ronin358]

>I once suffered a mental illness that made it difficult for me to feel certain emotions. One of the most fascinating results of the experience was the degree to which my ability to reason degraded.

This helps reinforce a thought I've been playing around with since my 20's. It seems quite ridiculous to me that reason is set in conflict with emotion (a remnant, I believe, of the historical conflict of science contra religion in the west). It is much more likely that the ability to reason is a subset of emotion, i.e., reasoning is nothing more than the development of particular emotions working in concert. This conception is more aligned with how evolution actually operates (building upon the processes of before) rather than having to explain a "magical" reason which just appears out of nowhere in the human mind and dominates the animal nature.

Just a thought...I hope you were able to deal with your illness well.