The opium wars are not obscure!
Yay!
I bet that your reading of the opium wars is in accord with that of many respectable historians and discord with many other respectable historians.
Fair enough. I guess it would've been better to start with a more personal example.
What do you mean?
I trust my moral intuitions about if something is ultimately good or bad, but spend time reflecting on my emotions, which I often act contrary to.
Often when I'm annoyed its the result of someone misunderstanding something, or me not eating recently or sleeping enough. When I'm working with someone on a goal that I've determined is good (like, my FIRST team or something) and I feel the urge to snap at someone, I try to not do it. It would feel right, but snapping would probably do things contradictory to my goals.
Suspending emotions is easier when I run through a checklist of why I might be feeling it. For instance when I'm tired (often a forerunner to me becoming lazy, or irritable) I ask myself if I'm actually just hungry. If I think that's why, I go eat and things are better, and my actions are more consistent.
Joshua Greene manages to squeeze his ideas about 'point and shoot morality vs. manual mode morality' into just 10 minutes. For those unfamiliar, his work is a neuroscientific approach to recommending that we shut up and multiply.
Greene's 10-minute video lecture.