Thursday 18 September 2014

Be reasonable

The little red rubber guy, his head filled with flour, pleads with us to be reasonable. He is worried. He wants us to be open to argument. He is hoping we are not fanatics of some irrational cult. He hopes we are not fascists, zealots, anarchists, bigots or surrealists. He hopes we are not fuelled by emotions as women are supposed to be.
When we are passionate, loyal, in love, mad, patriotic, poetic, intuitive, filled with hatred or remorse, our heart rules our head and we make irrational decisions. Sometimes those decisions turn out to be the same as the ones we would have made by applying rationality. Sometimes we rationalise intuitive decisions after we have made them. Sometimes we act without seeming to make a decision at all.
Neuroscience tells us that every thought we have has an emotional content. It’s impossible to add two numbers together without involving an emotional component. So perhaps the little red rubber guy is being unreasonable.

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