On Wed, 8 May 1996 07:21 Hal Popplewell wrote -
> In a message dated 96-05-07 20:20:23 EDT, you write:
>
> >John, I'm not so sure about this conclusion. Our genes are the product of
> >several hundreds of thousands of years, and they seem to build more
> >feeling or emotional parts of our brains than thinking parts. If this is
> >true 'US' may be more emotional than logical. Particlarly in situations
> >that have risk, to our selves or our jobs (same thing?) we may react from
> >our emotions rather than logically.
>
> I'm merely trying to point out that the "division" between emotion and
> logic is, IMHO, illusory. My text sought to show that we evaluate
> emotions, at least their appropriateness to a circumstance, logically. We
> can also be horrified or happy about a logically-derived conclusion. So
> why divide them? Instead, why not *unify* them?
I would like to add to this discussion of emotion and logic.
The two are different and are very necessary to the successful functioning
of any person.
Emotions are signals from what I call the "gut", that part of us which
holds our values and judges everything we sense/experience. Our gut has
standards for each value and if what we experience reflects a higher
standard than ours we like and respect it, if lower we dislike and
disrespect it, and if the same we think "so what". The gut sends the
result of its judgments to the conscious brain and thus the gut could be
called our "Good/Bad Compass". Emotionalism is allowing these judgments to
create actions and this is a misuse of our gut level signals. These
signals must only be used as "do more of that" or "do less of that"
rather than what to do in order to carry out the which way. What and even
if to act is strictly the function of the conscious brain.
Our conscious brain is our logic center and it is able to use facts from
memory in order to design actions. The conscious brain on its own is
unable to tell right from wrong, good from bad. Only the gut can do this
and it is unerring in its judgments. If the conscious brain designs
actions, they must be subjected to the judgment of the gut in order to
tell if they are the right thing to do. Otherwise, the conscious brain
will rationalize or excuse because "look what they are doing" or ignore or
use one of many other available strategies to do what it wants to do
rather than what is right.
Education tends to destroy our ability to listen to the gut. A two year
old child can often accurately judge if a person they meet is good or bad,
but by the time we go through sufficient education we may have learned to
join in doing very bad things in spite of our values. Plato taught us that
our emotions are base and always lead us to do bad things. He elevated the
brain's ability to reason to be the only way to emulate God and gave
emotions a very bad name.
Education also teaches us that we can always arrive at the correct answers
through use of our conscious brain. Then we wonder at how people can
create the Spanish Inquistion or the Crusades or the Holocaust or many
other of man's inhumanities to man. The truth is that without the gut we
have lost our "good sense" and our intuition. The working level in most
companies live by their gut level signals. Ask a hard hat 15 years ago
what to do with Russia and then ask a state department official from
academia and compare the time to create the answer and its accuracy if you
want proof for what I say.
The Greek society of 800 to 400 BC was perhaps the highest achieving
society in man's history just because they so valued all of what man was.
Once Plato arrived, they went downhill in an avalanche of recently created
self-doubt and lack of confidence, certainly partly because of Athens'
defeat at the hands Sparta and their wanting to blame and tear down
individual leaders for the result rather than get on with life. Socrates
did not want to be remembered as we think of him, but as a simple soldier
who fought well against the Persians for the right of Athens to continue
its own culture.
I may have rambled too much, but hope that I have added something.
Regards, Joan
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joan Pomo The Finest Tools for Managing People
Simonton Associates Based on the book
jpomo@gate.net "How to Unleash the Power of People"
--"jpomo@gate.net" <jpomo@gate.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>