Logic vs Emotions
I recently learned something else about our cultural divide that separates family, friends and nations.
It is about logic vs emotions.
Why does advertising often appeal to the emotions? Because it works. Sex, love, anger, fear. Act now before it’s too late. Spontaneous purchases. Impulse items. Emotions getting the better of us. The ridiculousness of happy people extolling the joys of car insurance or toilet paper.
Gad Saad is an atheistic evolutionary psychologist and marketing professor. In his book The Parasitic Mind, he describes the way people make choices. It has to do with how our minds work, having both emotion and reason. Both are valuable. In a healthy brain, the two sides work together.
Choices and ideas based on logic and reason tend to be slow and calculating. They involve research, considering different sides and reaching a conclusion.
On the other hand, emotional decisions tend to be quick and irrational, often neither good nor true. People latch on to false ideas, being fully aware they are wrong, but embracing them anyway because it feels good. In other words, feeling good trumps being good.
Dr. Saad calls these bad ideas parasites of the mind. Just as physical parasites can affect the brain, parasitic ideas can affect the mind. Once emotional ideas take effect, it is very hard to dislodge them.
In our culture we see the Woke Mind Virus or Trump Derangement Syndrome which are based on emotions. No matter how much good is done, it must always be called bad.
Political posturing based on emotions is powerful and takes effect long before logic and reason can catch up.
The news media consistently stirs up anger, hate, fear, or concern for a cause. Even when their ratings tank they cling to their illogical agenda. So much of it is false, fabricating hoaxes and bogeymen to rail against night and day.
This explains why people cling to irrational, obviously false or evil ideas, like gender fluidity or defunding the police or open borders or climate doom or sexual mutilation of children or rallies supporting Hamas or cheering for abortion.
What do you hear at progressive rallies? Is it logic and reason, carefully debating ideas, or is there a lot of chanting and singing charging up emotion?
You can tell that this virtue signaling is fake, because eventually, when logic and reason catch up and debunk them, they are forgotten and the next hoax is speeding around the world.
This explains why people can unashamedly accuse you of the very thing they are doing, and why hypocrisy and double standards exist openly and proudly. It is because emotionalism is detached from reason. Truth is irrelevant.
So next time you hear whacky, irrational and false ideas, understand that you are dealing with emotion and not reason.
The appeal and success of Charlie Kirk, was his patient willingness to address the emotional and irrational with calm logic and reason. Let us have courage and take the same approach in restoring common sense to society around us.
Emotion isn’t bad, but it must be tempered by reason. A healthy society, like a healthy mind, needs a healthy balance of both.
