Decisions Decisions

This eye-opening report aired on CBS recently, but unfortunately  they offer no online link to the video. They do provide the transcript: From CBS Sunday Morning: Decisions, Decisions. Here is a short excerpt between the researcher Lerner and the reporter Spencer:

But sadder still?
“We’ve never succeeded, never, in having people recognize the irrational influence of incidental emotion,” Lerner laughed.
“Never?” Spencer said.
“And then to make steps, no. Never.”

Wow! “Never” she says! ‘Never’ sounds like a challenge worth sinking one’s teeth into, eh? I have found it’s possible to avoid the bio-hoodwink to an extent. Much of my writing here is aimed at just that challenge. Regarding all my perceptions as the perception of symptoms is a tool I use most. This, along with correlations, helps nip many hypocritical rationalizations in the bud.

This matches my observation that how I feel drives how I act, just like any other animal. The duck feels hungry, it goes and eats. I feel hungry, I go eat. Next, how I feel drives how (and what) I think. If a duck could think, that would be the same for it. As far as I know, we are the only species that thinks. And that, my friends, may be where the trouble begins.

Thinking feeds back on how I feel. This can turn into a really neurotic viciously obsessive circle. This is where our difficulty begins, as chapter 71 puts it,  Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty. Thinking gets me into a mess, and aside from getting a total lobotomy, I know of nothing that can help me avoid the mess except thinking, or rather remembering. Writing this blog help reinforce my awareness and memory of where the trouble originates. Perhaps reading it can help do the same for some folk.

Making decisions, I believe, is what people get the ‘big bucks’ for. They don’t really have to be correct decisions; they just have to put them forth confidently, which accounts for much of the difficulty our species finds itself in (see also, The Decider).