On The Wisdom of the “Gut Feeling”
Commentary, Truthiness Comments (4)
I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday. -Abraham Lincoln
Humans it turns out, seem to have to be able to sense out something is wrong, but not always the ability to figure what is wrong; the reasons seems to be both social and a genetic ability of memory: while in modern times, having a perfect memory will elevate you to a social standing or a small cave of programming languages and branded a nerd, thinking too logically and less emotionally seems to create unstable humans.
People who are really smart-the kind of smart that makes people actually envy them- eventually seem to become unstable, and psychopathic . They start to look at the rest of us as insects. Serial killers, real ones, the ones taking years to catch, are incredibly smart, and treat most victims as experiments in a lab. But someone always seems to know them for what they truly are.
For the rest of us, who work “normally”, let’s run thru examples:
- for years people believed that when you cut hair it grows back thicker. Well, turns out it doesn’t but there is a reason it seems thicker. People also believed giving kids sugar makes them hyperactive. Trying to convince a parent it didn’t would more than likely get you fisted in the face. Well, turns out that its not the sugar, but most things we give kids have yes, food dye and coloring and THAT makes them hyper.
Other examples continue:
- People in relationships sense something changes, but they don’t know implicitly something has. This sends most of them on a hunt to find proof. Most times yes, it is the cheating other, but sometimes it’s just a surprise birthday party or a well hidden present. Still, their instinct was there.
The thing is, we don’t know we cannot remember perfectly to think absolutely logically. We are emotionally connected to an imperfect system that mostly records the feelings of our knowledge and experiences. . There are many other instance where the feeling is right, but the the true cause is what is missplaced. Turns out most (and i say most) of the remedies to what people think are the cause problems does fix the problem; but to turns out its like using a bomb to open a door. We rip apart our lives, fixing , searching trying to find the answer. We call this “being curious”.
Perhaps this incredibly curiosity is just a by product of the way we remember? Because we cannot remember every thing perfectly, and we have a need to know, (not to mention the brain’s amazing ability to substitute and fill in the gaps) is truly responsibly. Our own failure to remember perfectly and only having what we do remember tied into an emotional response leads to this curiosity.
Perhaps none of that is true, but when you remember a picture or want to find something that will remind you of something, don’t you search harder for it? To evoke the emotion, to feel again? Why is it you keep around that thing of your old lover, when you know what they did to you in the end?
Now, what does children and sugar, serial killers, hair and things wrong in relationships… , have in common? Feelings. We have feelings about them all, and make assumptions about them all, often times without facts. It usually turns out we were not wrong, just…, not right. This all begs the question. Should you go with your gut or go with empirical evidence? When do know something is wrong and are you right?
Clearly in life our ability to question has given us Galileo, and Newton, The Atom and God. We’ve removed ourselves from the center of the Universe, and know better than to give kids sweet snacks an hour before bed time. We are often wrong in our assumptions, and evidence sometimes makes no sense. But we question because we felt “something was wrong”.
What to do then? Go with your gut; It’s right. Ask forgiveness and move on if wrong, don’t live in obliviousness and be labeled as clueless.
Believe in yourself; you’re open a door with not a key, but a grenade.
OceansOfThought @ March 17, 2008
I take offense with your assertation that “unstable” and “psychopathic” are one in the same. I maintain that thinking outside of social norms doesn’t necessarily make one dangerous, and without it we be an artless, soul-less and otherwise ugly society. The inherent beauty of free will is that I can choose to use my powers for good rather than evil; not to be arrogant, but in the end the world will be a better place for having let me be a part of it.
That being said, I agree that it’s important to follow your instincts and not fight them, however it takes a certain amount of practice for many (most?) people to actually understand what their instincts are saying; myself included.
On an unrelated topic, I’m going to have to set aside more reading time if you’re going to post twice in one day.
I’ve rewritten this twice now, so i think I finally have what i want to say in mind: unstable and psychopathic are not the same, but I would say the FBI behavioral unit (no, not the one on TV) would agree that pretty much all psychopathic behavior eventually unstabilizes the target person as they degenerate into a creature of wants and needs.
We know from many studies that “Crazy in Love” isn’t actually that far off, and very few people would assert that love doesn’t make the best of us unstable. Physopathic, no, not really, (Fatal attraction not withstanding.) But even love makes us strange to our friends who don’t understand what is happening, or why we are acting a certain way. People in love are clearly not phsychotic, but can eventually cross that line; unstablity is a first step.
In the end, I’m saying in the post, that one has to be both “unstable and psychopathic” with an added dose of unsaid sociopath for the condition to be true to lead down the path which whereupon the rest of us need to stay away from said person.
As for people who think outside the preverable box, or who traffic outside social norms, I’d have to say i think we -you and I- are clearly of that type, and admire the other for it. I like to say “our veiws are based upon our parents view of right and wrong and our parents views are based upon societies level of acceptablity of deviation from the norm.” In the end, I enjoy thinking outside social norms. It keeps others on their toes.
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