We all believe that we are rational. Unfortunately, everything we do suggests otherwise. From the decisions we make, the things we buy, the clothes we wear, our life partner, the location of our house, and anything else you can imagine, none of it comes from a rational, fact-based decision-making process. All of it comes from our feelings. You don’t think so? Well, let’s look at a few items.
I feel red is right!
Consider your preferences in color. Why do you like the colors you like? I am certain you can produce a certain number of answers. However, if you take a closer look, you will discover that there are no good reasons for you to like the color purple, for example. Why not blue, red, yellow, or any other of the myriad of colors that exist in nature? You will also realize that just as there are no good reasons for the colors you like, there are no good reasons for the ones you dislike.
The only reason worth considering is the one rooted in your limbic brain. And No, I am not going all sciency on you. The limbic brain is the part of the brain in charge of feelings. Red feels right. Blue feels wrong. Now that we have established that red feels right, we are going to try to find the reason why red feels right to us. You may also notice the process is reversed. We make the decision based on our feelings first. Only after we make it are we free to make sense of it.
Buy first
Most of us have witnessed the release of the new iPhone. Apple gathers thousands of people in a room and convinces them to buy its latest phone. Based on the prototypes they have touched, these people go out and willfully execute a free advertising campaign for Apple. Does that sound rational to you? Is this something that a person in his or her right mind would do? It does not stop there. Three days before the official in-store release, people start lining up in front of stores and often in the cold. All this just to be the first one to hold a device that, if you think about it for a minute, will become obsolete within 12 to 18 months. That’s not a sound investment if you ask me. However, millions of people make that investment every year. I am not sure there is a place in there for rationalism.
Needed or not, it stays!
Any economics professor will tell you. We don’t make sense most of the time. The most baffling thing is the storage of unneeded items. I agree that some people may have legitimate reasons to own a storage unit. Most people who own storage units do not need them. You know you have a problem when you have so much stuff that you have to pay someone extra to store it. Why do we keep the second TV that we will need or use again? How about that old couch? The son’s old bed or the daughter’s toddler bicycle, and all the other stuff we keep around. As we have seen before, there are no good answers here either. TV technology does not stand still, so the chances of using the stored TV go down with every passing month. Wouldn’t it prove more beneficial to let someone use it? Of course, that would make sense. But Remember that we don’t do the things we do because we think. We do the things we do because we feel.
Communism was not wrong! It just ignored our reality.
We can all agree that most cars nowadays are pretty close in design, performance, and quality. I am not talking about the Lamborghinis or the like. I am talking about a run-of-the-mill car. The question, therefore, is why are we, not all driving the same cars if they are pretty close, all things considered? We are not doing that and will never do that because doing so ignores how we feel.
There are many reasons communism did not work. On paper, it should work. Shoes fill the same function, and everyone needs a pair. As the followers of Marx and Lenin have discovered, mandating that everyone wears the same outfit does not account for their feelings. There are a plethora of reasons communism failed. However, I contend that ignoring how people feel has to be close to the top of the list. While their logic was sound, they fail to realize that we are not rational beings. We are emotional in everything we do. I think our old friend Descartes, instead of coining the famous “Cogito ergo sum,” should have said instead, “Sentio, ergo sum.” Logic is the guardrail that keeps us on track. Feelings are the true power behind every decision we make.