Heroes Not Zombies

I was listening to a discussion recently about rational and irrational thinking. Whilst I agree that rational thinking is a “good thing”, I can’t say I agree with the current reduced materialistic view of rational thinking and I certainly don’t agree with what I heard one of the contributors say, which was that if only we could increase rationalism we would create a better world. My immediate thought was, “really? You think so? I can think of something which is not rationalism which I would much prefer to back as the way to create a better world – love.”

So, I was delighted to find this piece by David Brooks in the NY Times.

We emphasize things that are rational and conscious and are inarticulate about the processes down below. We are really good at talking about material things but bad at talking about emotion….when it comes to the most important things like character and how to build relationships, we often have nothing to say. Many of our public policies are proposed by experts who are comfortable only with correlations that can be measured, appropriated and quantified, and ignore everything else.

He goes on to make the point that the latest research is changing this view of rational being good, and emotion bad.

First, the unconscious parts of the mind are most of the mind, where many of the most impressive feats of thinking take place. Second, emotion is not opposed to reason; our emotions assign value to things and are the basis of reason. Finally, we are not individuals who form relationships. We are social animals, deeply interpenetrated with one another, who emerge out of relationships. This body of research suggests the French enlightenment view of human nature, which emphasized individualism and reason, was wrong. The British enlightenment, which emphasized social sentiments, was more accurate about who we are. It suggests we are not divided creatures. We don’t only progress as reason dominates the passions. We also thrive as we educate our emotions.

Hmm….what do you think? Are we on the verge of a new more holistic (and I’d argue more realistic) view of human beings?