We are emotional creatures, and emotion plays and flirts with reason in such a fashion as to complicate the nature of every decision we make. Inherently there is some reason for any choice, yet that word "reason" implies rational, that there is a logical construct that will allow one to determine the result given all entry parameters. There is a reason for our choices, but it is not so simple as to be easily ascribed right or wrong, or good or bad. It can be beyond our abilities to understand. We may say that some decisions don't make sense, even to the one who makes them. That's not fair, though. Our own failings of comprehension should not be attributed to choices made, even if those choices prove at some point to have been less favorable.
The perception is that emotion conflates reason and we make choices that are not reasonable or logical. That perception, however is based on a post enlightenment western view that our capacity for reason is to our advantage over the lesser animals and that it allows for us to make choices that will be of greatest benefit.
Animals lack this capacity for reason, yet we perceive that their behavior is entirely rational. They eat, sleep, mate, migrate, hibernate, defend, flee, and more all as is in their current best (perceived) interests. The “decisions” of such animals are instinct, seen by us as a logical response to stimulus. Within ourselves we have relabeled instinct as emotion and ascribed to it an anti-logical connotation.
Our emotion is our basest response to stimulus. When we feel comfort with (or fear of) another; when we unconditionally love our children, we are experiencing emotion, and we are also exhibiting our basest form of logic: our instinct.
That is not to say that our emotion will always produce a response that is within our best interest. Because we have grown up and developed—both in terms of long term evolution and in terms of a single life lived in modern society—we have come to appreciate that we are capable of overcoming base instinct to create to develop to explore to discover. Our instinct for curiosity has caused us to develop impartial reason as a means to examine the world around us, and to examine ourselves. The development of that part of our minds has become a part of us every bit as much as our instinctive, emotional, core. As such our decisions are a complex twinning of the two sides, two parts of reason that do not have each other’s best interest in mind.
The emotional side wants a companion with whom we feel a certain type of comfort, the logical side wants stability. The emotional side wants that one house, while the logical side studies the mortgage payments. The emotional side thinks a big slice of cheesecake would be the perfect finish to the already large meal, while the logical side says that it is unnecessary and unhealthy. (It is not our instinct to stop eating when full.)
Every decision has a reason behind it. Some of those reasons are impartial decisions, and others are emotional. Some we can step back and make sense of, others we cannot. Some are good for us and others are not.
I am personally driven to understand the reason behind things. I don’t care if that reason is the result primarily of logic or emotion, or a more equal interweaving of the two. I don’t care if the reason is complex or simple. I don’t care if the reason is faulty or sound. I am painfully curious, especially of things I do not understand and that affect me personally.
There are certainly times when that desire to understand can come off as argumentative, or that I am trying to influence or change someone else’s decision to be more favorable to me. I cannot deny that that is ever the case. In fact, it would be a wholly reasonable thing for me to attempt to create a decision that would be in my perceived best interest. Of course, what I perceive to be in my own best interest may not actually be in my best interest. I understand that, which complicates things horribly.
Decisions that are to have a long and lasting effect on my life are not ones I take lightly. To begin or end a relationship (or to accept such things), to buy a house, to get a dog, someday to get married, to have a child. Those are complex, long term decisions. They will affect me not only when I make them but for years to come. Years which are unknown and unknowable.
How do we make those decisions? How do I? It depends on the situation. Some decisions are best left to reason (when to get gas, whether to go to work). Others are better suited to emotion (what to have for dinner, whether to kiss one's partner). Big decisions should get input from both sides. Of course this is primarily a rational look at choice, reason and emotion, and it ignores the fact that people can misuse reason, or misinterpret emotion.
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