Emotional Decisions
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From Chapter 4:
In truth, all the decisions that we make have to use a little bit of both logic and emotion. It's just that manipulators re-rig the scale so that you use too much emotion and not enough logic. Again, both are needed. Funny enough, many people believe we only make good choices based on sound, logical reasons, but the truth is that no choice is purely logical, because they're value-based. Think of it this way: the most common form people describe to me as being “purely logical,” is to list off all of the pros and cons of any given choice (ie. its consequences and its traits, and so on), and then to choose the one with the best balance between those pros, and cons. There’s at least one big problem with this. And it’s pretty simple. How do you know which of the consequences are pros, and which ones are cons? No matter what your logic is, the decision is made as a way to trade your current present, for a different future. Why would you trade your present for a future that is less valuable? If it isn't less valuable, how would you know?
Let’s say that one of these consequences for your choice, one of your futures, was a 100% chance of death. Well then, it depends on how you feel about death. If you feel a desire to keep living, chances are that you fear death, as your WHO aligns with life, and has a very unlikely chance
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of aligning with its opposite. As such, you’d turn down this choice almost immediately. What if you’re suicidal, or simply don’t care if you die? Well, if the other items on the list are good enough, you might choose to complete this choice, based simply on pure numbness. Better yet, if the items on the list are so valuable, that you’d even risk trading your life to have them come to fruition, you may happily, though with reservations, commit to completing this choice too, while maybe going down in history as another famous, great martyr. Sometimes, people will feel that death is acceptable, or even wanted. Even death, something as seemingly terrible as death itself, may actually be a pro, depending on how you feel.
Some of you may be saying, “But what about our survival instinct?”. It doesn’t matter. Our survival instinct may exist, but its way of achieving things, like many other psychological capabilities, relies on other, outside, portions of the brain. Your survival instinct doesn’t work alone.
Basically, you may have a survival instinct, but that instinct often communicates its needs through sensations. It makes you experience something so that you know how to act. It may make your stomach growl in hunger, or it may give you the butterflies. It may make you sweat. It may make you shiver, but ultimately, it must give you a sensation. In the case of death, often this sensation is fear. And fear my friends, is an emotion.
All these other sensations are made to make you feel an emotion as well, such as a desire for food, a cold drink, or to want to curl up under a warm blanket. Almost all experiences lead to emotion, even experiencing certain thoughts. Hence why, imagining any future experiences, or remembering past ones, is not necessarily pure logic. Make no mistake, emotions play a vital role in many of our everyday lives and activities.