Tuesday, 10 July 2007

Eureka!!!

Yes, i had a bath moment. You can never have too many steaming hot baths ...
It's also really interesting that that is when your mind has it's best moments.

The upshot goes like this: We are an emotive society, not an intellectual one.

Now this is a big statement, one of those things that define how you perceive the world, and how to understand it more effectively. What makes it worse (i think) is that we believe, from our school days, that we are a scientific society. We have houses and cars and computers and cell phones and complex tools to assist in our daily lives. We have tradesmen, artisans, specialists, engineers, and that helpdesk helper. All these little helpers make the 21st century the age of technology.

But the over specialisation has a price. People know what they do at work, usually some minutae within a massive organisation, but even if their work impacts our domestic sphere of life, their specialisation means very little in the day to day running of our lives.

What chrystalised this train of thought was a blog post of a friend (Koo) who commented on a friend of hers talking about feelings, and how feelings were a luxury not afforded to even our parents. They took what they could out of life and were grateful for it.

Now looking at the youth of today (don't say it) but they are very emotive beings. They operate on emotion; I don't feel like doing it, it doesn't feel right, my FEELINGS, etc. Even choosing a car, most make a passionate choice, as opposed to a balanced, informed choice. It's not the make with reliability and service support that makes your insides bubble. It's the fast, sleek, sexy car that will break that in the showroom wins your heart. The subsequent trauma of having a sub standard car is merely the laws of cause and effect in action.

Hmmmm ... i'm not making my thoughts clear enough i think ......
Well, as an aside, this is exactly what i want the blog for .. just sharpening my thoughts. If they have the sharpness of a tyre, then i need to think again.

Be back a little later i hope ... got to try clarify.
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2 comments:

Slavedude275 said...

Just whilst you clarify your thoughts there... just a small comment on my immediate thoughts when reading it.

You can learn and be skilled and educate yourself to take good decisions about this and that. I believe education is a good thing, not necessarily only for the field you are in. I'm a marketer of profession... so I know a bit of economics, accounting, and how peoples minds work in a purchase situation... and how to trigger people to buy. This is all well and good! For me it's just as important to have a base knowledge, and be able to use my brain to understand what is going on around. Emotions are important still, and I decide on emotions all the time. I can weigh back and forth... and in the end emotions decide still!! I cherish emotions! Follow your emotions and you will live a happy life!! You marry and have kids not bacause you are smart (to find the right one, and a rich bitch), but because of love and emotions. Emotions are good! Don't tell me that emotions had no part in it when you bought your Yamaha FZ6, haha!!

I've got a cousin who studied finance and economics. Now, he is very successful and owns about 10 appartments in downtown Oslo (Norway). He has made up his own little fortune there, but I can also see that he puts all emotions aside to get there! I've seen how he section the appartments to get an extra two rooms to rent out... ruining the appartments in my view.

My cousin also told me it was the wrong time to buy a house when I went into the market! I was upset and emotional about this. I moved to another town and needed a place to stay, so I bought. As much as I wanted into the market, it was an emotional decision get something of my own. But whether the prices were going up or down the next year... I still needed a place to live!!! So fuck him!

I want my kids to be emotive beings as you say! Hopefully they will take some kind of education... and thus be able to make sound decisions based on emotions balanced out with informations when needed.

Now you'll probably edit your post and I've answered to something way off the mark...

11/7/07 12:16
Anonymous said...

Hmmmmmmm ... me munches on this bit of food for thought ....

Ok, i need to make a point here. I am not against emotions, or thought for that matter, but an excess of either.

Taking my wonderful FZ6 as a prime example:
The bike aquisition project has been running, mostly unsuccessfully for about 2 years now.
The framework is rational, starting from a hatred of sitting in traffic (come on, rationally sitting in traffic is insanity), to a phenomenally high petrol bill, and car repair costs etc.
The emotional side is essentially the need to get out the cage (literally and figuratively).

Now after i had decided on the budget, and overall framework of my requirements, it boiled down to 2/3 options. I'll admit that they were all much of a muchness, and as such i allowed myself the luxury of choosing the one that took my heart, BUT ONLY AFTER THE HEAD DECISION HAD BEEN MADE, AND BOTH CONCURRED. My heart's choice matched my heads rules, and all was happy.

Johnny, you started your comments with words like learn, skilled, educate, good decisions. Something which we were fortunate enough to grow up with, knowing that those are at the forefront of succeeding in any way in life. And true success is achieving the balance between head and heart. Your home buying decision was not a heart one, it was a factual, rational decision based on your needs. If you had listened to your brother, your emotional side would have won, i believe your "wish" for a house was rational, and your brothers advice emotional, in the sense that making money trumped the practicality of your day to day needs. Even though his advice was justified rationally.

I have an 8 year old son, who i'm proud to say is a dreamer. This however poses a dilemma; my desire for him to be happy and balanced conflicts with his ability to survive in a distinctly non-dreamer world, so part of my duty is to ground him (when necessary, and with due sensitivity). We would i think both agree that the balance is essential.

Right now getting to the crux of my post. The society in which we live is emotive.
TV is not a rational device, adverts which tell you how scientific their washing powder is don't tell you that the advert actually works on moods. They try make you "happy" and associate your happiness with their product. Now rationally this reeks, but sadly, because we are only human, it works remarkably well. The fact that TV is a (correction THE) major input into most young minds, add to that the fact that it is not an infortmational source (as certain people have told me) but a "feelgood generator" (feelie anyone?) and you have a problem with people's basic acceptances of it. Almost everybody i know watches tv to relax, unwind, etc. What they never admit to is that it is at the expense of their minds. Reading a book balances the 2, tv does not.

The entire commercialisation of our lives is an emotional one, from shops, shopping malls, movies, etc, and while you or i are able to at least recognise the dangers, the younger cannot, and are artfully led to the conclusion that so long as it feels good, it must be ok.

It is this that i, and you would have to guard against, something which we're able to, because of our education. We can rationalise, and prevent any extreme responses. Again i stress, your education protects you. What i don't see, is a similar mindset in the youth.

Aside from the deplorable state of education in this country, parents for some reason no longer take interest in their own kids, leaving them to discover the world they find. Because the world they are finding today, is frankly not worth looking at. I'm talking about the daily life in a city. Therein lies the rub.

Unless people actively work against this dumbing down of kids, it's not going to improve. Things are coming off the rails, you need only look at road rage to see the point, since we are bombarded by conflicting ideas daily and consistantly. Although i'm being VERY long winded, it's important for me to be clear. A perfect example again is the bike. I need a license to operate (and buy) one, but any attempt to book via the "system" is completely stonewalled.
So on the one hand you have a rational decision to buy a bike, but that is blocked by the traffic department. This would result in the rational mind doing backflips, and the emotional side overheating. This is happening daily, increasingly and more irrationally by the second.

The only solution (as i see it) is a conscious decision to identify, and counter such trends. My first step was to eliminate TV. There are many other directions and steps that can be taken, what lacks is the will. To choose any direction is a rational act, but as shown above, our very rationality is at stake here, with our anger, despair and fustration making even a simple first step seem impossible.

11/7/07 14:32

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