When being “logical” person is not good enough
Things you will get out of this article:
- People rather be identified as logical rather than emotional for their preferred thinking process
- This perpetuates the illusion that one is more useful than the other
- Logic is not better than the emotional reasoning — as they are different ways of explaining the world
- This prioritization leads to the lack of research and skill development of emotional intelligence, which causes common problems in human development, communication, and leadership.
- One should choose the method based on its FUNCTION and not on its type — what's more likely to give a wanted result, help understand the opposite view to defend your own better, and make your relationships harmonious or more distant.
There are two types of reasonings:
There are two types of thinking modes to describe the world. One is the logical and the other emotional. One uses methodical systems that are controlled and can be manipulated, the other uses feelings, hunches, intuition, and instincts that are less constant and predictable.
We want to be more rational and logical and less an emotional thinker. This is understandable. We say things we don’t mean when we are angry. Emotions are temporary and not always produce productive results. Surgeon dissociate their emotions from the patients to operate with an objective judgement. You don’t want your surgeon panic in the middle of a complication. Being “professional” at work means putting the emotional opinions aside.
However, this preference generates a side effect, an underlying unspoken value that logical thinking is better than emotional thinking.
If emotions are distracting and inaccurate in a decision making, then we should focus be more logical and avoid “feelings” like a plague.
The question is: Does the nature of emotions produce bad decisions or the lack of mastery and awareness of emotions that produce bad decisions?
Recognize that you are falling for that illusion:
Being more logical is wired in the fabric of our culture and identity. There is a famous book by Daniel Kahneman called “Thinking, fast and slow”, where he identified two decision making systems: 1- Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious; 2 — Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious.
The words that describe these two systems inherently carry negative and positive connotations. If you had to choose one system to part of your identity, you rather be identified with the system number #2. In the male dominating society, we also see that the system number #2 is associated with a male thinking and number #1 with a female thinking. That is not a coincidence. One system is a weakness and the other is strength. I don’t even have to name which one is which, you already know.
You are right handed because you were trained to be one:
When you receive new information, you use either logical or emotional thinking more often than the other, but definitely both in combination. There is a natural tendency to use one or the other. If you believe there is a hierarchy is the thinking processes, then you are more likely to change your tendencies. For example, the child will use left or right hand to learn writing. With right hand preference culture, parents would force the child to use the right hand and right hand only. Without any preference, the child will end up using either hand according to its natural tendency and predisposition because it results in an equal results.
To perform functions that need both hands, the child will learn and should use both hands as necessary with equal efficiency. If the situation will require the child to be ambidexter, then it will take some time to switch the brain and training.
This is my argument is that we need to learn how to use emotional intelligence in combination the logical intelligence. The society and stigma against emotions have forces people to be more logical ending up a lot of people not knowing how to use their ability use emotions to its full potential.
Positive and Negatives of Two Thinking Methods:
(+) Logic is best for material and measurable aspects of the world
Logical thinking is using more than two premises that lead to a conclusion. The validity of logic comes from evidence based facts that are measured, proven, perceived by senses, and based on physical reality. Even the “good” guess is good enough to be considered logical form of decision if the guess is based on probability and statistics. Thinking methods such as process of elimination, deduction, categorizations and modeling is a form of logical thinking.
Such thinking is very useful for science, using past experiences to deduce abstract laws and rules of nature. Logic is a sequence of events that lead to predictable results every time. Scientific method, economics and business models are all based on logical reasoning because it deals with physical and predictable aspects of reality that can be measured, replicated, and predicted.
(-) Logic it is confined in its own system boundaries
The limits of logical thinking is its dependence on assumptions and specific context. The necessity to prove the fact to be true or not is skipped for the sake of simplicity and function of the argument. For example, to prove the fact that 1+1 is 2 is not necessary to teach students how to use logic for addition and subtraction. However, for pure mathematicians 1+1= 2 is not a fact but an observation. It will take at least 7 pages to actually prove the fact 1+1 is in fact 2. Therefore, you cannot just say that 1+1 = 2 is a fact. For some situations it works good enough, for some it doesn’t.
The even more challenging to our logical thinking is recent discovery that there are more than 3 dimensions existing in the “reality” which makes the three Newton’s law difficult to contextualize with the 3D reality we experience.
(+) Emotional reasoning can explain things logic cannot
Emotional thinking is harder to define, hence this article is an attempt to define and possibly see the validity of its effectiveness and implications.
Emotional thinking is not emotional reaction. Reactions are wired in the biological nervous system either for procreational, survival, and protective purposes, such as fight or flight response, desire for sex and search for food supply. We are more likely to remember things when mixed with emotions, such as fear and pleasure.
When the logical mind is limited, one has to use intuition, gut feeling, and just a hunch to make a decision. This explains the belief systems, religion, culture, the identity, the values of self, the ethics, and even like following one’s heart that if an experience that the logical mind is limited to reach and explain.
You can argue that just because we don’t have explanations yet, doesn’t mean that the logic never will. Yes, but it the true explanation will not come from the same paradigms of the same logical system because of the point I made about logic limitations. There is a reason Religious and Scientific methods of knowledge are just very different systems of thoughts.
(-) Emotional reasoning is highly biased and hard to track
This explains how childhood traumas and experiences still have a life long effect into an adult life, even when those responses are no longer serving the purpose. Emotions are highly unstable, volatile, circumstantial, and personal. It is hard to rely on emotions when you cannot control them. Neuroscience still cannot understand how the “feelings” and “instinct” is expressed in the central nervous systems.
Where logic being illogical at dismissing the emotional reasoning
The observation that emotions lead a person to believe that illusions are real makes any emotional personal dismissed as crazy. Because their “reasoning” is grounded on fears or desires that are not founded on reality and facts their reasoning becomes invalid and unreasonable.
For example, the ‘scientific person’ often dismissing any ground of reason of any religious person who believes in God. What is real to a scientific person is not the same reality to a person who knows there is God. Religious person has its own set of evidence based on system of reasoning in its own right.
Remember that logic and any system of thought relies on the boundaries of assumptions and accepted definitions of reality. If I follow this method of logic that proves logic thinking its limit:
1. Logic is valid as long as it has system and proved assumptions
2. Those assumptions have been proved based on the evidence of reality
3. Evidence of reality is defined within those boundaries of the system itself
4. Any system is a closed system with boundaries
Therefore, logic is valid if only if the evidence present itself as valid.
Using this logic, if some evidences of reality are not defined by the same assumptions then the evidence is undefined. Any evidences that cannot be proven by that logic within its system boundaries, they become non existent. However, this is illogical because nothin in the system of logic says that any evidence that are not within the logic system are invalid. Just because one cannot prove it does not mean it doesn’t exist. No system cannot prove or disprove anything outside of itself. The logic trumps itself by its own confinements.
You cannot see the value of emotional reasoning from the logical perspective. Today’s world is created out of the benefit from logical and scientific method. Since the Greeks to Renaissance, from Industrial revolution to golden age of Physics, all has been a result from working with defined, outlined, and consistent set of data that is easier to measure, manipulate, and replicate.
You cannot do that with biology, ethics, religion, weather predictions, and so forth. It is messy because it is heavily relied on statistics, tons of variables, infinite number of variations, and just having no set of intrinsic values because it changes every second, every era. A lot of physicists do not like biology because it is “messy”.
Maybe it is too complicated that we needed to figure out the controllable parts of out lives before we could attempt to understand the “human” and “messy” aspects of our lives. Thanks to Greeks and Industrial Revolution, we can now delve in into more complicated aspects of Human, like love, hope, motivations, psyche, consciousness, and spirituality. It is predicted that 21st century is the Golden Era of Biology and Neuroscience.
Development of Artificial Intelligence can help us put aside the mechanical parts of the job so that we can concentrate on solving human “messy” parts of human psyche.
Using the Emotional Reasoning
Both perception sense and logical mind are used in combination to make a “rational” decision. Rational decision is when one uses all variables of life, such as experience, knowledge, values, and belief systems to come up with a single action.
Being able to read emotions and body language is skill many are not trained to use. The body language, facial expressions make up 60 percent of the language we use and it is all emotional. The famous study from the FBI agent that wrote a book called, “What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People” by Joe Navarro.
Women learned to read the language of emotions more consistently than men. Men rely more on logical reasoning to explain the behaviors of others and self. Because one does not have the mastery of both languages, it creates common miscommunications and tension between women and men.
Every emotional response and emotional view on the world it the reflection of how they experience the world. Every person is painting of the world.
Some areas where you can experience the benefits of the emotional intelligence are:
- CREATIVITY — use your emotions as a guide for music, writing, problem solving, and coming up with “out of no where ideas”. Trust and use your gut feeling and instinct.
- RELATIONSHIPS — become more aware of your own attachments, you desire out of control, denying something that is part of a reality. Have emotional conversations with the loved ones while being vulnerable and open to humility and accepting every pain and anger from another as understandable and valid. Being seen and understood moves the pain and anger out of the way in front, so that one can move forward in the clear space for healthy solution.
- LEADERSHIP — if one masters self awareness and emotional intelligence, then one can use it to understand and motivate other people. Inspiration by logic is never inspiring nor it creates any vision that moves people forward. We are working for people by people. Developing people’s skills is not straightforward and not logical. It is emotional and messy.
- WORK — developing relationships within the team requires some scarifies of self interests and sometimes to push your interests forward against other’s resistance **(link to the article)**. Developing emotional intelligence makes you more engaging and approachable by your teammates. The more positive engagement you have, the more you get to have the upper hand on the decision making.
What resists persist!
The more you not resolve the feelings, the more those feelings will just stay there and magnify. Every person has its own story and the way they heal their hurt or anger. Emotions always have the source and are valid just for their own sake.
For example no one wants to be passive aggressive on purpose. It is the sign from a deeper pain where the pain is coming from past traumatic experiences.
By accepting a negative feeling, it doesn’t mean you allow it to happen again and again. Acceptance means to give it space to disappear. The only way for anything to disappear is by recognizing it first.
You know this story where a superhero or “the one” has an innate power but the hero doesn’t know of it existence and how to use it. The power is still sleeping and shows up slowly as the hero grows older. It becomes most inconvenient and dangerous as the hero doesn’t know how to use it. The hero tries to hide it and deny its existence by resisting or repressing it. Until the hero learns that resistance will stop when the hero learns to accept it, discover its potential, and use it for the benefit of self and others.
The hero is us, the unrealized super power are our emotions. It is only harmful and uncontrollable when we do not know how to use it. Instead of being embarrassed of being emotional and hide it, we might as well use what mother nature gave us. To do that you have to become aware of it, accept it, and practice using it to your own advantage.
