Posted by 64bowtie on May 11, 2004, at 12:40:57
I feel, therefore I am?
cogito - ergo - sum = I think - therefore - I am
At about age six or seven, kids can reason:
1. If it feels good, its OK.
2. If it feels bad, avoid it.This is not thinking. This is feeling. ...and the lasting memories are stored in the gut as feelings.
It doesn't cause a problem until we are in our teens or later and insist on running our complicated adult lives the same way.
We come hardwired with fear of loud noises, fear of falling, and to avoid dissatisfaction (and others). The latter keeps us alive categorically for the first five years, with the help of one or more loving adults (as well as sometimes by lucky accident).
There's a whole bunch of behaviors and emotions that interplay with the dissatisfaction impulse in the gut, making us comfortable with it as a source of survival wisdom. Unexplainable reactive behavior is sourced here: Flip Wilson's, "The devil made me do it!" for example.
I have charted how many decisions I attribute to my gut response and how many were do to intelligent use of my logic, and I'm a seathing-wound of feelings, not at all logical as I wanna be known. If I abdicate to my gut most of the time, and I know how not to, what's that say about most folks, who claim to not know what the h**l I'm talking about at all?
I'm an adult who needs more more logic incorporated into my reasoning.
Rod
PS: my apologies to Antonio Damasio, authur of "Descartes Error" for re-use of his book title
poster:64bowtie
thread:345741
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040503/msgs/345741.html