If my recent blog drafts are any indication, I’m going all long form (for me, anyway). But, I still can’t help wanting to share the odd observation here and there, so forgive this – it’s effectively a rough cut. Recently, I watched the following video by Dan Ariely.
We imagine that we’re in the driver’s seat, but much of the time, we’re not. What resonated most of all in this video is the idea that we have no problem finding technological solutions to physical deficiencies (glasses for seeing, crutches and wheelchair for walking, etc) but when it comes to cognitive deficiencies, we don’t accept it. Depressed? Suck it up. I see things for what they are. I’m in control; I don’t mimic. I’m unique. I know what happened.
I’m paranoid and uneducated enough to think our brains conspire, using these evolutionary tools, in order to preserve the organism.
Cognitive Delusions + Politics = Suck
When I read one of Aaron Gaudio’s buzzed items, this all immediately came to mind. Right now, our country’s political divide involves, least partially, the idea that we’re in total control of our destiny. When a political party advocates gutting virtually every safety net, that’s what they’re saying. Exposure to such baffling assumptions creates, in me, a sort of political current. I can’t help but tack to the left. If Democrats were actually the monstrous Marxist bogeymen imagined by the right, it’d be different. Caricatures like those are a cognitive disorder, too, and one that I share, much to my own disappointment.
Back when we hunted mammoths, I’m sure these tendencies I call bad very useful. But not so much in complex social-systems analysis.
