Quote: Jonah Lehrer on Thinking and Feeling

I know I talk about this person all the time, but Dr. Parks has come through again. A couple of weeks ago, I got a message in my inbox from Dr. Parks telling me he found a book I would like (and the author’s blog). As with most recommendations from him, I took his advice and purchased the book How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. It’s about—well you may have guessed—how we make decisions. Although his work is based in neuroscience, Lehrer’s content is very approachable through the use of everyday case studies and situations we can all understand. Therefore, you don’t have to be a neuroscientist to know what he’s talking about. I’m probably about 1/8 through the book, but I came across this quote and wanted to share.

The process of thinking requires feeling, for feelings are what let us understand all the information that we can’t directly comprehend. Reason without emotion is impotent.

Plato believed true reasoning meant thought needed to be devoid of emotions and feeling. That philosophy has largely carried over into Western tradition, as we often equate level-headedness, calmness, and logical thinking as the best ways to make decisions. However, when some of the most crucial decisions are made, those people can’t explain why they made them. Intuition, emotions, and feelings all play roles as well.

Resources: 

• Buy How We Decide on Amazon
• Jonah Lehrer’s blog - The Frontal Cortex

Words To Live By

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is one of those books you just need to read. I read it once in high school, but I always feel it nice to go back and reread for things I may have not understood (or simply skipped) at the time. Towards the end of the book, Bradbury writes one of the most beautiful passages I’ve ever read in this type of literature through Granger, the wise character who consults protagonist Guy Montag meets after his escape from the city. The following quote can be applied to everything you do.

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.

Why Empathy Is Important

Empathy increases understanding, productivity, and drives innovative solutions to various problems in the workplace, economy, and society. Developing socially conscious solutions requires the ability to discover issues and deal with those issues from multicultural perspectives. Empathy is crucial to understanding the motivations that drive others to act the way they do.

Empathy ≠ Sympathy

It is important to note that empathy and sympathy are not synonymous. Sympathy is the feeling of sorrow for somebody else’s misfortune. Empathy, on the other hand, is the ability to understand another person’s feelings. Those feelings can be happy, sad, or something altogether different.

Why Empathy Is Important

We are often quick to make judgments of others’ actions. We often assume that poor decisions are a result of a person’s irresponsibility or their individual lack of intelligence, willpower, etc. Many times this is the case. However, many times poor decisions are a result of poor available choices. Sometimes a child is obese because they simply eat too much. Sometimes they’re obese because there exists no safe place for them play. “Last school year, 258 public school students were shot in Chicago, 32 fatally, on their way to or from school, traveling through gang-infested territory and narcotics wars on the South and West Sides,” states an article from the NY Times. Do you think these students are concerned more about choosing organic products at the local grocery store, or making it home alive? For these kids, there is a lack of positive choices, which leads them to make undesirable decisions. Youth Advocates Programs, Inc. recruits, educates, and trains advocates from within the community to help create safer environments for these kids and others, which lead to better options from which to choose. These advocates are well-equipped to empathize with those who need help because they’ve been there themselves.

When we take empathy into account, we start to uncover some of the root issues that cause larger scale problems, which, in turn, lead to more sustainable solutions. I’d like to hear your opinions and stories of empathy. What issues would you like to bring to light? How do you feel the use (or lack of use) of empathy will work (or not work) in evaluating decisions and coming up with viable solutions to issues?

What Role Did We Have In The Foxconn Debacle?

 

It truly saddens me to think I might be partly responsible for at least thirteen (13) people – people I never knew – deciding to bring their lives to a premature end. However, the reality is that just might be the case. Maybe I did have something to do with it. No, I take that back. I most certainly had something to do with it. At Foxconn, a Chinese electronics factory that produces components for the likes of Dell, HP, and Apple, there were thirteen reported cases of suicide since January.  Why? Well, according to an article by the New York Times, the harsh work environment, a sense of loneliness, and working 286 hours per week in order to earn the equivalent of $1 per day were the major causes. Personally, I think the problems run much deeper than that, but it would take too much space to present my argument in a blog post (look for a full article soon).

How I am responsible for the despair these factory workers, their families, and others in similar situations feel? It’s easy to blame the huge global companies that outsource their production to factories like this, but the constant consumer demand for faster, stronger, better, and CHEAPER products drive these companies to cut corners wherever they can. Two big expenses that increase costs: manufacture and customer service. Sometimes I walk into a store like Target and walk by the $1 section, pick up an item and think:

That’s crazy. We were able to mine the raw materials, refine those materials, ship them to China, pay the salaries of everybody from the executive team to the designers to the factory workers, label it, package it, ship it BACK to the States, and pay the courier, the inventory people, and the salaries of everybody in the store…all for under $1 per unit – for a pen.

Just under $1 is the maximum we’re willing to spend on that pen – the same amount the Chinese factory worker may have made that day. Is it worth it?