Margaret McGhee

People believe what feels good, they just use their brains to justify it.

Some folks are offended by this statement. They seem to take it as an insult. But I believe that is actually the way we humans are designed, or more accurately, how we have evolved, to operate. And for me anyway, it explains much of the perplexing nature of today's politics in the US - and throughout the world.

On the other hand, it doesn't quite tell the whole story. The rest of the story is a little counter-intuitive, so please bear with me as I develop this idea.

A common misconception about human nature is that we humans are the thinking animal - and that difference makes us vastly different from the other animals.

Actually, we are a lot more like other animals than we are different from them. For all animals life consists of making decisions and acting on them. From the moment we are born, until we die, that's basically all we do during our waking hours. Doing that we accomplish all the things we do in life.

For example, every morning I get up and manage to make a pot of coffee to satisfy my need for caffeine. My cat wakes up and manages to find her dish of cat food to satisfy her hunger. In both cases decisions were made. And in both cases there was some instinct and automatic response to our feelings - and there was some reasoning and access to memory. The difference between the two examples is one of proportion, not of kind.

Some animals, including many mammals, have evolved a rather powerful reasoning ability, a logical computer, that aids this decision-making process. And, it is true that we humans have a stronger ability to reason than cats. But functionally we still make decisions just like they do. We make our decisions according to what feels the best to us at the time. More specifically, we make decisions based on our prediction of what will make us feel better as a result. Yes, reasoning does play a part in that process. But it is only a supporting role. Our feelings are really in charge at the moment every decision we make is made. And we will make that decision according to how we predict we will feel as a result.

But, you say, I make decisions all the time that don't feel good. For example, I'd much rather just have fun every day and not go to work. But instead, I do the work thing - forty hours a week, even though it doesn't feel nearly as good as going to the beach.

But you actually are doing what feels best of the two. You know that to get paid you have to show up every day and do a good job. You like the money and other benefits you get from your job more than the fun of going to the beach every day - and being broke. You have decided that you'll really feel better, everything considered, by showing up at work - than you would by blowing off your job. The key is that we have the ability to predict, using our brain, how various choices will make us feel over the span of time that we are mature enough to consider. And we still make choices that we believe will make us feel the best of all the choices we are aware of.

So, whether we are young or old, human or feline, we make choices according to how we believe they will make us feel. We do not make choices directly as a result of our ability to reason. No living creature does that. Mr. Spock of Star Trek is an impossibility - because a decision-making creature, devoid of feelings, and therefore not concerned about how they would feel as a result of their decisions, would have no reason to choose any particular path over another. Logical conclusions alone, without feelings that value them can not motivate. I call that the Vulcan paradox.

It's true that some humans can characteristically make better decisions than others. The reason is that have learned to use their reasoning ability to better predict the results of their actions - and probably that they can better estimaate how they will feel as a result. But people can't simply be divided into wise decision-makers or not. While it is true that we humans can be very skilled analytical thinkers, it's also true that we can be very selective about applying that brain power. The biological scientist who also professes a belief in creationism is an example. This abandonment of reason often happens when people allow their minds to become infected with a very strong world-view. Emotional, self-reinforcing world-view ideas can produce powerful feelings. And remember, your feelings are what determine your choices.

People who allow these powerful feelings to infect their minds are called ideologues. Ideologues, and their steroid pumped relatives, zealots, best capture the statement that titles this paper; People believe what feels good. They just use their brains to justify it. Their religion and/or political ideology fill them with strong feelings of security and safety from a dangerous world. Their ideology feels like being in control, being powerful.

Strong feelings like this can act much like a narcotic. And for those who are susceptible, the strong feelings of ideology are just as addicting as heroin. Just like a drug addict, ideologues organize their lives to guarantee access to those good feelings - and they ignore reason if it gets in the way of their habit.

It is my belief that those on the left of the political spectrum in America today, tend to be more aware of this danger and actively try to avoid strong ideology in their world-view. But, be careful here. That has not always been the case and the left has no monopoly on reason. The French revolution and many other insurrections that blindly killed all those in power were just as mindless as any right wing attacks on the lower classes. But today, that's why there are relatively few Christians on the left but plenty of atheists.

The truth is that everyone, right or left, is subject to strong emotions that can impede their reasoning under the right circumstances. When someone attacks us physically or emotionally, our adrenalin flows and our reasoning ability is diminished in favor of instinctive protective actions.

That's one reason the right wing has been so partisan in the last few years. Those who lead the right wing movement know that at least, it will reduce our ability to reason and to defend ourselves. At best, it will cause us to blindly strike out and open us to accusations of being just as crazy and mindlessly hateful as our right wing counterparts. But mostly their extreme partisanship helps feed the emotional engines of their own, more ideological followers. Those intellectuals actually leading the right wing these days, such as Karl Rove, Frank Luntz, Norman Podheretz, William Krystol, etc. never allow themselves to get emotionally involved. For them, strong emotions are a tool to be used against us. Observe them the next time you see them on TV and you'll see what I mean. You can sense their passion for their cause - but it is always under tight control.

They have a whole brigade of pseudo-intellectual, entertainers like Bill O'Reilly, Rush and of course, George W. Bush to go out and keep the emotions of the faithful at a fever pitch. For these snake oil salesmen, reason and logical consistency is not even considered relevant.

They see their followers not as participants in a governing process looking to have their voices heard, but as the ultimate weapon to achieve their aims. They incite them by constantly pushing their hate buttons with sound-bites about welfare queens, abortion-on-demand, the destruction of traditional marriage, the homosexual agenda. Whatever creates the most ferocious anger in the hearts of their true-believers is their fuel of choice.

Suitably enraged, those followers will mindlessly attack all liberals. Many of them would gladly rid us from the face of the earth - if they could get away with it. And don't think that's so far fetched. Groups of humans killing other humans over ideological differences have headed most major chapters of human history. Many humans, indeed, many American humans, are engaged in that activity at this moment. The killing is always initiated by those who are true-believers in one ideology or another. And the victims always believed such hate was beyond possibility - until the moment they saw the pellets dropping through the vents, or saw the cluster bomb fluttering toward their home in Fallujah or looked up from their desk and saw the airliner headed toward their floor of the World Trade Center.

Over the last twenty years, the right has purposely transformed their political party into a quasi-religious, faith-based organization. They know that open, respectful discussion in politics, the search for fair and honest solutions to problems of governance are their death knell. When their ideas are examined closely and objectively - they almost always fail the test. But, by turning their followers into ideologues - they can forget about truth, logic, fairness, honesty - all those elements of political discussion so prized on the left. Using these tactics the right has become a truly formidable enemy of liberal democracy.

If we are aware of these things we can turn them to our advantage. One way to do that is to remember that most of those ideological followers on the far right embrace their own emotionality and see no danger in it. They live their lives hating and despising liberals, loving God and Bush, whatever. It's a dramatic lifestyle. They are addicted to having their minds infected with ideological truths. And their leaders, of course, encourage that.

We can use that by remaining calm and reasonable when they attack us or when we argue our point of view. We should remember that we have chosen our values by rejecting blatant ideology and by using our minds in the best Jeffersonian tradition to come up with the system that's most fair for all. In any impartial debate where objective reality is permitted to reign, we will win. And eventually, objective reality, mother nature, always gets her way.

Even the most committed ideologues must feel a little silly brandishing their fiery emotion-laden rhetoric in the face of a cool dose of reality. A calm, logically consistent argument probably won't change any minds immediately but it can plant a seed. People go through phases in their lives. There will probably be a time in the future when every ideologue will become less addicted to their passions - a time when they tire of the constant emotional drain of either hating or loving everything in their lives so blindly. That's when they will hopefully remember the beauty of a political system that tries to treat everyone with respect - a great short definition for what I call a liberal political philosophy. It's not so important that we win each contest. But it is important that we don't hesitate to speak the calm truth to power - every chance we get.

That bears repeating. We all owe it to ourselves and to our notions of democracy and freedom to always speak out in the face of right wing attacks on our values. We don't have to win any arguments. We don't even have to argue. But we do have an obligation to tell that person, and anyone else in hearing range, that they are wrong.

The title of this paper is true. All of us make decisions, like what to believe or what actions to take - according to how good we believe we will feel as a result. We can't help it. And, once committed, we all use our brains to justify our decisions after we make them.

But it's also true that some people have the ability to apply their reasoning power more effectively while making those decisions. I know it's not always easy - but as we defend ourselves this election season and as we try to spread our liberal American values to the voters in the middle - it's good to remember that we are the most successful and do the most good when we acknowledge our emotions and use them for motivation - but fully engage our brains and use our reason to direct our actions, not just to justify them.