Musings of a Restless Mind

I’ve recently read a number of articles about how people think and make decisions. I’ve been fascinated by this topic for most of my life because I recognize that…, I’m odd. Once when I went to a classical music concert with a friend, she asked me how I liked it. I replied that at first it seemed oddly chaotic, but then I began to appreciate how the bass notes accented the harmony, and I began to appreciate the beauty of how it came together with each different instrument playing its part. She gave me a puzzled look and said, “I just like how it sounded.” Similarly, I once asked some of my friends who were about to attend a rock concert why they found it so enjoyable to pay money to listen to live music with poorer sound quality than they could get from their home stereo. They replied that it gave them much more pleasure to be part of a shared experience. So, as someone who obviously comes from an alien planet, I strive to understand human beings, a species gifted with intelligence that vastly outstrips any other creatures on the planet. Sorry dolphin lovers, it’s not just because they don’t want to that dolphins don’t build rocket ships to outer space. They’re just not intelligent enough to do that.

Why do people so frequently make what to me are irrational decisions? Why are they so immune to rational persuasion? Many psychology books have been written to explain human decision making, and I have availed myself of much of this scholarship, about fast and slow thinking and lizard brains, but my intention is to approach this issue from a personal perspective.

I should hardly be amazed at the cluelessness that seems to go on amongst so many folks. After all, as a baby boomer, I saw it firsthand during the Vietnam War. Almost all in my age group were rabidly against that war. It may have had a lot to do with the draft and the likelihood of being plucked from our preferred life and shipped off to a war against an enemy that hardly seemed like an immediate threat. Deeming Communism inimical to human freedom, I was never against the war, but I was appalled at the way it was fought by the feckless, megalomaniacal bully LBJ and the clueless holdover Kennedy “whiz kids”. The powers that be had purged every real strategist from the Pentagon it seemed. Nixon, whom all my contemporaries hated, and with whom I was not thrilled, quieted the unrest at home by ending the draft and then ended the war by bombing North Vietnam and blockading their ports, and by crushing the North Vietnamese sanctuaries in supposedly neutral Cambodia. All of which he caught flak for by the “anti-war” crowd for “escalating” the war instead of just sending foot soldiers aimlessly into the jungle to get shot at. In short, he solved the issues that my contemporaries found so appalling, but was constantly reviled and mocked as if he had caused the problems rather than solved them.

There is a lot of talk currently about the “woke” crowd censoring speakers and shouting them down, but for this baby-boomer, that is not new. In high school, I remember being in a multi high school assembly for a talk given by General S. L. A. Marshall, the military historian who had documented D-Day among many other notable military events. I wanted to hear his perspective on Vietnam, even if I disagreed with it, but the vast majority of the high school crowd wanted none of it, booing loudly. I realized then, at 17, that I belonged to a small minority of people, interested in evidence and open to persuasion.

I’ve learned the hard lesson that the great majority of people prize passion over logic. It seems more important to be the authentic self that follows your passion rather than someone who’s abstract-sounding goal is to be a good person. That is why most people’s perception of someone’s guilt or innocence is almost always proportional to their view of the heinousness of the crime they’re accused of, not the likelihood of their actual guilt. Instinctively we feel that a terrible crime calls for swift and forceful retaliation. The long, thoughtful, process of determining responsibility for such an evil act is secondary to the need for quick counter-action.

Surprisingly to me, that strategy can actually work, as I learned young from personal experience. When my brother and I were young boys, my parents would drive us cross-country on long trips in our station wagon for vacations. On one of those trips my brother and I were relentlessly teasing each other in the back seat as young boys will do when bored. My father grew tired of our nonsense, and threatened swift punishment if we didn’t stop it. Knowing that our father was serious, I shut up and sat still, but my older brother continued teasing me. I sat there quietly, sure that my forbearance would be rewarded, and my brother’s bad behavior punished. Finally tired of the continuing ruckus from the back seat, my father took one hand off the wheel and, without taking his eyes off the road, reached back and slapped me in the face. I knew better than to complain of the injustice for fear that I would get punished, on purpose this time. What surprised me was that my older brother also shut up and sat quietly, having had the fear of God (or at least our father) seared into him. So my father had accomplished his purpose by accidentally punishing the wrong person.

Researchers have determined that it is the likelihood of punishment rather than the severity of punishment that deters crime, so there’s some logic (if not justice) for people’s instinct. As British statesman George Saville once said, “Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen.”

If you’ve ever served on a jury, you’ve witnessed first-hand how our legal system places so many rules and restrictions in place that it almost always tends to result in rational discourse and weighing of evidence rather than the jurors all acting on instinct. Even though famous lawyers are known for their appeal to the jury’s emotions, it is usually the evidence that prevails. “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit,” may be a catchy phrase, but it only works because it reminded jurors of a specific refutation of the prosecution’s evidence that they saw with their own eyes. Mind you, I’m not saying the jury system doesn’t result in wrongful decisions sometimes, just that the system is designed not to be misled by our passions and instincts.

Don’t think that I’m getting all puffed up about being better than others. I’m the last person you want in a life and death situation. I’d just freeze up while I tried to think it through, while my less odd friends would take action and save both themselves and me. “There is a time for every purpose under heaven” as the good book says. I could use some training on using my fast thinking lizard brain when appropriate, and I wish others would try to use their slower, rational brain when the situation calls for it.