sonuva72

Antonio Damasio wrote an interesting psychology book in which he postulated that emotion is what allows us to function rationally. He cited case studies such as Phineas Gage, the guy who had the emotional parts of his brain destroyed when he took a railroad tie through the head in an accident, and subsequently lost his abililty to make logical decisions. Its been awhile since I read the book, but the basic idea was that we react to decisions initially at an emotional and instinctive level, discarding options that don't appeal to us, and allowing us to focus our reason on a small subset of the available choices. Those without the capacity for emotion are unable to make that initial cut, and are overwhelmed by the options surrounding them, completely unable to make decisions. It was a pretty interesting take. His whole point was that we think of rationality as competing with emotion, when they are in reality inextricably bound together.