Life is decisions. Some automatic. Some not.
Should I let my leaves go now, or tomorrow? Should I eat this herb and not the other? Should I kill this old deer or the young one with the wounded leg? Should I wear a tie? Should I buy this iPhone? Should I invest in Bitcoin or stocks? Should I vote? For who?
We take decisions every day. Thanks to the social media and the enabled notifications, we might need to make decisions every minute. Should I look at my phone? Should I reply? What? Sleep-texting is an extreme example for this.
I don't know about you, but I imagine, that inside me there is a 3-level stack of decision-makers.
Lower level, embedded in the "hardware": reflexes. Hot? Let it go! Stinks? Go away! Some of these can be overriden. Must pee? Wait for the toilet! And the override can also be automated. Need to pee while sleeping? Hold it, or wake up. Need to fart while sleeping? Let it out! These decisions reflect more or less to myself only.
When others are also affected by my decisions, a higher level of decision-making kicks in. Social skills like empathy are needed here. Sets of rules have to be applied. These come by different names: fashion, etiquette, religion. Their benefit: make decision-making quick. In an evolutionary model that can be important selection factor.
But my decision-makers are not that simple. A lot of decisions are biased by sentiments. Which girl do I like? Who do I hate? Somewhere between my reflexes and my rationale these buggers keep messing things up.
So how do I make decisions? Whom of these decision-makers do I trust? Well, this is also a decision.
What I am trying to do is the following: if there is no conflict between my emotional and rational decisions, it is all good. But when there is a conflict, I am trying to analyse the emotional one: is it a bad emotion, lake hatred, fear or envy? If yes, I try to force myself to take the other option. As said, I try. But many times I cannot do the right decision, I just cannot.
Why do I write about all this? First of all, to clarify it for myself. If it makes you wonder about your decision-makers, I am happy about it. But as social media platforms made micro-targeting possible, many campaigns target our emotional decision-makers. Not only advertisements, but also political campaigns, think Bolsonaro, Trump, Orban and Brexit! I have to fight my guts over their messages a lot.
Bottomline: I love my decision-makers. I don't want to leave without any of them. I would be already dead without my reflexes. I would be puppet without my rationale. And without my emotions I would be a machine.
What about you?