Theodore Dalrymple's essay "The Goddess of Domestic Tribulations," about Princess Diana, has some echoes of this.

If you haven't been reading him, BTW, he's right up your alley.
Assistant Village Idiot | Email | Homepage | 07.19.06 - 9:03 am | #

Dealing with the combination of those gut feelings plus rational thought -- and being able to do so at a moment's notice -- was something that I noticed that developed on its own during the time I spent in Law Enforcement. Yes, we were the technicians at the other end from your involvement, yet among those who strived for excellence (and to stay in one piece), quick application of the gut feeling along with pertinent facts and instinctual use of Occam's Razor became intuitive.

The detective in your story about Steve should have keyed on the guy, I don't mean that as a knock of the detective for there can be a myriad of reasons to miss the obvious on a case, sheer number of cases can do it to you in a heartbeat, things like that.

You can learn a lot by interviewing the beat cops first on a scene, too, if you teach yourself to listen to what they are really trying to tell you.

Back on topic, the current political rants from the left can neither pass the gut feelings test nor Occam's Razor. I believe them to be generated by psychoses, the old grindings of ego, envy, etc. which go totally unrecognized by those suffering from same. But there goes Occam again.

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The Machine | Email | Homepage | 07.19.06 - 10:30 am | #

Forgot to add one other very important thing learned from working in Law Enforcement:

The worst witness is the eyewitness.


Feelings, whoa-oh-oh, Feelings...


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The Machine | Email | Homepage | 07.19.06 - 10:32 am | #

Exactly - which is why the whole DC metro area was on the look-out for white box trucks during the sniper shootings...I thought it was a clever ruse for terrorists to use what turned out to be ubiquitous vehicles hitherto unnoticed which turned out to be everywhere.

But the 'eyewitnesses' were wrong.

All the "professional profilers" who blathered on and on about how the shooter "most likely" was a "disgruntled white male" also turned out to be wrong. Had the pair been white we'd have gotten Hollywood movies and books ram-rodded down our throats about their race, religion, and politics. Since they were black Muslims that whole box of issues was dropped like a hot rock.

It would be fascinating though to round up completely innocent people and accuse them of some heinous crime, and then repeatedly put them through interviews with detectives, uniformed police, lab-coated professionals, etc. and see how they react.

Then expose them to public ridicule, media whoring 'death by association' stories, and then run them through the gamut of interviews.

Would they protest their innocence loudly or softly? Would that be their personality/history talking for "the truth" coming through?

Not saying Steve is innocent - but how is one to respond to accusations of guilt? I know a man who has been utterly destroyed (lost job, lost friends, had to move, etc) after being accused of child abuse. He was exonnerated. The accuser admitted to making it up to get at him. It got so bad at one point that the accused started wondering whether he really was a monster who somehow did it while sleep walking or something.
John | Email | Homepage | 07.19.06 - 10:46 am | #

The unquestioning reliance on one's feelings ... as the be-all and end-all of perceiving reality has some MAJOR, MAJOR snags associated with it. It leads to chaotic, dysfunctional relationships, instability, histrionic and impulsive behavior, and a lack of concern for the needs and feelings of other people.


Do you mean something sort of like an 'honor' culture?


If we ignore our feelings we have psycholgoically blinded ourselves to important information about the world; and if we ignore our mind and our reason, we have done the same thing.

The above is not a true statement.


Feelings may or may not give us valid, correct information about the world.

This makes feelings completely unreliable as a tool for giving us information about the world.
anonymous | Email | Homepage | 07.19.06 - 10:48 am | #

Thank you very much for this.

I am an unusually perceptive person when it comes to other people's feelings. Unfortunately, this ability isn't infallible, and sometimes I am quite mistaken. And, of course, there are times/situations/persons towards which I am quite oblivious, too.

Sometimes, I see right through people. I once told a friend of mine, for instance, that a woman friend of his didn't even like the man she had married. He was shocked that I knew it (which he knew to be true) for I had never said more than "Hi" to the woman in my entire life, and I had never conversed about her with anybody else.

I just "saw" that she didn't like him. Of course, that was very confusing, because I had to ask myself, "Why is she with this man she doesn't even like? (She is a beautiful woman.) Why does she want to marry a man she doesn't like? Don't her friends and family know she's engaged to a man she doesn't even like? Why would they let her marry a man she doesn't like? Why can I see she doesn't like him when her relatives and friends must not know it?" It was very confusing to me, before I worked up the nerve to mention it to somebody who actually knew her well and verified that my perception, despite all probabilities, was right on.

But sometimes I think I'm seeing through somebody when I'm not. I think, now, that what I may be seeing is, sometimes at the least, a reflection of my own feelings.
ELC | Email | Homepage | 07.19.06 - 11:18 am | #

Stop reading my mind! Feel free to read my blog, however.....

http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/20...f-my- brain.html
Gagdad Bob | Email | Homepage | 07.19.06 - 12:14 pm | #

What a facinating story!

"But somehow, our culture, once founded on and dedicated to rational thought is slowly evolving into a cult that worships emotion and whim at the expense of reason."

A common theme throughout history is that the current crop of humans has left the path, and doesn't measure up to past societies. This type of thing is difficult to measure, and thus is ripe for exploitation; in the absence of any research to the contrary I'll continue to believe that human nature hasn't changed that much.

This would, however, make a facinating multi-generation research study.
Michael Czeiszperger | Email | Homepage | 07.19.06 - 1:23 pm | #

I love reading your first-rate incredibly deep and wise insight in your posts. Very facinating information you always share. And all of this for free! Thank you for that Doc. And thanks also for clearing up a couple naggers I'm having vis-a-vis "facts v. feelings - what's right and what's wrong". I know I can always turn to your posts and find answers that nag me.


Your Steve story would make a great episode of Law & Order. Except that once those Lib screenwriters got their hands on it Steve would naturaly become a radical right-wing Christian zealot with lots and lots of crosses hanging from walls; toting aroung a ginourmous bible; dour and homely women-folk lurking in the shadows; being interviewed by (you) and displaying some incredible levels of self rightousness that we all know reside in the hearts of them damn Christians; spouting insanities for all the hear, etc etc. No, no. It's not a just a mental disorder perhaps Steve was born with, it's because he's a White. Male. Christian. who's father not only thumped the bible but did a fair amount of thumping on Steve too! Laws yes! Lock your doors America! Those Mishy-naries be'a knocking soon!

Talk about ripe for exploitation!

But that's just how I feel.
Dude | Email | Homepage | 07.19.06 - 2:41 pm | #

I remember being outraged that the press referred to this short range mass murderer as "The DC sniper".

An affront to the true sniper while every one of the outrageous murders could not have been carried out from any real distance considering the surrounding terrains.

There's feelings, there is also stupid.

Feelings plus stupid is infinite.


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The Machine | Email | Homepage | 07.19.06 - 10:30 pm | #

anon: "Feelings may or may not give us valid, correct information about the world.

"This makes feelings completely unreliable as a tool for giving us information about the world."
anonymous

If feelings can give us valid info about the world, it certainly does not follow that they are "completely unreliable". Self-awareness makes the difference.

For example, cognitive therapy stresses that thoughts "always" preceed feelings. So the idea is to check your feelings to see if the thought which usually preceeds them is rational or not. Dr. Sanity emphasized the same thing, as well as the necessity of following up the "feeling" with further reason and observation.

So, unless you want to define "feelings"as necessarily not in any way rationally related to the real world, then feelings might
relate importantly to the real world.

I've projected my "feelings" onto situations at work, too, and had to learn over time to recognize that I was doing this, that it was dysfunctional, and that it didn't help me to do my job at all. Everyone involved only endured some needless suffering at my hand. So feelings can be unreliable, obviously.

On the other hand, though, if you do something enough which involves actually dealing with reality,you can get valid feelings much more often than not. I hypothesize that the thought capacity jumps over the need to actually form a thought expressable in words and goes right to something like "a sense about things", which can and must be checked but can be an important clue or instantaneous deduction about what is going on.

At the same time, I don't know what
happens, for example, when
you run by a rattlesnake you didn't notice in the grasses and then hear its rattle just behind you - then take off like a shot,
seemingly without any thought at all. I guess I don't really care, but it seems maybe more of an "instinctive" reaction, and a correct one.

So I conclude that Dr. Sanity's statement, "If we ignore our feelings we have psycholgoically blinded ourselves to important information about the world; and if we ignore our mind and our reason, we have done the same thing", is true.

Being aware of your feelings and familiar with them is what Dr. Sanity is talking about, imo. Then they can certainly be used a tools, and can be quite reliable.
J. Peden | Email | Homepage | 07.20.06 - 11:18 pm | #

If feelings can give us valid info about the world, it certainly does not follow that they are "completely unreliable". Self-awareness makes the difference.

This is untrue.

Maybe an example will make it clear.

Say a child hears thunder and feels fearful.

The fear may or may not be justified.

If the storm is directly overhead and it's about to kill you, then your fear, your feeling, is valid. And you should run, or whatever.

If it's the child's first experience of thunder, and the storm is off in the distance, then the fear is giving you bad information. And to keep feeling the fear would not be valid.

So like I said, feelings may or may not tell you something about the world around you.

What 'always' tells you something about the world around you are your observations.

When you hear thunder, you must look out the window, all things being equal, sound intensity, etc.
-- regardless of your feelings.

I'm not saying to ignore feelings. I'm only saying that you cannot reliably use feelings to get information about the world around you.

Feelings are results of your thinking.

Thunder may cause fear in a child, excitement in a metorologist, and boredom in a crack addict. It all depends on your thinking.

Feeling can be right or wrong. So they answer nothing to us about the external world, regardless of our self-awareness.
anonymous | Email | Homepage | 07.21.06 - 8:20 pm | #

I'm wondering why there was so much about politics in some of these comments. Could people be projecting onto the national political scene?
Adrastia | Email | Homepage | 06.18.07 - 10:06 pm | #