Rousseau's belief in the noble savage and that man is corrupted by
society and is intrinsically good, underpins the thinking of many on the left -
socialist, communist and anarchist. This is what leads them to believe that
they can build heaven on earth. Change the system and you change the man.
I think there's some truth in it, but I've always thought that man is more inclined to be led by his emotions than be guided by reason. This is what makes him susceptible to group think and the oratory of demagogues. A highly cultured society like Germany that gave us Ludwig van Beethoven, Heinrich Heine and Johann Goethe, also gave us Hitler, the Nazis and the death camps.
The former U.S. President, Ronald Regan, once said that if you're explaining, you're losing. He thought that a politician should keep his arguments simple. The cognitive psychologist, Herbert Simon, coined the term 'bounded rationality'. Simon believed that our ability to be rational is limited given the complexity of the world and our limited capability to process the information we have. Given our bounded rationality, Simon argued, we develop shortcuts to allow us to economize in our mental capabilities. These are known as 'heuristics' or intuitive thinking.
In short, most people are guided by their gut instincts and politicians and advertising men are well aware of it. Like stockbrokers and salesmen, they regard most people as suckers who are easily manipulated.
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1 comment:
I suspect that for most people, emotion is the easier option. To reason is to require someone to think and to consider in a sensible, logical way. We all have the capacity to reason, but for too many, the capacity to do so is limited by a variety of factors. What is reasoning, a practical activity or a state of mind? Is it nature or nurture? In contrast emotion or gut instinct may be considered to be more easily defined, as in a basic sense, it operates as a place of refuge for our preconceived positions. It helps to reinforce our self-beliefs, whether they are based on considered reason or not. Yes, emotions are conscious mental reactions, but they must be subjective by definition. Are they manipulated, yes of course. The demagogue thrives on them, but surely emotion only retains a powerful consciousness, when reason is either not understood or it disregarded.
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