Trump Wants to Shoot Shoplifters and Trump Okays Cops to Murder
Some of Our Monuments Want Us to Forget Rather than Remember, MTG Wants to Take Sec. of Defense's Salary, Chris Christie Proclaims His Own Misogyny, Keith Carradine Sings
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: Why “going with your gut” is detrimental to your brain—and America.
Trump Wants to Murder Shoplifters: Trump wants us to follow Iran, China, and North Korea and execute thieves.
What Our Public Monuments Say About Us: Two stories—LA promotes Black historical sites, and a MAGA maniac shoots a monument protestor—frame a meditation on what monuments should and shouldn’t do.
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Non-Starter Amendment: She wants to cut the Secretary of Defense’s salary to $1. Yes, it’s as stupid as it sounds.
Chris Christie Gets His Misogyny On: Accuses Biden of sleeping with the enemy—Jill Biden.
Kareem’s Video Break: D Soraki dances his way to a championship. My feet are still moving.
Keith Carradine Sings “I’m Easy”: The song won an Oscar and a Golden Globe. Easy to see why.
Kareem’s Quote of the Day
I've been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and frankly speaking, between you and me, I have come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.
―Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
In Nick Hornby’s wonderful novel High Fidelity, 35-year-old Rob (played by John Cusack in the movie version) wonders why all his romantic relationships have gone bad. After quizzing all his exes, he has the insight quoted above.
For me, that quote encapsulates the greatest dilemma in American culture: the romanticization of “gut feelings” as down-to-earth common sense, while vilifying critical thinking as elite snobbery. It is the elevation of emotional reactions over precise reasoning. Capt. Kirk’s seat-of-his-pants cowboying versus Spock’s inhuman logic.
The problem is that while we’re celebrating “going with your gut/heart” in some decisions, we demand logical analysis in others. And we do it without consistency, mainly as an excuse for lazy thinking. When reality contestants ask friends for advice about making a decision, the “friend” always cops out with, “Go with your gut.” That way, they abdicate any responsibility while offering a useless cliche that has become the mantra of MAGA.
People with vast experience in a field may actually have a gut feeling that is the result of thousands of hours of exposure to a job. They are reacting to many silent cues to make an informed decision. Their gut feeling is actually a brain feeling after processing information that their expertise has analyzed.
But that is not what happens with most people using this phrase. For most, it is their free pass from doing any research before forming an opinion or putting those opinions under a microscope to find logical fallacies. Logic shmogic. They proudly proclaim they think with their gut or heart. And when they are wrong—they excuse themselves with, “I’m only human.” True, just not a very good human.
I found this excerpt from an article in The Observer (“Should you trust your sixth sense?”) discussing psychologist-neuroscientist Joel Pearson’s take on “gut reaction” in his book The Intuition Toolkit especially interesting:
Through his research, Pearson has learned that intuition is incredibly useful in a number of situations – and potentially disastrous in others. He uses the acronym Smile. S is for self-awareness: if you’re feeling emotional, don’t trust your intuition. M is for mastery: you need to actually know about the area in which you’re being intuitive. Don’t take a lucky gamble on the stock market based on gut feeling when you know nothing about finance. I is for impulses: you’re not feeling an intuitive draw towards food, drugs, social media… those are cravings. L is for low probability: don’t use intuition for probabilistic judgments. “Anything with numbers or probabilities: whatever you feel is probably wrong,” Pearson says. And the last is E for environment: only trust your intuition in familiar – therefore fairly predictable – environments.
Here’s the thing: We make choices using the best information we have available. But we can’t know everything, so all choices are flawed, made, to borrow from Kierkegaard, with fear and trembling. Sometimes those choices turn out well, sometimes not. Logic and reason place the odds in favor of a good outcome, but not always. It’s difficult to take responsibility for bad decisions, but one way we have come to live with self-blame is to say that “at least I went with my heart.” Oh, okay, then you’re off the hook, except that this is the justification people use, not just on The Bachelor, but also to be cruel, violent, and abusive.
We should expect better of ourselves and others. We definitely shouldn’t elevate the phrase to embroidered-on-pillow status.