Get Emotion Entirely Out Of Discourse — And Thereby Produce Civility (And Civilization)
AND, I might add, good marriages, friendships, and familial relations.
A quick way to assess a society is to examine the nature of its debates. Course, vile, hyperbolic, and profane debates mean society’s participants are emotionally immature (with little self-control).
Twitter Thrives In Drama. However, Societal Success Does Not.
Consider the following image. Emotional debates are found to the right of the vertical white line. Rational and value add debates are found to the left. Yet, social media will not likely thrive at the extremes of either. Don’t get me wrong. I think Twitter (and some other social media) could save civilization. However, conflict happens in the middle. And that is where we are now. Yet, it is not where we want to be for a viable civilization. It is corrosive.
The Cognitive Explanation For This Curve
People discover new things with reason. Yet, they operate or act in habit. Unsurprisingly, humans spend most of their time in habit. This is why the Aristotle quote to the right of this paragraph rings true. Only in reason can a person contemplate more than one view as true (that is, subjectively true). In habit, or when operating, the individual is emotionally committed to their subjective truths. Indecision in operation is dangerous.
The Human Mind In Habit Cannot Do This
Habit must rely on subjective truth, while reason, not in the act of doing, is free to consider all ideas and thereby free to eliminate any false hypotheses (subjective truths). These two cognitive processes are as different as night and day; specifically, while acting in one mode, you cannot operate in the other.
Self-control, or free will, is how the person moves from habit to reason.
The Brain’s Broader Operation
Habit is the human cerebral cortex. I believe it is what we all consider the SELF. It is governed by the Amygdala and emotions. It is the human evolutionary brain; our old brain, or, if you will, our REPTILE brain. By contrast, reason resides in the pre-frontal cortex. It is manipulated by the conscious. Reason cannot be manipulated by emotions. This is because the process of reason is disproof. That is a non sequitur to the amygdala and emotions. Habit proves. Reason disproves. You see, different as night and day.
In intellectual maturity, reason programs and governs the SELF (adds to or modify’s the SELF). Reason is the newest function of the human brain. The cerebral cortex (habit) is connected to the senses and behavior outputs. These neural networks are our habits. Whereas the prefrontal cortex is not directly connected to those cognitive regions. Instead, it is connected to habits. A developed prefrontal cortex thus makes possible SELF-awareness.
A debate In habit Is a conflict between emotionally held truths — and hence, the exhausting drama
It is not possible to have a debate in habit. To any given brain, habit is its known truth. When one threatens KNOWN truths, the brain (cerebral cortex) reacts emotionally. This reaction is brain’s fight-or-flight response. Remember, habit acts. It will not be stable if another comes along to “blow up” what it uses to act.
However, reason can sustain reflection and debate. Reason does not operate using truth. Reason seeks to understand. In time, reason updates the SELF.
What An Emotional Response Looks Like
FIRST: All personal (ad hominem) attacks are habit (emotional) responses. PERIOD.
Rational people, by contrast, attack ideas. Irrational people always attack the attacker. An irrational person sees themselves personally (the SELF) under attack when their ideas are under attack. They are not yet SELF-aware and cannot perceive a difference between them.
Irrational people also reveal themselves with the following:
- Profanity
- Name-calling
- Hyperbole
- Gaslighting
- Strawman Arguments
- All ideological opponents are bad (see shame below)
- All ideological friends are heroes or perfect (good–see praise below)
- Use Of Conclusory Statements
- Reliance On Hearsay Statements
- Reliance On Unsupported Statements
- Intolerance of other views
- And, abstractly, claims of overwhelming evidentiary proof. Whereas the rational person always seeks to disprove false hypotheses (claims). Lots of proof does not matter. Only disproof.
Habit is programmed with labels of good and bad (on beliefs).
The irrational attempt to “think” in habit. Thus, one must use the tools of habit (irrationality) to train them.
If you are new to my writings, the following may not make sense, but habit uses good/bad feedback to organize the thoughts of the irrational. We train children this way. Also, engineers program/train AI this way. Irrational people are ipso-facto emotionally immature. Shame and praise are the appropriate developmental tools for irrational people.
In time, individuals will learn self-control and reason and think for themselves. Then, we can make arguments with them.
To halt irrational behavior, you must shame it (never shame the person).
One cannot “out emotion” the emotional person and win the argument. Arguments in emotion are simply out of the question. Again, because it is a great analogy, habit and reason are as different as night and day. They will not be present in the debate at the same time.
There is an old quote (often attributed to Mark Twain):
“Never argue with stupid people; they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
Mark Twain
Stupid people are really ignorant people. Ignorant people are often irrational people.
Thus, you must shame the individual into abandoning their use of emotion. Later, you might engage them with reason. If you resort to emotion, your position is almost certainly undone. Again, never attack the individual. Shame only behavior. The emotionally immature person will habitually avoid authentically bad behavior. They will see emotional behavior as bad behavior too. But, if you accidentally shame the individual, they will pursue a fight or flight response because they will not see themselves as bad.
Irrational people lack self-control (an example).
To the irrational, I say:
Profanity (the example) is a sign of little or no self-control. Moreover, I can prove/demonstrate that self-control is free will. And free will is required to learn something new.
Then I link the post to the right.
Sometimes I say:
It is always about behavioral shame … or praise if they make excellent arguments without the presence of emotion.
