NORTHERN PLANNER

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‘The Happiness Hypothesis’ by Jonathan Haidt explains a lot about heart v head. He explains that animals run on automatic processes – in-  built mechanisms that give us a little dopamine reward when we’ve done something like eating or having sex, anything that ensures our long term survival. Humans have managed to make it complicated for themselves by evolving controlled processes as well – the planning something consciously or analysing stuff for possible outcomes, something integral to the development of language. Haidt asks us to think of someone riding a horse – the horse is the automatic stuff, the rider is the controlled processes.

Automated processes have been around a lot longer, so they’ve had more time to get really, really good. Controlled has some catching up to do, which is why we can make a machine that can add up better than us, but no car can sense a speeding 4 x 4 in the third lane.

So we’re riders trying to control a horse that wants to ignore us since it thinks it knows where to go better than we do. Our conscious self is constantly in conflict with our primitive automatic tendencies – part of us wants to follow reason while the other is hell bent on disseminating genes.

Emotions are the expression of how the rider and the horse interact. Happy people manage this interaction well, unhappy people are having constant conflict between rider and horse. It doesn’t help that the horse is a coward – largely scared of unfamiliar situations and experiences. In other words, we make it hard for ourselves to try something new.

There’s lots of other stuff about gossip as the key to human culture since it’s risk free – the idea that it spreads new thinking thanks to the fact it’s endorsed by many and you can blame someone else for what you are saying.

Interesting to think about this balance being able to weigh up risks and your primitive self shouting "NO!".