> [!infobox] <s class="aside-in"><em>mentioned in 3 topics, 19 evergreens, 1 source</em></s> #### [[Humans are primarily irrational, illogical, emotional beings]] The [[human experience]] is one that cannot be distilled into any small set of elements, but over time general patterns and behaviors can be observed, and the causes of those behaviors can be investigated. Two such behaviors are [[Human's will find explanations for inexplainable things]] and [[Human's have an inability to admit that they are wrong]]. These two traits alone have led us to create [[religion|religions]], start wars, explain reality, and explore the stars. At their core these traits are illogical, emotional, and irrational, but they push us to survive beyond all odds, thus making them heavily reinforced by [[natural selection]]. This makes [[cognitive dissonance]] a fundamental part of being human. ^[[[Is cognitive dissonance fundamental to the human experience]]] Whether it is the [[belief]] that the creator exists, ^[[[Humans are addicted to believing]]] the [[belief]] that your political party is fundamentally superior, ^[[[Faith is an abstraction of cognitive dissonance]]] or just the [[belief]] that life is worth living, ^[[[Humans have decided to reject an unjust world]]] human's unrelenting push to survive relies on this fact. ##### Humans are illogical Imagine you are a prehistoric human, and that you are looking for food. You have no idea where to look for food. You don't remember where you got food before, you don't know where food would be now. So you make a decision to start walking in a direction and looking for food, and low and behold you find some. You decide that the reason you walked this direction was because there was a bush. So the next time you look for food, you look for a bush. The problem is you did not walk in that direction because there was a bush. You did not think about the bush, you just went. You had zero inputs and yet you still had an output, and when that output lead to a conclusion, you deduced inputs for your output. You decided that the bush was the reason you walked in that direction. This is a fallacy, the bush was not the reason, and yet you believe it is, and in the future you will work off of this fallacy. This illogical reasoning lead to your survival. When you explained that the bush was the reason you found the food, you [[Human's will find explanations for inexplainable things|explained an unexplainable thing]]. You had no true reason, but if you hadn't made that decision, you would have starved to death: [[Our brain will do anything it can to protect itself]], even make impossible choices. Say that the next day you go out with some other prehistoric human to get food, but they decide to go in a different direction. You think, "there is no bush, this useless," and yet you shortly find food. However, instead of deciding that the bush has nothing to do with the food, you walk across the next hill certain that you will find a bush. Across the hill you find a bush! Aha! If we had walked the other way, the bush would have led us here, and this statement is logical. If you had been walking the other way, you would have seen the bush and found the food, but that does not prove that bushes lead to food. You use your conclusion to prove your hypothesis. Logic built off fallacy, because [[Human's have an inability to admit that they are wrong]] ##### Humans are emotional From birth our [[emotions]] are the rulers of our lives. We are fed when we cry. We are encouraged when laugh, or walk, or talk. [[Humans long to know what to do]] and [[Wonder motivates us to interact with the world around us]]. Yet, our [[emotions]] so often lead us into folly. We say the wrong thing, or act the wrong way. We let our [[emotions]] get in the way of how we think we should act. In many ways, [[emotions]] are the thing that makes us unable to admit that we are wrong. - [[Complex emotions are imperfect understandings of primal urges]] - [[Mental health is a reaction to one's environment]] - [[Rationalizations are defense-mechanisms against strong emotions]] - [[Triggers activate stored emotional responses for certain situations]] - [[We carry our childhood wounds into adulthood]] - [[Our brain actively inhibits us from processing repressed emotions]] ##### Humans are irrational - It is more specifically described as an action or opinion given through inadequate use of reason, or through emotional distress or cognitive deficiency. Irrational behaviors of individuals include: - taking offense or becoming angry about a situation that has not yet occurred - expressing emotions exaggeratedly (such as crying hysterically) - maintaining unrealistic expectations - engaging in irresponsible conduct such as problem intoxication - disorganization - falling victim to [[confidence]] tricks These more contemporary normative conceptions of what constitutes a manifestation of irrationality are difficult to demonstrate empirically because it is not clear by whose standards we are to judge the behavior rational or irrational. [^1] [^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrationality - [[We carry our childhood wounds into adulthood]] - [[Our ego is our subconscious defense of our self]] - [[Our brain will do anything it can to protect itself]] - [[Human's will find explanations for inexplainable things]] - [[Human's have an inability to admit that they are wrong]] ##### What's the problem? As human's, we are necessarily predisposed to assume that our existence makes sense. This is a fundamental fact behind [[human advancement]]. Pattern recognition is one of the main things that set us apart from other species, but we are far more subject to our environments than we think. Despite the fact these traits have been a necessary part of [[human survival]], they are not purely positive. Much of human [[suffering]] has been the fulfillment of these behaviors in the hands of people with power, and on an individual level, the stubbornness that these produce warps our [[self-image]] and [[self-perception]]. ^[[[Self-hatred is born out of dissonance between self-image and self-perception]]] - [[The church will fail if christians keep aligning themselves with hate instead of love]] - [[Christians struggle to feel empathy because they must believe that non-christians are going to hell]] - [[Identity is your understanding of yourself vs your interaction with the world]] - [[Trans children will repress their dysphoria if they have been effectively taught it is unacceptable]] ##### Is it worth it? <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QnQfDHKrGZA" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> - [[What is the cognitive effect of living in an unjust world]] - [[Happiness is enlightenment and sadness is delusion]] - [[Realism must acknowledge optimism's existence and effectiveness]] ### <hr class="footnote"/> **Status**:: #EVER/GREEN *edited 7:35 AM - July 08, 2022* **Topics**:: [[mental health]], [[self]], [[Evolutionary Psychology]], [[political strategy]]