Do you think about the thoughts that pass through your mind or the images that swirl to the forefront of your imagination? An aspect of mindful meditation is to observe thoughts without engaging with them or judging them just as you might watch clouds roll by on a warm, sunny day. But watching the thoughts roll by gives little clarity as to their origin or their purpose. Which is the point of mindfulness. To be present and aware of the current state of being and not distracted by the chattering of a disquiet mind.
I had a habit—or maybe that is instinct (you’ll understand that bit of levity if you go in that direction while reading this blog post)—to use logic as a way of making decisions or justifying my choices. I touched on this tendency in a prior exploration of my mental processes. A believer in Logic Superiority, I could justify my choices or shoot down my wife’s with a carefully constructed map showing how each fact built on the others to their logical conclusion.
Because I came to my conclusion with logic, Erin’s counter to my decision couldn’t be logical. Rarely can something be both itself and not itself. And because logic was the superior strategy for making decisions, then clearly whatever I had deduced must be the best choice. If she couldn’t see that, then it was beholden to me to explain to her why I was right.
Let’s Take a Moment…
To appreciate how supremely fucked up that is.
My wife is an intelligent woman. I respect her thoughts and opinions. I look to her for advice. But if we disagreed, I would just overwhelm her with facts and prove how I was correct. Funny how logic always supported what I wanted. It never changed my mind and swayed me to her side.
At the time, that seemed logical too. After all, I was the logical thinker. I wouldn’t make a decision or want to do something that wasn’t logical. I always started Right and just had to prove to my wife how she was Wrong.
We’ve recently become aware of ways we talk past each other in conversations. She works within the spirit of the discussion and terms being used. I latch upon any small mistake or inaccuracy and cannot let go.
Realizing I inherited the family OCD has been eye-opening and comforting for us both, I think.
But beyond browbeating my wife, let’s acknowledge this simple truth: I discarded her choices because I felt they were flawed by emotion. Whereas my own decision making was impeccable—irrefutable!—because I used logic.
What nonsense!
Why Did I Think Like That?
Why did I value logic so highly? And more unsettling: Why did I think so little of emotions and their place in the decision-making process that I instantly discounted any perceived emotional bias as a flaw worthy of sinking the entire argument?
What I’ve learned is that, if you should delve deeply enough, to take the critical mind back far enough, we can start to see the repetition of patterns that weave the tapestry of behavior. And I think I found a pattern that helped weave this part of me.
If you’ve ever considered why you think the way that you do and wondered how you make decisions, then maybe following me along this journey will prove illuminating.
Thinking About the Mental Process
I conflate decision making, thinking, and processing information in this post. I realize these are separate cognitive processes with varying degrees of autonomy and intention. I’m not being precise in my word usage, and such sloppiness might nullify my point for some people. I understand, and I’m sorry for this lapse.
Hi, I’m Shane, recovering logic user and stickler for a degree of accuracy that no one else is overly concerned about. Welcome to my meeting.
Let’s Decide on How We Make Decisions
I often have a cat around while I write, so when I say we, it is in reference to him and me. I can’t get your input while I’m writing this. Yes, my emails have a similar tone and pacing as these blog posts if you ever wondered.
My cat and I (with some help from my new personal assistant Bard, who will be introduced in another post) agreed that these were the most common methods people use to make decisions:
- Emotions—how we feel about things or in an effort to minimize what we don’t want to feel and maximize what we do want to feel
- Habit—what was done in a similar situation in the past (I think habitual decision making isn’t robust enough, so I overruled Bard and my cat and created my own term: Instinct. Yes, I will explain why I’m right and they are wrong should you want to know.)
- Intuition—an unquantifiable hunch or gut feeling
- Logic/Reasoning—evaluating facts, examining the pros and cons, and choosing the result based on the final outcome of the calculation.
- Other People—what other people tell us (All three of us agreed to skip this one. This post isn’t titled “Why Do You Think You Think the Way That He Thinks? Because He Told You to Think That Way? I Guess We Nailed it.”)
New Blog Feature Unlocked!
Great news, everyone! This blog post got so long, I had to shunt less important things from the main post to extra pages. Yup! This Sex on the Fringe has leveled up and evolved an Appendix!
They are completely supplementary, so feel free to skip them if brevity is your thing. There’s a lot of skippable bonus content in this post for those interested. But I didn’t want to dilute the core points by having it all in one post.
You’ll find the link to each appendix at the applicable spot in the post, like right here with Appendix A, which asks you to imagine a scene and how you came to the decision you did.
Fun? Maybe.
Necessary? Fuck no!
If such bullshittery is not to your taste, then move on to the next new blog feature: bonus chapters about each of the methods listed above.
Except that last one. We’ve already talked about that as much as we need to. I won’t mention it again.
Or will I?
No, I won’t.
Overthinking Thinking
I cannot think a thing without overthinking the thing. You might have seen that refrain from me elsewhere. This blog post is a great example: I didn’t intend to write about thinking when I started it. I was going to write about overthinking. But to write about doing too much of a thing, I felt the need to explain the thing and what a correct amount of it might be.
I thought I could write a correct amount about the correct of thinking. But I then I ended up overthinking thinking before I even got around to overthinking overthinking. At that point, I’d overwrote the correct amount of writing by the same amount I’d overthought the correct amount of thinking
I explained in painstaking detail every flawed facet of logic and how it can still look like logic but isn’t. I even used The Princess Bride as an example. (Really? Inconceivable!) Erin thought it was too long and no one would get through it. I thought it was accurate info without too much extraneous detail (but still some humor, it is me after all). Erin agreed with my assessment but thought it was too long and no one would get through it.
I was sitting at over 20 pages and had F many appendices; good chance she was right!
I felt that it was important to retain some of it. If I say my overreliance on logic was maladaptive adult behavior, I want to explain why.
But you don’t need to know why if you don’t care. The bonus chapters do not contain information necessary to understand the sections that follow (in which I unravel how and why I developed the Logic Superiority Instinct). They simply clarify my previous and my updated perceptions of these methods.
Here are links to the bonus chapters:
Let’s Feel Out Emotion and Intuition
In which I examine how I feel about emotions and intuition as ways to think
Let’s Ditch Habits and Instead React to Instinct
In which I redefine the word instinct because the word I want does not exist
Let’s Compute the Logic of Using Logic
In which I compute if it is logical to use logic to make decisions
Let’s Not Talk About Other People Making Decisions for Us
In which there is nothing because I said I wasn’t talking about other people
Why I Think I Thought the Way I Used to Think
The rest of this post is an exploration into why I clung so vehemently to my Logic Superiority Instinct, that subconscious need to apply “logic” to everything and decry the application of intuition or emotion. There are several factors at play that led to the construction of behavior, and it begins with how the brain processes and sorts information.
In my chapter about logic, I talked about how identifying patterns is such a potent element in the human brain that our minds can quickly and easily lock onto a pattern and erroneously apply that pattern to unconnected things, thus resulting in an erroneous conclusion.
I have a great real-world example of this involving Monogamish Marriage, which you can read in Appendix C.
If you have a clear understanding of stereotypes, paradigms, and misinterpreting motivation, skip it. You are that much closer to the end.
If you are wondering what happened to Appendix B, congrats! You win a gold star! Appendix B is accessed through one of the bonus chapters, so you won’t find a link to it from the main blog post. But it does exist!
Or does?
Yes, it does.
Winding Back Clocks to Foundational Moments to Observe Them Play Out and Leave Their Scars
My childhood environment programmed my instinct for how I would make decisions. The instinct that developed favored logic and was dismissive of emotion and intuition to the point of scorn.
Figuring out how I developed such thinking required a bit of reverse engineering on the code of that instinct. The program that was put in place trusted logic but rejected outright emotion or intuition due to repeated examples that could be explained and justified by logical scrutiny but not emotional or intuition. Or that there was an ongoing situation that I was able to use logic to find a tolerable conclusion for by analyzing the it with logic but that had only resolved in intolerable (i.e., emotionally painful) conclusions if looked at with any other framework.
How about a situation in which my emotional wants and needs weren’t considered. A situation so full of nuance, emotion, and anxiety that no child could understand the complexity but for which a very simple and well-established social paradigm could easily justify everything. A situation that would play out day after day after day, defining core elements of my childhood.
Yeah, I think such a situation, if it existed, could build a Logic Superiority Instinct.
And it did exist. That situation was my older brother.
Of Course It’s His Fault! (But Not Really)
I’ve talked about my brother before. He was high strung and emotional as a kid, didn’t deal well with unexpected change or things not going as expected. He recalls an afternoon when our dad left work early to surprise him with a trip to the movies. My brother had a meltdown and refused to go.
He’s the difficult child. I’m the easy going one (yes, dear reader, that is true). My role in the family is peacekeeper and placater. I make family time easier. For everyone else.
This dynamic created a cycle of my brother’s whims and emotional needs being satisfied in preference to my own. Which is understandable: The squeaky wheel gets the grease, as the saying goes.
We went to the places that he wanted to go. Ate at restaurants he liked. Saw movies that appealed to his interests. Played games that he liked. He decided to play soccer; two years later, I too was on a soccer team.
But there was more to our dynamic than him getting his way every time. He was a bully and a tattletale; mean and petty despite my general kindness and even servitude toward him. I don’t remember many specifics from our childhood, but have impressions and feelings of things.
He was always a grump. As we grew up, his negativity grew. By the time we were teenagers, we couldn’t be in a room together for very long before a fight broke out.
A Capstone Example: High School, Here We Come!
Being older than I, he entered high school before me. Which meant he picked which high schools we attended.
I didn’t have a say in the matter. Because he entered high school before me. Nor could I go somewhere else. Because reasons.
Legitimate reasons like a second-student discount, my brother could drive us, and a dozen other little conveniences that I couldn’t see and no one bothered to explain. Nor did they think I would care. I never had before. I just went along with whatever and never made a fuss.
But I did care. Most of my friends were going to another school…was the reason I gave. In truth, I wanted to go somewhere that was unspoiled by my brother being there first.
To quiet my disquiet, I was told that if I scored high enough on the entrance exam to get a scholarship, I could go to that other school. It was more expensive, so that seemed reasonable.
But my parents had said it to stop my complaining and assuage their own guilt that I once again lacked autonomy. In their esteem, I was lazy and had no drive for scholarship. There was plenty of evidence in my lack of both discipline and focus on school.
Because I put no additional effort into my education to shore up chances and I had stopped complaining about my inability to control my own destiny, my parents likely assumed that this want evaporated just like all the others. Once more peace settled on the household. The deal forgotten.
You can see where this is headed, right? That I ace the exam and get a scholarship, but my parents rescind the deal and l end up attending the school my brother picked?
Surely that cannot be how this plays out!
All in All It Was All Just Bricks in the Wall
That’s exactly how that shit played out!
I didn’t get what I was promised. Nor even a consolation prize. My achievement wasn’t celebrated but instead became a point of contention. This was a rare instance that our scores could be easily compared. He knew my score; I didn’t know his. But he fumed at the difference. (A pattern that would repeat when my PSAT and his SAT scores arrived on the same day, and mine was higher.)
My parents weren’t excited either, probably because they felt guilty about having to backpedal on the deal they offered me.
How does a kid resolve this event in a way that does just leave him crushed emotionally, angry at the world?
Are you joking? I didn’t need to resolve anything by this age! This wasn’t a blimp on my radar. I wasn’t even that disappointed.
First off, my parents never believed it possible, so neither did I. No one did. There were 52 kids in my 8th-grade class, and I wouldn’t have been on anyone’s list of the ten most likely.
Second, I never expected my parents would follow through. One school was more expensive. The scholarship worked for either; it made them equally cheaper. I understood that math.
At this point, I had so many examples about how I didn’t get what I wanted unless my brother got what he wanted out of it that I’d stopped really wanting anything. I certainly wasn’t going to put effort into improving my chances. Why put effort into anything?
I never thought I’d attend the high school of my choosing. But for a few months—before the results of the entrance exam came back—I could imagine that I did. And that was nice.
The Problem That Defined My World
The simple version is this:
My bullying, mean, grumpy older brother consistently received preferential treatment from my family (extending beyond just parents).
I couldn’t understand why. No matter the metric of accountability I used to quantity our value (grades, times punished at home, disciplinary actions at school, arguments caused, Christmases canceled, fights started, number of friends, amount of time spent being kind to others, etc.), I couldn’t figure out why my family liked my tormentor more than they liked me.
Intuition and emotion couldn’t solve this conundrum. The truth I lived didn’t feel right. It certainly didn’t feel good!
Likely realizing the unfair treatment they gave, my parents adopted a system of Absolute Fairness that resulted in things like my brother and I getting an allowance at the same time (which my brother hated because I was young and getting the same amount) but also getting chores at the same time (which I hated because I was younger and had to do work like my brother!).
How Absolute Fair did this get? One Christmas, my parents gave me a check for $42.36 to balance out the difference that was spent on us. It’s a memorable number, which is why I only remember that one and not the other near-30. Though Mom might have stopped with the change at this point. I don’t pay that much attention anymore.
Building a Logic That Made Sense of My Reality
Logic took in all the facts that I had collected and wove a narrative that justified the disparity in our treatment. Tested throughout my childhood, the logic held strong, and evidence mounted year after year.
And it is such simple, effective logic, too. Elegant. Concise. Easily formed from an early age.
My brother was treated better because he was older than I was.
It wasn’t because they liked him more; he was an asshole! An emotional tyrant! Not just to me, either; his tantrums and moods hurt everyone!
But as the first child, he was more important. Logic found the only measure that existed that I could not refute his superiority.
Moreover, I didn’t generate this idea. I saw it played out countless times in movies, TV shows, and in the households around me: “Listen to your older brother.” “You’re not old enough.” “Because I’m your big brother!”
He was heir to the throne. I was the spare. There was nothing I could do that would make me his equal, so I learned to be comfortably inferior.
This is just one example of how my child-brain used logic to make sense of my world in a way intuition and emotion could not. The easiest way to explain is just this: I couldn’t make choices using emotions because my emotions were never given priority in my house. I couldn’t trust intuition because every time my gut shouted “This is wrong,” my parents’ actions contradicted me.
Shut It Down! Shut It Down Forever!
If Older == Greater Authority seems underwhelming, it is. But it was Child Logic. And it helped me make sense out of nonsensical injustice.
This wasn’t the only false logic I created, nor the Logic Superiority Instinct the one built based upon false logic. In the last year or so, I’ve learned to map adult maladaptive behaviors back to the hurtful childhood patterns that needed coping mechanisms. The discovery of some has proven comforting. Unfortunately simply discovering them does not unburden me.
The Logic Superiority Instinct existed more than a decade after the Older == Greater Authority logic was torn down (though there are ways it still shows up: I’m terrible at guessing ages, but I will always assume people with greater authority than me must be older).
The Logic Superiority Instinct was easily torn down because it was based upon a truth that was proven wrong.
I’ve never prioritized my own happiness. Even if I could justify it with logic, I believed it was still logic’s place to deduce if I should be happy. My reason wasn’t I wanted to be happy. It didn’t think I deserved it.
Given how often I felt like a failure, my logic didn’t resolve to good things for me. I didn’t deserve what I already had—my wife, our life together, so many amazing friends. I always felt one misstep away from losing everything. How could I think to try for more?
Logic is confining. It is controlling. If logic dictates a path, then that path must be.
Realizing that logic is a fallacy, that there is no path but instead an open field to frolic in…that’s freeing! By releasing logic as the only true arbitrator, I return to myself autonomy to walk my own path instead of standing idly beside it.
Logic Lied But Was Tolerable; Intuition Was Right But I Couldn’t Accept It Back Then
I had dispelled the Older == Greater Authority logic long before I discovered the Actual Truth, which would have countered it just as easily. My brother received and to this day still receives preferential treatment because most of my family actually likes him more.
My childhood intuition had been right; child me just couldn’t accept that and what it means about the world.
They get annoyed and frustrated with how he behaves—he’s still the source of strife and malcontent at events—and I’m the one everyone wants to have around…somewhere in the background…so that everything runs smoothly. But they identify with him and his personality more than they do with me, the people pleaser.
I know this because they say this to me. But they show it in other ways as well. Erin and I can see why, which is kind of a surreal thing to know about family. His love language matches there more succinctly and requires little effort. I put in tons of effort but it falls on deaf ears. They feel his affection more than they feel mine, and they respond in kind.
That realization caused a handful of other maladaptive behaviors, but we’re not talking about those.
Adrift but not Lost
I’m sure it’s been some small comfort to Erin to not have to deal with a self-assured Shane overexplaining why he thinks he’s right. Again.
Unfortunately I’m tearing myself apart faster than I am putting things back together. I’m less me in some ways, which is probably terrifying for her. The last time I completely changed myself, I began to exalt every trait most antithetical to her existence. Twenty years later and we’re still dealing with the fallout of that rebirth.
If the next change voids the last, then all that damage was for naught. And if it is another transformation into an alternate me that she cannot abide, then…what? She suffers more because of my shiftful tides?
I find myself unmoored, set adrift upon a sea of possibility and potential with no rudder and little wind to direct my sails. Having spent so long ignoring and dismissing my emotions and intuition I am unable to tap into their wisdom.
I trained myself to not want, to not pursue, to not even ask. Examples abound through this blog; a few spring to mind so easily. I am a people pleaser because evaluate everyone else as more worthy than I am. Even after all this time, I still see myself as the unnecessary spare.
I don’t yet know how to replace what was torn down, but I believe it can be done and this time I have an adult perspective, a variety of tools to select from, and peers I trust to help me gentle through the hard parts. That’s a better starting place than the first time.
A Hopeful Horizon
I have no reason to think that I view the uncertainty of chaos with any less fear, doubt, and hesitation than anyone else. I’d say there is fair evidence that isn’t so. So I’m surprised I don’t feel more fear at the unknowable haze before me. I’m closing in on mid-40. I had thought my rutter would be set and it would be smooth sailing at this point. Instead I’m unraveling with only the hope that I can return to shape that can fit back into the hole I fell from.
Instead have hope.
I cannot point to a reason for it. It’s just a hunch.
And for once I am OK with that.
It’s not the fleeting-but-comforting dreams of the optimist who would envision improbably awesome futures because his unrealistic imagination was so often the sole source of satisfaction.
It’s just a feeling.
And I’m learning how to trust those.