2

Interpretation: As Pericles surveyed the political scene early in his

career, he noticed the following phenomenon: Every Athenian political

figure believed he was rational, had realistic goals, and plans on how to

get there. They all worked hard for their political factions and tried to

increase their power. They led Athenian armies into battle and often

came out ahead. They strove to expand the empire and bring in more

money. And when their political maneuvering suddenly backfired, or

the wars turned out badly, they had excellent reasons for why this had

happened. They could always blame the opposition or, if need be, the

gods. And yet, if all these men were so rational, why did their policies

add up to so much chaos and self-destructiveness? Why was Athens

such a mess and the democracy itself so fragile? Why was there so

much corruption and turbulence? The answer was simple: his fellow

Athenians were not rational at all, merely selfish and shrewd. What

guided their decisions was their base emotions—hunger for power,

attention, and money. And for those purposes they could be very

tactical and clever, but none of their maneuvers led to anything that

lasted or served the overall interests of the democracy.

What consumed Pericles as a thinker and a public figure was how to

get out of this trap, how to be truly rational in an arena dominated by

emotions. The solution he came up with is unique in history and

devastatingly powerful in its results. It should serve as our ideal. In his

conception, the human mind has to worship something, has to have its

attention directed to something it values above all else. For most

people, it is their ego; for some it is their family, their clan, their god,

or their nation. For Pericles it would be nous, the ancient Greek word

for "mind" or "intelligence." Nous is a force that permeates the

universe, creating meaning and order. The human mind is naturally

attracted to this order; this is the source of our intelligence. For

Pericles, the nous that he worshipped was embodied in the figure of

the goddess Athena.

Athena was literally born from the head of Zeus, her name itself

reflecting this—a combination of "god" (theos) and "mind" (nous). But

Athena came to represent a very particular form of nous—eminently

practical, feminine, and earthy. She is the voice that comes to heroes in

times of need, instilling in them a calm spirit, orienting their minds

toward the perfect idea for victory and success, then giving them the

energy to achieve this. To be visited by Athena was the highest blessing

of them all, and it was her spirit that guided great generals and the best

artists, inventors, and tradesmen. Under her influence, a man or

woman could see the world with perfect clarity and hit upon the action

that was just right for the moment. For Athens, her spirit was invoked

to unify the city, make it prosperous and productive. In essence,

Athena stood for rationality, the greatest gift of the gods to mortals, for

it alone could make a human act with divine wisdom.

To cultivate his inner Athena, Pericles first had to find a way to

master his emotions. Emotions turn us inward, away from nous, away

from reality. We dwell on our anger or our insecurities. If we look out

at the world and try to solve problems, we see things through the lens

of these emotions; they cloud our vision. Pericles trained himself to

never react in the moment, to never make a decision while under the

influence of a strong emotion. Instead, he analyzed his feelings.

Usually when he looked closely at his insecurities or his anger, he saw

that they were not really justified, and they lost their significance

under scrutiny. Sometimes he had to physically get away from the

heated Assembly and retire to his house, where he remained alone for

days on end, calming himself down. Slowly, the voice of Athena would

come to him.

He decided to base all of his political decisions on one thing—what

actually served the greater good of Athens. His goal was to unify the

citizenry through genuine love of democracy and belief in the

superiority of the Athenian way. Having such a standard helped him

avoid the ego trap. It impelled him to work to increase the

participation and power of the lower and middle classes, even though

such a strategy could easily turn against him. It inspired him to limit

wars, even though this meant less personal glory for him. And finally it

led to his greatest decision of all—the public works project that

transformed Athens.

To help himself in this deliberative process, he opened his mind to

as many ideas and options as possible, even to those of his opponents.

He imagined all of the possible consequences of a strategy before

committing to it. With a calm spirit and an open mind, he hit upon

policies that sparked one of the true golden ages in history. One man

was able to infect an entire city with his rational spirit. What happened

to Athens after he departed from the scene speaks for itself. The

Sicilian expedition represented everything he had always opposed—a

decision secretly motivated by the desire to grab more land, blinded to

its potential consequences.

Understand: Like everyone, you think you are rational, but you

are not. Rationality is not a power you are born with but one you

acquire through training and practice. The voice of Athena simply

stands for a higher power that exists within you right now, a potential

you have perhaps felt in moments of calmness and focus, the perfect

idea coming to you after much thinking. You are not connected to this

higher power in the present because your mind is weighed down with

emotions. Like Pericles in the Assembly, you are infected by all of the

drama that others churn up; you are continually reacting to what

people give you, experiencing waves of excitement, insecurity, and

anxiety that make it hard to focus. Your attention is pulled this way

and that, and without the rational standard to guide your decisions,

you never quite reach the goals that you set. At any moment this can

change with a simple decision—to cultivate your inner Athena.

Rationality is then what you will value the most and that which will

serve as your guide.

Your first task is to look at those emotions that are continually

infecting your ideas and decisions. Learn to question yourself: Why

this anger or resentment? Where does this incessant need for attention

come from? Under such scrutiny, your emotions will lose their hold on

you. You will begin to think for yourself instead of reacting to what

others give you. Emotions tend to narrow the mind, making us focus

on one or two ideas that satisfy our immediate desire for power or

attention, ideas that usually backfire. Now, with a calm spirit, you can

entertain a wide range of options and solutions. You will deliberate

longer before acting and reassess your strategies. The voice will

become clearer and clearer. When people besiege you with their

endless dramas and petty emotions, you will resent the distraction and

apply your rationality to think past them. Like an athlete continually

getting stronger through training, your mind will become more flexible

and resilient. Clear and calm, you will see answers and creative

solutions that no one else can envision.

It's just as though one's second self were standing beside one; one is

sensible and rational oneself, but the other self is impelled to do something

perfectly senseless, and sometimes very funny; and suddenly you notice

that you are longing to do that amusing thing, goodness knows why; that is,

you want to, as it were, against your will; though you fight against it with all

of your might, you want to.

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, A Raw Youth

Keys to Human Nature

Whenever anything goes wrong in our life, we naturally seek an

explanation. To not find some cause for why our plans went awry, or

why we faced sudden resistance to our ideas, would be deeply

disturbing to us and intensify our pain. But in looking for a cause, our

minds tend to revolve around the same types of explanations: someone

or some group sabotaged me, perhaps out of dislike; large antagonistic

forces out there, such as the government or social conventions,

hindered me; I received bad advice, or information was kept from me.

Finally—if worse comes to worst—it was all bad luck and unfortunate

circumstances.

These explanations generally emphasize our helplessness. "What

could I have done differently? How could I have possibly foreseen the

nasty actions of X against me?" They are also somewhat vague. We

usually can't point to specific malicious actions of others. We can only

suspect or imagine. These explanations tend to intensify our emotions

—anger, frustration, depression—which we can then wallow in and feel

bad for ourselves. Most significantly, our first reaction is to look

outward for the cause. Yes, we might be responsible for some of what

happened, but for the most part, other people and antagonistic forces

tripped us up. This reaction is deeply ingrained in the human animal.

In ancient times, it might have been the gods or evil spirits who were to

blame. We of the present choose to call them other names.

The truth, however, is very different from this. Certainly there are

individuals and larger forces out there that continually have an effect

on us, and there is much we cannot control in the world. But generally

what causes us to go astray in the first place, what leads to bad

decisions and miscalculations, is our deep-rooted irrationality, the

extent to which our minds are governed by emotion. We cannot see

this. It is our blind spot, and as exhibit A of this blind spot, let's look at

the crash of 2008, which can serve as a compendium of all varieties of

human irrationality.

In the aftermath of the crash, the following were the most common

explanations in the media for what had happened: trade imbalances

and other factors led to cheap credit in the early 2000s, which led to

excess leverage; it was impossible to place accurate value on the highly

complex derivatives that were being traded, so no one really could

gauge profits and losses; there existed a shrewd and corrupt cabal of

insiders who had incentives to manipulate the system for quick profits;

greedy lenders pushed subprime mortgages on unsuspecting

homeowners; there was too much government regulation; there was

not enough government oversight; computer models and trading

systems ran amok.

These explanations reveal a remarkable denial of a basic reality.

Leading up to the crash of 2008, millions of people made daily

decisions on whether to invest or not invest. At each point of these

transactions, buyers and sellers could have pulled back from the

riskiest forms of investment but decided not to. There were plenty of

people out there warning of a bubble. Only a few years before, the

crash of the giant hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management showed

exactly how a larger crash could and would occur. If people had longer

memories, they could think back to the bubble of 1987; if they read

history, the stock market bubble and crash of 1929. Almost any

potential homeowner can understand the risks of no-money-down

mortgages and lending terms with fast-rising interest rates.

What all of the analysis ignores is the basic irrationality that drove

these millions of buyers and sellers up and down the line. They became

infected with the lure of easy money. This made even the most

educated investor emotional. Studies and experts were pulled in to

bolster ideas that people were already disposed to believe in—such as

the proverbial "this time it's different" and "housing prices never go

down." A wave of unbridled optimism swept through masses of people.

Then came the panic and crash and the ugly confrontation with reality.

Instead of coming to terms with the orgy of speculation that had

overwhelmed one and all, making smart people look like idiots, fingers

were pointed at outside forces, anything to deflect the real source of

the madness. This is not something peculiar to the crash of 2008. The

same types of explanations were trotted out after the crashes of 1987

and 1929, the railway mania in the 1840s in England, and the South

Sea bubble of the 1720s, also in England. People spoke of reforming

the system; laws were passed to limit speculation. And none of this

worked.

Bubbles occur because of the intense emotional pull they have on

people, which overwhelms any reasoning powers an individual mind

might possess. They stimulate our natural tendencies toward greed,

easy money, and quick results. It is hard to see other people making

money and not join in. There is no regulatory force on the planet that

can control human nature. And because we do not confront the real

source of the problem, bubbles and crashes keep repeating, and will

keep repeating as long as there are suckers and people who do not read

history. The recurrence of this mirrors the recurrence in our own lives

of the same problems and mistakes, forming negative patterns. It is

hard to learn from experience when we are not looking inward, at the

true causes.

Understand: The first step toward becoming rational is to

understand our fundamental irrationality. There are two factors that

should render this more palatable to our egos: nobody is exempt from

the irresistible effect of emotions on the mind, not even the wisest

among us; and to some extent irrationality is a function of the

structure of our brains and is wired into our very nature by the way we

process emotions. Being irrational is almost beyond our control. To

understand this, we must look at the evolution of emotions themselves.

For millions of years, living organisms depended on finely tuned

instincts for survival. In a split second, a reptile could sense danger in

the environment and respond with an instantaneous flight from the

scene. There was no separation between impulse and action. Then,

slowly, for some animals this sensation evolved into something larger

and longer—a feeling of fear. In the beginning this fear merely

consisted of a high level of arousal with the release of certain

chemicals, alerting the animal to a possible danger. With this arousal

and the attention that came with it, the animal could respond in

several ways instead of just one. It could become more sensitive to the

environment and learn. It stood a better chance of survival because its

options were widened. This sensation of fear would last only a few

seconds or even less, for speed was of the essence.

For social animals, these arousals and feelings took on a deeper and

more important role: they became a critical form of communication.

Vicious sounds or hair standing on end could display anger, warding

off an enemy or signaling a danger; certain postures or smells revealed

sexual desire and readiness; postures and gestures signaled the desire

to play; certain calls from the young revealed deep anxiety and the

need for the mother to return. With primates, this became ever more

elaborate and complex. It has been shown that chimpanzees can feel

envy and the desire for vengeance, among other emotions. This

evolution took place over the course of hundreds of millions of years.

Much more recently, cognitive powers developed in animals and

humans, culminating in the invention of language and abstract

thinking.

As many neuroscientists have affirmed, this evolution has led to the

higher mammalian brain being composed of three parts. The oldest is

the reptilian part of the brain, which controls all automatic responses

that regulate the body. This is the instinctive part. Above that is the old

mammalian or limbic brain, governing feeling and emotion. And on

top of that has evolved the neocortex, the part that controls cognition

and, for humans, language.

Emotions originate as physical arousal designed to capture our

attention and cause us to take notice of something around us. They

begin as chemical reactions and sensations that we must then translate

into words to try to understand. But because they are processed in a

different part of the brain from language and thinking, this translation

is often slippery and inaccurate. For instance, we feel anger at person

X, whereas in fact the true source of this may be envy; below the level

of conscious awareness we feel inferior in relation to X and want

something he or she has. But envy is not a feeling that we are ever

comfortable with, and so often we translate it as something more

palatable—anger, dislike, resentment. Or let us say one day we are

feeling a mood of frustration and impatience; person Y crosses our

path at the wrong moment and we lash out, unaware that this anger is

prompted by a different mood and out of proportion to Y's actions. Or

let us say that we are truly angry at person Z. But the anger is sitting

inside of us, caused by someone in our past who hurt us deeply,

perhaps a parent. We direct the anger at Z because they remind us of

this other person.

In other words, we do not have conscious access to the origins of

our emotions and the moods they generate. Once we feel them, all we

can do is try to interpret the emotion, translate it into language. But

more often than not we get this wrong. We latch onto interpretations

that are simple and that suit us. Or we remain baffled. We don't know

why we feel depressed, for example. This unconscious aspect of

emotions also means that it is very hard for us to learn from them, to

stop or prevent compulsive behavior. Children who felt abandoned by

their parents will tend to create patterns of abandonment in later life,

without seeing the reason. (See Trigger Points from Early Childhood,

on this page.)

The communicating function of emotions, a critical factor for social

animals, also becomes somewhat tricky for us. We communicate anger

when it is something else we are feeling, or about someone else, but the

other person cannot see this and so they react as if personally attacked,

which can create cascading misinterpretations.

Emotions evolved for a different reason than cognition. These two

forms of relating to the world are not connected seamlessly in our

brains. For animals, unburdened by the need to translate physical

sensations into abstract language, emotions function smoothly, as they

were meant to. For us, the split between our emotions and our

cognition is a source of constant internal friction, comprising a second

Emotional Self within us that operates beyond our will. Animals feel

fear for a brief time, then it is gone. We dwell on our fears, intensifying

them and making them last well past the moment of danger, even to

the point of feeling constant anxiety.

Many might be tempted to imagine that we have somehow tamed

this Emotional Self through all of our intellectual and technological

progress. After all, we don't appear as violent or passionate or

superstitious as our ancestors; but this is an illusion. Progress and

technology have not rewired us; they have merely altered the forms of

our emotions and the type of irrationality that comes with them. For

instance, new forms of media have enhanced the age-old ability of

politicians and others to play on our emotions, in ever subtler and

more sophisticated ways. Advertisers bombard us with highly effective

subliminal messages. Our continual connection to social media makes

us prone to new forms of viral emotional effects. These are not media

designed for calm reflection. With their constant presence, we have

less and less mental space to step back and think. We are as besieged

with emotions and needless drama as the Athenians in the Assembly,

because human nature has not changed.

Clearly the words rational and irrational can be quite loaded.

People are always labeling those who disagree with them "irrational."

What we need is a simple definition that can be applied as a way of

judging, as accurately as possible, the difference between the two. The

following shall serve as our barometer: We constantly feel emotions,

and they continually infect our thinking, making us veer toward

thoughts that please us and soothe our egos. It is impossible to not

have our inclinations and feelings somehow involved in what we think.

Rational people are aware of this and through introspection and effort

are able, to some extent, to subtract emotions from their thinking and

counteract their effect. Irrational people have no such awareness. They

rush into action without carefully considering the ramifications and

consequences.

We can see the difference in the decisions and actions that people

take and the results that ensue. Rational people demonstrate over time

that they are able to finish a project, to realize their goals, to work

effectively with a team, and to create something that lasts. Irrational

people reveal in their lives negative patterns—mistakes that keep

repeating, unnecessary conflicts that follow them wherever they go,

dreams and projects that are never realized, anger and desires for

change that are never translated into concrete action. They are

emotional and reactive and unaware of this. Everyone is capable of

irrational decisions, some of which are caused by circumstances

beyond our control. And even the most emotional types can hit upon

great ideas or succeed momentarily through boldness. So it is

important to judge over time whether a person is rational or irrational.

Can they sustain success and hit upon several good strategies? Can

they adjust and learn from failures?

We can also see the difference between a rational and irrational

person in particular situations, when it comes to calculating long-term

effects and seeing what truly matters. For instance: In a divorce

proceeding with child custody issues, rational people will manage to let

go of their bitterness and prejudice and reason what is in the best

overall long-term interests of the child. Irrational people will become

consumed with a power struggle against the spouse, will let

resentments and desires for vengeance secretly guide their decisions.

This will lead to a protracted battle and a damaged child.

When it comes to hiring an assistant or partner, rational people will

use competence as their barometer—can this person do the job? An

irrational person will easily fall under the spell of those who are

charming, who know how to feed their insecurities, or who pose little

challenge or threat, and will hire them without realizing the reasons.

This will lead to mistakes and inefficiencies, for which the irrational

person will blame others. When it comes to career decisions, rational

people will look for positions that fit their long-term goals. Irrational

types will decide based on how much money they can immediately

make, what they feel they deserve in life (sometimes very little), how

much they can slack off on the job, or how much attention the position

might bring them. This will lead to career dead ends.

In all cases, the degree of awareness represents the difference.

Rational people can readily admit their own irrational tendencies and

the need to be vigilant. On the other hand, irrational people become

highly emotional when challenged about the emotional roots of their

decisions. They are incapable of introspection and learning. Their

mistakes make them increasingly defensive.

It is important to understand that rationality is not some means of

transcending emotion. Pericles himself valued bold and adventurous

action. He loved the spirit of Athena and the inspiration she brought.

He wanted Athenians to feel love for their city and empathy for their

fellow citizens. What he envisioned was a state of balance—a clear

understanding of why we feel the way we do, conscious of our impulses

so that we can think without being secretly compelled by our emotions.

Pericles wanted the energy that comes from impulses and emotions to

serve our thinking self. That was his vision of rationality, and our ideal.

Fortunately, to acquire rationality is not complicated. It simply

requires knowing and working through a three-step process. First, we

must become aware of what we shall call low-grade irrationality. This

is a function of the continual moods and feelings that we experience in

life, below the level of consciousness. When we plan or make decisions,

we are not aware of how deeply these moods and feelings skew the

thinking process. They create in our thinking pronounced biases that

are so deeply ingrained in us that we see evidence of them in all

cultures and all periods of history. These biases, by distorting reality,

lead to the mistakes and ineffective decisions that plague our lives.

Being aware of them, we can begin to counterbalance their effects.

Second, we must understand the nature of what we shall call highgrade

irrationality. This occurs when our emotions become inflamed,

generally because of certain pressures. As we think about our anger,

excitement, resentment, or suspicion, it intensifies into a reactive state

—everything we see or hear is interpreted through the lens of this

emotion. We become more sensitive and more prone to other

emotional reactions. Impatience and resentment can bleed into anger

and deep distrust. These reactive states are what lead people to

violence, to manic obsessions, to uncontrollable greed, or to desires to

control another person. This form of irrationality is the source of more

acute problems—crises, conflicts, and disastrous decisions.

Understanding how this type of irrationality operates can allow us to

recognize the reactive state as it is happening and pull back before we

do something we regret.

Third, we need to enact certain strategies and exercises that will

strengthen the thinking part of the brain and give it more power in the

eternal struggle with our emotions.

The following three steps will help you begin on the path toward

rationality. It would be wise to incorporate all three into your study

and practice in human nature.