Will & Imagination

Williams James said that “Where the will and the imagination are in conflict, the imagination will always win.”

It is clear, if you look at our political and religious leaders, that humans are not rational creatures, but we are always rationalizing creatures. [It’s also clear if we look at ourselves, but that’s a bit more difficult.]

Educationally, we probably should worry less about “the basics” of “the 3 Rs,” and more about emotional education. I used to tell Helen that she was the most important person at Charleston [IL] HS because she was the only one who taught family relations, child development, etc. She was the only one who taught emotional education. Knowing how to read and write and how to “do your numbers” doesn’t make you a rational or logical person. If you are not rational, some demagogue [or drug dealer or boyfriend or used car salesman] will always manipulate you into acting against your own best interests.

Most people act and vote with their emotions, not their intellect. Indeed, we disparage intellect, as something that keeps us from expressing our true feelings, which usually have to do with shouting our hates and fears at persons different from ourselves and claiming that it is either patriotic or Christian to do so.

Paul Unger used to do marriage counseling by trying to get people to think five years ahead: where do you want this marriage to be in five years? He said it never worked; men would paint a rosy picture of their marriage five years hence and walk out of his office and run to the homes of their mistresses. The imagination trumped the will.

Some would say that sex is physical, and it certainly has that component, but it’s primarily emotional. We say the brain is the most important sexual organ, but only a small part of the brain is mental, the rest is emotional. We usually talk about emotions as being heart or gut and obscure that fact that emotions are really in the brain, the emotional brain.

Many people have very good brains that they use to make bad decisions because they respond to the emotion of the moment instead of the long view of what is best.

Perhaps we need to do away with the myth that we are the rational inheritors of The Enlightenment and deal with the reality—we are emotional creatures who do what feels good at the moment, even if it will destroy us and all we hold dear tomorrow or next year.

The irony is that the surest way to destroy the self is to be self-centered.

We don’t need salvation from the devil or any other evil outside ourselves. We need salvation from ourselves and our own self-centered emotions.