Adil MaliaGuest Author
Trending

The Feeling Machine

By | Adil Malia | www.adilmalia.com

Intellect versus Emotions – the debate goes on, unabated. It gets more intense and fierce around the success mix – is it more intellect or more emotiveness that attracts success based on which the primer and basal of Leadership rests.

Antonio Damasio the Portuguese-American Neuro Scientist maintains that “humans are not either thinking machines or feeling machines but rather feeling machines that think.”

The core is human feelings that precede. Thinking follows.

Organisms down to the level of invertebrates emotionally and automatically respond to threats from predators or environmental dangers for their betterment and survival.

Through evolutionary processes, the beauty of the mind has combined feelings of emotion with the accrual of knowledge, logic and reasoning. The last 100 years have added a lot more to the thinking element of this equation and thus as he explains – we now have less violence and fierce wars than 300 years ago, because of this evolution that has gone beyond basic emotional responses.

In addition to humankind’s high level of reasoning, unique memory and rich language, Damasio holds that what separates us from primates is a sense of autobiography.

“We can look back at our past in great detail including the places we have lived, a variety of events that are very marked, and we can create a memory of our anticipated future.”

Feel it and then think about it.

Republished with permission and originally published at www.adilmalia.com

Source
www.adilmalia.com
Show More

Related Articles

Back to top button