Rationality, or the ability to reason, to observe facts as they are while abstracting from feelings, is an excellent tool when it comes to producing something that works—at least on paper and in concept. But when it comes to applying it to real life, the everyday one, the one that demands constant sacrifices and compromises between what we truly desire and what life offers us, there is an enormous gap. And that is where feelings have their crucial place.

Nietzsche wrote: “I am body entirely, and nothing besides; soul is only a word for something about the body.” And further on: “The objective man is an instrument, a precious instrument for measuring, an admirable mirror… but he is not a goal in himself.”

First of all, it is not a matter of saying that one mode of expression takes precedence over the other: each mode of perceiving the world and acting is useful, even if it is strongly dependent on the context and the sphere in which the process operates. I am going to dissect these two modes of functioning to understand their weaknesses and their qualities.

The Emotional Mode and Its Vicious Loop

To begin with, the emotional mode has a major flaw that I perceive. People for whom the emotional mode takes precedence over everything else keep themselves stuck in an infinite loop where the escape seems to break at a point that blocks scalability toward more abstract, more theoretical, more factual horizons, which would allow prioritizing reflection and this in order to grow at a place where the sequence repeats itself.

We can characterize the pattern as follows: entry into a context/environment → emotional reaction → inability to prioritize rational reflection in the moment during a period of stress / ambiguity → action on the initiated impulse in order to relieve the emotional weight → return to a state of stability. And the loop closes there.

How? Precisely at the moment of returning to stability, because the fact that the initiated action was triggered neglects the reflective integration phase that could have identified the pattern causing the intense emotion in the first place. And so the emotion is often doomed to return and reproduce the same pattern.

Identifying what makes us feel one way or another is often the best way to first understand what is happening, then to plan for the next time such an event occurs. It is the famous transition that many people have already experienced, the one where they say to themselves “I should have said or done such and such” afterwards.

The Rational Mode and Its Trap of Total Inaction

Next, the rational mode. This one allows precise identification of emerging patterns, and methodical planning of systems, reactions, and events. However, it favors total inaction, the opposite of the emotional mode.

The ability to identify all reproducible or imaginable patterns means that nothing is left to chance, except feelings. And that is the problem. Feelings are merely a visceral decision-making matrix that allows us to recognize the intensity of the things we experience. Without them, nothing has a primary or secondary place anymore, no hierarchy. Everything becomes neutral, flat, objective.

The multitude of options and their incessant analysis and comparison without going through an emotional calculation step makes decision-making much more difficult. All options are equal, or none is good enough, perfect enough, because none meets all the analyzed criteria. And even when an option meets most of the objective criteria, the emotional is set aside, favoring a potential installation of chronic dissatisfaction due to objective, rational decisions, but... Voids of personal, subjective meaning.

And this inexorably leads to irrational decisions, because when it comes time to make a decision that requires an emotional choice (purchase, relationship, etc.) and where the person has no choice, given the intensity that will reach them through their bodily sensations, but to make a purely emotional decision, then at that moment, the rational brain, accustomed to a purely factual mode, will try to respond to it, but with clumsiness that in fact makes the decision even more irrational, because it will not have prioritized or taken into account the sensory flows, which, even if we make a distinction between the two modes, are nevertheless quite part of the real, objective world.

So there are two major tipping points:

• Total inaction due to inability to prioritize the influxes and to find an objectively "perfect" decision (which doesn't exist obviously)
  
  

• The decision forced by the situation, but which has not integrated the emotional mode at time T.
  
  

  
  

Toward an Asymmetrical Balance

Balance is surely found in a subtle mix of these two modes, but never can we count on anyone to hold such a balance, except that one can try to lean towards one or the other through conscious and introspective learning where one clearly identifies their dominant mode of functioning, and where one tries to detect the patterns that govern us.

(P.S.: This idea resonates with Antonio Damasio's “somatic marker hypothesis” although I discovered his work afterwards)