Insticts, Intuition, Emotion, the knowledge of the body

[sasha_feather]

Jonah Lehrer talks about the science of making decisions. If you use your intellect alone, you will dither forever between the Wheaties and the Cheerios. People use intuition and instinct; their back brains, to help in decision making. He talks about the role of dopamine-- if there is a dopamine imbalance; people may exhibit addictive behaviors. If people (or animals) are under great stress; the mind will shut down.

Michael Pollan writes and talks about the "rise of nutritionism" as a kind of false expertise, a false doctrine that leads to bad decision making about what to eat. He advocates using older received wisdom to help in the decision making process. "What would your great great grandmother consider to be food?" That is womens' knowledge.

The Gift of Fear attempts to teach women to listen to their instincts to help protect themselves in dangerous situations. Even listening to your instincts is gendered: women are told to suppress this knowledge, to "be nice" to strangers, to give others our attention, not to be a bitch.

There is an element of "Geek Boy" culture in which men will say something along the lines of, "I'll tell you little lady, what movies you should be watching/which music is better/why my show is better than your show". The man attempts to prove his coolness and knowledge by providing facts and expertise. This denies the power of intuition, emotion, and the knowledge of the body. It privileges a certain kind of intellect above all other kinds of intelligence. Does he know your tastes better than you do? Why is he exhibiting this behavior?

ETA!
It also fits in with this tendency of doctors to deny the patient's pain or experience (link to eruthros). The doctor has expertise, after all! And the patient only has the experience of the body! And the cultural expectation is to defer to expertise.

Comments

[spellercopter.livejournal.com]

It's such an indie kid thing to do. This kid can only run his mouth about music and movies, so I started going on about the history of photography, you know, and added a snide, "Oh, you don't know what Edward Muybridge was famous for? Well, I thought you would have. No, it's a COMPLIMENT."

Knowledge is power. But how we share knowledge can be very disempowering. To privilege one movie's import over that of another is dangerous territory. Canons are reinforced, even outside the mainstream, every time someone says, "You haven't seen The Big Lebowski? But you'd like it!"

People aren't often concerned whether or not we like it, only that we know we should. (Obviously it's not true everytime; tone and the delivery of the "compliment" is what makes it clear.)

[spellercopter.livejournal.com]

Ignore my italics typo!