![<b>Sotheby’s:</b> Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], John Tenniel. <i>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland</i> First Edition. Macmillan & Co., 1866. $15,000.](https://ae-files.s3.amazonaws.com/AdvertisementPhotos/cc3f4f98-f195-4049-aca6-329c27fdd27c.png "<b>Sotheby’s:</b> Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], John Tenniel. <i>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland</i> First Edition. Macmillan & Co., 1866. $15,000.")
![<b>Dominic Winter, Nov. 5:</b> Aquinas (Thomas). <i>[Summa Theologica], Secunda Parte,</i> Venice, 1496. £700 to £1,000.](https://ae-files.s3.amazonaws.com/AdvertisementPhotos/b69c37e7-f18c-4417-b08b-f00e9b97a413.jpg "<b>Dominic Winter, Nov. 5:</b> Aquinas (Thomas). <i>[Summa Theologica], Secunda Parte,</i> Venice, 1496. £700 to £1,000.")
It has long been understood that emotion and logic interact. You learn by observing and repeating and incorporating what you have observed. When your intelligence is tested, such tests capture how much you retained. While primary intelligence is important, every human being also has an alternative lens through which we use our intelligence, their emotional intelligence. In simple terms, your intuition is in constant interaction with the facts you observe.
I’ve always had deep access to my intuition. By experience, I’ve concluded my traditional and emotional intelligence exist in a 9 to 1 ratio. Intuition is simply deep memory that notices, remembers and correlates. Most western societies encourage fear about emotions because emotional content is generally associated with unreliability and instability. How many times have you been told, “control yourself?” While emotional intelligence is rarely fully used, it scales like square roots. Facts are captured one by one in the left brain. Think of them like water, while emotions scale like steam. They quickly feel intense, even irrational and can seem frightening. With experience you know those feelings quickly dissipate. The trick is to avoid acting on emotions until your rationality retakes hold. The law recognizes this as temporary insanity. We all have this capacity and occasionally become very angry. It’s part of being human.
Over the past 20 years we have become accustomed to using social media that has learned to use emotional accelerants to trigger negative emotions to devastating effect. For many online visitors, their involvement was amusing or occasional, not knowing that effective practitioners had an increasing ability to test their language and ideas to ensnare a larger audience. These days, many of them entice or induce behavior to the human extreme. For them it’s just numbers.
Of course, many resist aberrant behavior but, not everyone can or will.
When you think about over the past 2 decades, you can remember wondering why violence was increasing. Long since, you have become accustomed to multiple shootings. In our present century we are living through the uncontrolled flow of trash through the internet, and it can feel like there will be no end to it.
Surprisingly, there is a straightforward solution. Turn your back on social media. It has become an interloper in your phone and home, preaching distrust and hate. You’ve been listening to this crap because there’s often some of it resonates with you. We have been living in an imperfect world and we’re imperfect people. We all have Hispanic friends and associates. When 47 declared war on them earlier this year, most of us acted the way the Germans reacted to Hitler in the early 1930’s when he blamed Jews for their inflation. It began as only words and most white Christian Germans were spared. And it turned out to lead to concentration camps and 6,000,000 murders.
Virtually no one fought it. Only the wisest and luckiest escaped.
Now 47 has begun to eliminate our Hispanics. He has started to systematically reduce healthcare for the poorest populations. Whether they are LGBT, black, Asian, Muslim or any of our myriad population groups, he sees America as a white country with an unwanted other. We are all part of the other.
We are here today because prejudice has long lived in our communities and in our lives. But today, because of social media it’s more accessible.
Turning your back on this swill, finding some books to read, quickly brings you back to your pre-Internet self.
I’ve tried it. I’ve read a half dozen biographies and a few about the evolution of thought. I had found myself being drawn into the social media frenzy and within a couple weeks after turning off social media and set a few hours each day to read books, it was literally like popping a bubble. Once I saw what was happening from the outside, I understood it’s possible to reestablish my pre-internet self. It was liberating and emotionally healthy.
I encourage you to try it. There are thousands of libraries* with millions of books to read. Your librarians want to share them. History, biography, sociology, and whatever. Once you turn off the social media and settle into some interesting books, you’ll find your life will have calmed down.
Reading in the long form (books), life will be better. Join me!
- The ALA believes there are 17,278 public libraries in the United States, and the US Census mentions there are 10,800 bookstores in the US. Worldwide, books are available everywhere.
