When a rational argument hits on an emotional argument, it usual ends badly.
Both increase their volume, the rational side by elaborating their arguments in ever greater detail and citing even more rational voices, the emotional side by shouting louder, crying harder, or damaging art more badly.
While both fail to see that almost no problem worth discussing has a 100% rational or 100% emotional answer to it.
Part of today’s divide in societies stems from an ignorance about this duality on either side.
And so, both try to win the game by playing it according to their respective rules – which of course means that no-one can win as they don’t even play the same game.
The irony is that it might not be about winning at all. That it’s not about who is right but about how to get it right.
For this, it helps to ask why the emotional side feels the way it does when you’re standing on the one side of the argument. And why the rational side thinks the way it does when you’re standing on the other side.
Someone’s got to start. It could just as well be you.
