Why don't people listen to reason?

Highlights from our meeting on 02/26/03

1. We live in a sound byte culture.
2. We seem to be more interested in expressing our own views than in listening to others.
3. Listening seems to be a lost art.
4. Bumper sticks substitute for public debate.
5. Intensity and commitment seems to have replaced logic and reason as the preferred means to advance a particular position.
6. The power of the personality of the speaker seems to be a very significant factor.
7. Charismatic leaders such as Hitler appeal to emotion rather than to reason to garner support.
8. Does emotion always win over reason?
9. Sometimes people overrule their emotions in favor of reason only to discover later that their intuition was right. This might occur in relation to whether or not to trust a new business partner, for instance.
10. The reverse is also sometimes true. Compulsive gamblers regularly go with their intuition, ignoring the odds as calculated by reason, only to lose repeatedly to the point of financial ruin.
11. Reason, well employed, has an advantage over emotion in that reason can acknowledge and factor into its calculations what wisdom it may find in emotional reactions.
12. The reverse is not true. Emotional reactions, while they may contain some wisdom, do not engage logic and reason before expressing its position.
13. Emotional wisdom does grow with life experience.
14. Still, why is the appeal to reason so scarce?
15. If emotional needs are not being met, people have little patience with cold logic and reason.
16. Perhaps to be persuasive one needs to appeal to both emotion and to reason.
17. Perhaps there has been a cultural backlash against detached logic and reason. An era of smug intellectuals debating abstract ideas in ivory towers with little interest in or actual knowledge of the real problems of ordinary people might have caused such a backlash.
18. Perhaps the baby was thrown out with the bath water.
19. The danger of abandoning reason entirely, is that it leaves one open to abuse by forces that might incite passions for cynical or sinister purposes.
20. Perhaps it is compassion, rather than just passion, that needs to be married to reason in order to make reason both effective and meaningful. Compassion ensures that the listener's emotional needs are acknowledged and addressed before one rushes down the path of logic and reason in pursuit of common understanding.