[Editor’s Note: The Mesquite Citizen Journal asked both political columnists, Terry Donnelly and Mike Young, to write about a special topic – which is more important – Facts over Feelings or Feelings over Facts. We encourage you to read both columns.]
Mike Young’s version is available through this link: Facts vs Feelings: When Reason and Emotion Clash (mesquitecitizenjournal.com)
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” That was former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan writing in a January 1983 “Washington Post” column. It has become a stalwart rebuttal when one politician or commentator desires to challenge another in debate. Opinions, or feelings, are not facts. They come from a different place in our psyche and serve different purposes. When they become synonymous, sloppy thinking occurs.
Facts are empirical; able to be proven; and, adding some challenge to life, often change over time. With Pluto’s discovery in 1930, school kids learned there were nine planets in our solar system. In August 2006, all that changed. The International Astronomical Union downgraded Pluto to a dwarf planet, leaving the inner ring of eight as the only designated planets. Some folks still have strong feelings about Pluto. None-the-less, in 21st century calculations, eight solar system planets is the only correct test answer. One could make an argument with the isolated fact that Pluto was a planet longer than it has been a dwarf, but that doesn’t get your incorrect test answer accepted.
There are political equivalents to this line of thinking. Republicans love to cite the fact that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican president. That is an undeniable, unchanging fact. Democrats like to counter that today, Lincoln would have been what conservatives call a RINO. Some Democrats, me included, would argue that the liberal leaning, big government president would have been a modern Democrat. Due to having no way of knowing, that is a feeling I have.
The defense of my feeling comes from facts. Lincoln favored big government activity to solve the county’s issues. He freed the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order, and he set up the first federal government internal revenue system to collect the first taxes beyond tariffs. He installed real estate, excise, sales, and license taxes, plus the original income tax on earnings over $600. If that doesn’t sound like Democratic thinking, I don’t know what does.
The idea here is that I’m not contesting that Lincoln was a Republican. I’m suggesting Lincoln needs to be considered a liberal thinker, regardless of political party affiliation. My feelings are supported by facts around actions he took during his term of office. When feelings alone are the base of any argument (“I want Lincoln to be a Republican because he was a great president”), sloppy thinking can become unjustified actions.
Feelings are not accountable to objective, independent, or scientific verification––they are emotions. When we treat facts as the basis for creating an opinion, there is a line of logic to follow. If we rely on feelings alone to form opinions, we eliminate the need to test our conclusions or search backward for isolated, inconsequential facts for support (“Pluto was a planet for 76 years and a dwarf for only 15.”).
Harvard neuroscientist Dr. Joshua Greene conducted studies and concluded we have a “dual-process brain.” The area of the brain that produces emotions, or feelings, is deeper inside and thus is engaged first. Often analysis need go no further. Why we like peanut butter better than orange marmalade on toast, or even why we fall in love needs no further critical analysis––simply enjoy peanut butter and being in love. But, on consequential matters––buying a home, taking love to the next level and getting married, or political/social matters––more than emotions need exploration. In comes the prefrontal cortex in the brain’s outer layer. It controls reason.
Emotions come first and reason takes longer to kick in. To avoid fuzzy thinking, the extra effort is necessary. For critical thinking, it is required to go beyond the initial brain function of emotions and add reason for justification––meld emotions and reason to validate original feelings.
The most important political decision a voter makes is choosing a candidate. Barack Obama wrote, “Whether I liked it or not, people were moved by emotion, not facts.” That’s why the homecoming queen wins student council elections and the nerds lose. That’s why nose-to-the-grindstone, policy wonk candidates like Adlai Stevenson and Hillary Clinton lose to oversized personalities like Dwight Eisenhower, the war hero, and Donald Trump, the television personality. Feelings rule the day––they shouldn’t, but they do.
Treating feelings as facts is the reason our society and our politics are polarized. Left unchecked by factual influences, over time, treating feelings as facts allows feelings to gain dominance, rendering even more extreme, feelings-based views that seem even more certain and become harder to modify. When feelings are treated as facts, a strict, feelings-based divide rules the day with facts shoved into a dusty corner. This could describe our divided America today.
Feelings are welcome. They are central to our humanity. But, when we act on feelings alone, we’re only using half our resources. When we get facts correctly integrated with feelings, exemplary progress can be made in both personal and civic life. Just be sure the facts being used are accurate. There are unscrupulous actors who would introduce disproven or marginalized facts into the debate to gain a political edge. Those bad actors necessitate adding a layer of critical thinking and research into forming rational opinions––fodder for another conversation.
Mike Stevens says
Fact: not a single climate change prediction has come to pass
Fact: there are only 2 genders
Fact: a baby is a baby from conception to birth
Fact: guns do not kill people, people kill people
David Petrillo says
You have a few facts wrong. Guns do kill people. Having millions of guns makes it easier for a spouse to kill another spouse. A person suffering from mental illness can kill many more people with high capacity guns. A teenager suffering from depression can take a parents gun and commit suicide. Kids can play with guns and accidentally kill a friend. So again, guns do kill people, over 40,000 a year.
A baby is not a baby until born. Women have the complete right to control what happens to their own body. We liberals are all for personal freedom. The far right, the party of no.
Evidently you have not traveled to the polar ice caps. They are melting. The rain forests are disappearing.
You are confusing real facts with propaganda.
Bill Bishop says
Mike recheck your climate change info, you’re dead wrong. Recheck you’re baby info, wrong again. (Ever heard of genetic completness of the embryonic genome?). You must be referring to abortion which you condemn women for but don’t mind happily using the death penalty even if it might be a wrongful conviction. Guess that’s why you didn’t say murder is murder.
You guns comment is just childish.
Mike Stevens says
Have any proof? Or a prediction that came to pass?
Baby info is correct, genetic manipulation is done by elephants? No, it’s done by humans. Humans and ONLY humans can make tiny humans.
Saying that my gun comment is childish is opinion, not fact. What is fact is that humans murder other humans, and will sometimes use guns. And it is a fact that last year more murders were committed by humans using knives then rifles. Look it up before using your emotions and feelings to simply knee jerk that something is incorrect
Mike Stevens says
Here you are mistaken. “Having millions of guns makes it easier for a spouse to kill another spouse.” You said it yourself, the spouse killed the other spouse, not the gun. Each example you gave is this same situation. A gun is an inanimate object, a tool that can be used by one human against another. Just like a knife(with which more people use in murder then rifles each year, look it up).
A baby is a baby from conception till birth. What do you think it is? A balloon animal? It is a tiny human. Tiny humans can ONLY be made by other humans. Your argument here is feeling, not fact. A women having a right to her own body does not magically change a baby into not-a-baby. It is still a baby. She has the right to choose, but I’m doing so, she is killing a tiny human. Fact
Have you traveled to the polar ice caps? I’d bet you know just as much as I do about them, as neither of us has been there and neither of use are polar ice cap scientists. However, and I would like you to look this up on your own, not a single country has disappeared under the ocean waves, NOT ONE. New York was already supposed to be under water. The world was supposed to be unliveable by the year 2000, 21 years ago. NONE of the climate predictions have come true, and according to AOC, we have what, 9 years left on this planet? Do you honestly believe that we have 9 years left on the planet??
No my friend, it is you that twist fact and intertwine feeling to present your arguments.
Not a single climate change prediction has come to pass
There are only 2 genders
A baby is a baby from conception till birth
Guns do not kill people, people kill people
Patrick O'Meara says
Facts matter, and math works. The former president is losing support among Republicans. So, his “behavior” and the GOP’s internal food fight, are creating a large number independents and democrats. Current math says that since the 2016 election, republicans have slowly, and more recently, in large numbers, been leaving the party. Poll of Polls would indicate that it will be nearly impossible for some of the far right candidates cannot, mathematically, win a statewide election. Plus, the former president will possibly go to prison, making the situation even worse for his party even. And some may feel that he won in 2020. The FACT is that not even swing states found ANY fraud in the 2020 election. This saddens me since we really need a good, ethical, republican party in congress, working for us, not the former president.