"Interviewer: Why did you call the movie "Stop Making Sense?"
David Byrne: "Because it's good advice."
"Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts don't stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape..."
-Talking Heads, "Crosseyed and Painless"
I noticed a while ago that many like-minded people my age have casually replaced "I think that" with "I feel like."
For example: "I feel like we probably shouldn't invest all our money in hog futures." I'm not talking about: "I feel like pizza for dinner," which is legitimately felt. Here's some of what I associate with each word:
Feeling: experience, intuition, sea change, watchfulness, groundedness, passivity, hesitance, experience over interpretation, yielding instead of arguing, "subjectivity". Feeling is to be dominated.
Thinking: interpretation and meaning, facts, deduction, rational discourse, arbitrary/manic changes, airiness/non-grounded, outward public challenge, conversation, decision-making, power, politics, being in the game, being right, interpretation over experience, mischief, "objectivity". Thinking is consequential.
Is this a problem, referring to thinking as feeling? It's certainly unclear language, it's flaccid and passive, a bit pretentious, and it's not accurate (you're usually describing a thought). "Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell comes to mind. I wonder what he would think?
Replacing thinking with feeling reflects, I think, an obsession with getting out of our heads, clearing our intellectual chatter and getting in touch with our sensitive sides. As a generation, we're cynical about thinking, and suspicious of thought; it is devalued as something inhuman and cold, misleading and unpredictable, sometimes violent, manipulative and dominating.
I think that saying you "feel" something also shuts the door to conversation-- as if, if I choose to challenge your opinions, I could somehow hurt your feelings. Feelings are also rooted, grounded, sensed, and can't really be challenged in the same way that thought can. Sure, you can debate a "feeling" with someone, but something just won't sit well at the end of the conversation.
In journalism, there is the obsession with objectivity as an ideal. We are supposed to divine out truth by reading between the lines of two different opposing viewpoints, or thoughts. More often than not, though, I don't think this works. Serious conversations become dichotomous and manic-- see the quote above, from the Talking Heads-- and the discussion is effectively lost in the details.
I sometimes choose thoughts, opinions, facts that fit the stories I have about myself. It's a great feeling to share thoughts on facebook when it's something that really represents me well as an intelligent, thoughtful and sensitive person. What I share reinforces my identity and the associated values. I suspect there are endorphins/hormones involved, it feels so good!
Maybe we're just naming it well, since gut and personality have so much more to do with how we choose and compose our public thoughts than thinking does?
I'm reminded of a quote by Eduardo Galeano that I like:
"Why does one write, if not to put one’s pieces together? From the moment we enter school or church, education chops us into pieces: it teaches us to divorce soul from body and mind from heart. The fishermen of the Colombian Coast must be learned doctors of ethics and morality, for they invented the word sentipensante, feeling-thinking, to define language that speaks the truth." - from The Book of Embraces
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