To the editor:
I was educated to believe that we are all rational beings. Present me with information, and I can use it to make a rational decision.
Over the last 30 years, researchers have shown that the “rational man” theory of how we act is not complete. Behavioral economics has challenged our way of interpreting how people process economic information. Much of the time we don't make decisions rationally; rather, we make decisions emotionally and then use reason to back them up.
Politically and socially we now have the means to satisfy our emotional decision needs. With a quick Internet search we can find an article to match any conclusion we want to believe. The chosen article could be true or false; it does not matter. On Facebook, we might feel right at home agreeing with all the others who have a like mind.
We are becoming tribal, and that is not a good thing. Look at tribal societies around the world and tell me which one is succeeding as a nation.
Carl Jerris, El Cajon
Note from KBJ: The worst tribalists are progressives, many of whom (by all indications) read only the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and New York Review of Books, listen only to National Public Radio, and watch only PBS, MSNBC, CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS. In other words, they live in a progressive echo chamber. The conservatives I know are much more knowledgeable about ideologies other than their own, in part because they once adhered to other ideologies. I am a case in point, having been, at various times, a liberal, a libertarian, an anarchist, a feminist, an egalitarian, and a progressive. If all you know is progressivism, then you know very little indeed.
