ABSTRACT
Many of our prevailing cultural mindsets hinder our ability to deal with global challenges such as climate change, multiculturalism, and economic inequality, now compounded by a staggering pandemic. In particular, our belief that social order depends on dominance hierarchies blinds us to cooperative solutions to our big problems (Eisler, The Power of Partnership). The dominator ethic is in turn fed by the belief that emotion and reason are opposites and that reason is better than emotion. As a result, many of us unconsciously believe that one cannot think and feel at the same time.
Yet recent results in both neuroscience and experimental psychology suggest that emotion and cognition are not opposites but rather are deeply interdependent. Effective decision-making requires the inclusion of emotion, and effective empathy requires cognition. The next two chapters describe those results in more detail.
If we cannot overcome the belief that thinking and feeling are incompatible, we risk reacting to the stresses of technological and economic progress in ways that are harmful to democracy. Conversely, democracy is nurtured by the belief that reason, emotion, and intuition are equal partners within our minds and all necessary.
