Most courses, programmes etc. to assist people in distress, and to which, very often, angry or hurt people are referred, are rooted in the male, left brain, logical way of looking at problem solving. Generally, they don’t honour the female way of looking at the world, i.e. where rationality is often influenced by emotion, and which has a very important purpose in family life. Most of them are based on the CBT modality that we described earlier in the blog.
Often what’s on offer in such courses struggles to touch people emotionally, and that includes the staff delivering the programme. Many of them use manuals, flip-charts, videos etc., and involve homework. While being well-intentioned, these learning tools, which lean towards purely cognitive methods of problem solving and skill-learning, can often act as barriers, or inhibitors to emotional expression.
I joked about building a relationship with an engine here and again here, and hoping that it would fix itself. I will revisit this general theme briefly now.
A male way of looking at a problem might be ‘here’s a problem – let’s find a solution now, quickly, so the problem will not be stressing us out then and we’ll have an easier life’ – like a mechanic looking at an engine.
A female way might be ‘here’s a problem – let’s get emotional about it and that will not only assist us in working it out – it might assist us in getting to know each other too’.
This might not work that well with engines, but who is to say that the male, mechanistic way works well with humans? In the workplace, (which consists of a group of humans), almost always, logical rationality (the typical male way) trumps what I will call intuitive irrationality (the equally valid typical female way).
Reflecting on such questions in respect of society, if intuitive irrationality (right brain) had equal status with logic rationality (left brain), things might be done in a slower, and perhaps slightly more disorderly way – but, like in the good enough family, they’d still get done! Decisions might be made as much on the basis of intuition – the feelings we get about something – as logic. [1].
The world as we know it is very left brain – rational, and in almost all workplaces excitement, inspiration, creativity, spontaneity, impulsiveness are generally dampened down and discouraged.
Could a society be built where intuition has equal status to rationality?
Would female values be conducive to building a good enough society; and what would it look like? I wonder if the female value of intuition was of higher esteem in the world would there be wars?
I feel a bit of a fraud as a man arguing this – but my hunch is that the world would certainly look different to what it is now.
As someone [2] said once ‘we need unreasonable people to change the world’.
[1]. I remember well the anti-nuclear protests in Ireland in the late 1970’s. At the time I would have been in favour of use of nuclear power for electricity generation – as a technologist I did not see any problem with it. Logically, it could be proven to be safe. I tended to dismiss those who thought that it was dangerous just because it felt unsafe. Over the next few years there were major incidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the latter exploding, causing great death and destruction. These accidents, were, of course, put down to human error. They certainly influenced my opinions on how experts who have vested interests discount (and undermine) the fears of ordinary people.
[2]. I looked this up and there were so many references that I have no idea who came up it. If anyone knows please let me know……