Who is Driving the Bus?

When you ask someone why they made a certain decision, they will explain their rationale.

That is, their sense of who they are, their consciousness, will explain how a conclusion was reached. It’s like, “I am Billie-boy, and here’s how I reached my answer.”

But I offer that Billie-boy’s consciousness, or his sense of self, didn’t have any role in the process. He uses rationality retrospectively. He explains why his answer was rational after having it simply pop into his head.

For example, please think of a decision you made recently. A simple one will do.

Here’s mine. I just sent a guy an email.

If you ask me why, I’ll explain the nuanced politic behind my decision. It will sound very rational. But, in truth, the idea of sending the email came to me somewhat out of the blue. In fact, maybe I wondered, for a moment, “What should I do?” But I didn’t get the idea through any conscious, rational thought process; it just came to me. I have no idea how it came to me.

This is not to say the things that pop up aren’t reached through some rational process. It’s just to say that it’s not our conscious mind that goes through the rational thinking process; our decisions come from someplace deep inside—skilled, practiced, well-embedded, perhaps; but our conscious mind doesn’t actually have the bandwidth to produce, or follow the process of generating, the thought with the speed we typically require.

Our sense that our consciousness is the one in charge of us is a bit of an illusion. In fact, ample research (google: “Libet” to get started) has shown that there’s about half a second delay between when our unconscious mind decides stuff and our conscious mind is aware of it.

Next time you’re asked about something, catch yourself sitting there, pausing, while you wait for the answer to be delivered to your conscious awareness. YOU didn't do it. Your other, hidden you, did.