I love it when different books by different authors on different topics come to a similar point - the different lines of evidence and the varying methods of arriving at that conclusion are compelling demonstrations of the validity of the point being made.

One of my fundamental disagreements with classic Stoic philosophy is what I perceive as an over-reliance on logic.  The Roman philosophers like Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus felt that the impulse of pure emotion and instinct could be overcome by applying the faculty of logic.  We humans have a unique ability to use our advanced intelligence, they argue, and apply logic to a situation.  While our first animal instinct may be to lash out at someone we feel has wronged us, we can apply logic to our situation and consider the consequences of our action, what we may have done to cause the other person to have committed their offense against us, and what alternative action might produce better results in the long run.       

Logic, the Stoics argue, is that divine gift that humans possess that makes us superior to the brute animals of nature, and we can utilize this gift of logic to arrive at an intelligent and productive solution to any situation we encounter.  All we have to do is be always willing to ruthlessly examine ourselves and our actions, and be ready to apply logic to any situation in which we find ourselves.

That sounds great, but it doesn't really hold up in modern times.  Behavioral psychologist and neurologists have confirmed what the Buddhists have been saying for millennia - that our subconscious mind makes most of our decisions for us without our even knowing it, and our conscious mind merely creates rationales and justifications for the actions we intended on doing anyway.  

For example, if Epictetus felt an urge to slap a centurion who had just rudely pushed him aside, he would stop, use logic to consider the outcome of his urge (the centurion would draw his sword and eviscerate him), consider how his own actions may have caused the boorish behavior (Epicteus hadn't moved aside when the centurion announced he was coming through, and thus did not acknowledge his authority), and then come up with a logical alternative to lashing out (e.g., simply decide not to take offense or to not consider it an affront to his pride, and move on as if nothing had ever happened).

But the real truth of the matter may have been that Epictetus was simply a coward, and that although his ego was hurt at being treated rudely by the centurion, he was afraid to take revenge.  His subconscious mind wished that nothing had ever happened in the first place, so he utilized his "logic" to devise a noble alibi for not avenging the centurion's action.   He felt he was using his superb and divine logic to select a reasonable course of action, but in reality, he was using his conscious mind to rationalize what his subconscious had already decided.

So anyway, that's my opinion on that aspect of Stoicism, and it's rooted in classic Buddhist philosophy, and the concept of mental models (samskara) and our capacity for self-delusion.  So I found it very refreshing to read Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind and his idea that the human mind is like a monkey riding an elephant.  The monkey (our conscious mind) thinks that it is steering the elephant (our subconscious mind) and telling it where to go, but in reality, the elephant goes wherever it damn well wants, and our conscious monkey is just hanging on for dear life and trying to come up with rationales and excuses for the actions of the elephant.  The specific point of the book is that some people are just naturally conservative and others are progressive by nature, and trying to use logic and argument to win a person over to the other side is like addressing the monkey instead of the elephant - no amount of logic, exposition, or argument is going to change anything, because the monkey's not really the one in charge.

This is why it's considered rude to discuss politics or religion, and ultimately so frustrating - no matter how well informed, well intentioned, and erudite your arguments are, the other person's elephant is charging off in its own desired direction and you're just making the monkey mad by revealing its powerlessness over the situation.

So that's Jonathan Haidt and The Righteous Mind validating what I've believed for some years now. Oh boy! Right again! More recently, I've been reading a book by zoologists Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson called Demonic Males.  Their basic premise is that the propensity toward violent action specific to males of the human species, as opposed to the generally more cooperative and less violent female, is shared by males of our closest relatives in the evolutionary tree - chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and even the beatific bonobos - but generally not by males of other species.  They examine the frankly depressing possibility that the human male's tendency toward domestic abuse, mass shootings, gang activity, and other violence is somehow hardwired into our DNA, and not a symptom as some have argued of an unhealthy, paternalistic society.  They consider if it's in our nature and not due to our nuture.

The authors are highly qualified field zoologists who, among other things, have participated in Jane Goodall's observations of chimpanzees in Gombe National Park in Tanzania, and are thus intimately familiar with chimpanzee behavior.  They've watched chimps behave cooperatively within well-defined troop societies, with recognized alpha-male leaders and complex but clear-cut hierarchies of succession and dominance. Chimps attempting to rise in dominance within the troop display highly intelligent behavior of well-timed strategic actions - it's not enough to merely challenge the alpha male and it's not enough how you challenge him, it must be done at the right time and with the right audience, and male chimpanzees obviously put a lot of thought and effort into orchestrating these right conditions in order to succeed. Right action, right time, right place.

As Wrangham and Peterson tell it, chimps have to envision the outcome of their actions, and then reason that Action A will result in Outcome 1 and Action B will result in Outcome 2, and then envision both outcomes and decide which is preferable.  Therefore, the authors assert, in highly intelligent apes, including but not limited to humans, emotion sits in the driver's seat, and reason (or calculation) paves the road.  The chimpanzee wants to be dominant, with the mating privileges and other benefits that entails, so its emotional elephant carries it in that direction.  Its "monkey" (the ape's conscious rider) is reduced to merely figuring out how to make it happen.  To be sure, humans can reason better, but we're also more capable of rationalization and self delusion. We tell ourselves that our conscious monkeys are in control, whereas in chimpanzees and gorillas the monkey mind is more obviously subservient to the elephant.

So that's the second validation of our skepticism of logic.  This time, zoologists observing the behavior of apes state that it's emotion, not logic, that's in the driver's seat, and that reason just facilitates what emotion desires.  This is very similar to Haidt's elephant-and-monkey metaphor, and not dissimilar to the Buddha's teachings to not mistake our mental models (samskara) with the reality they purport to represent.  Or as novelist John Barth would say, the story of our life is not our life, it is our story.

And to think I had thought that I could have explained this all in only three or four paragraphs, and I'm still not sure that I've explained myself clearly.