Background:

To the question, “How do we make decisions in life?”, most people would likely respond with the outlook prevalent in the news media – that we are rational beings and use our human reason to make sensible life decisions.  They might also say that human reason brings us all the comforts and luxuries we enjoy in 2024, that it is gradually building an ever-improving society, with the ultimate goal of a utopia where everything will be perfect.

I recently read that’s the outlook which George Orwell, author of Animal Farm, and Nineteen Eighty-Four, initially shared; but unlike most idealists who seek to impose their fanciful views on others, he examined life at close quarters; he took many menial jobs, he was wounded while fighting in civil war Spain, and was lucky to escape the massacre of volunteer socialist fighters ordered by Stalin.  On returning to England, he found it difficult to publish his experiences, as the “progressive” media preferred theoretical imagining over any truth based on actual experience.  Orwell came to recognize the failure of utopianism due to the fundamental irrationality of human behaviour.

Of course, human reason is very important in our lives, it’s essential in analysing these very thoughts.  But for decisions like where you want to live, choosing your partner in life, how you want to spend the hours of each day – there are many other factors involved, including your hopes, dreams, and innermost longings, your emotional attachments to people; and your dislikes, what repels you.

Life decisions need much more than human logic.  It’s about what drives us to scale mountains for the sake of it, what gives meaning, motivation, desire, and love.

Question:

Given that we are complex beings, where is the experience, the emotional mindset, and the wisdom and understanding, we need to make irrevocable decisions in life?