They are both important.
But in a world where the head dominates, and the heart yearns to be felt because it is silenced by the human’s perceived inferiority, have we limited ourselves to understanding each other through the categorical and diminishing nature of “facts,” which include rules, expectations, zero-sum thinking (only one person can be right), statistical data, and expert opinion? Don’t we value the intelligence that comes from insight? Had we lost the ability to wonder, inquire, and dialogue to better understand what we think, what we believe, and what we experience to be true… to its own end?
On this note, I am a non-fiction reader. The many fictional books that I’ve read were either assigned to me at school or read with my children. I enjoyed 98% of them. On my own, I’m challenged to read fiction. I’ll tell you why later.
In response to someone who reads a lot of fictional literature, the 3rd person at our table proclaimed that they only read non-fiction. Intended or not, I caught the undertone of superiority in the non-fiction reader, and I wondered to myself, do I sound like that? Then I self replied, how could I not?
The 4th person at our table who is a scientist, stepped in to say that while there is merit in fact, it’s in the creative, literary study that we cultivate understanding of the human condition.
Both the reader of literary fiction and the scientist that argued the value of it are my children. My mom hammered in me that fiction was a waste of time and that I should always be reading non-fiction. While I disagreed with her, I obviously, at some point, succumbed to making the reading choices she wanted for me. I was in complete awe and wonder as this conversation ensued between my children and the non-fiction reader.
Which makes me wonder, if we began to worship the heart source as much, if not dare a little more than, the Wiki- or Google-source, would we begin to have greater capacity to see the economics behind treating each other through the lens of human dignity and trust in the human spirit over logic and statistical data (which, too, I recognize, come from this amazing brain of ours)? Would this experiment be more dangerous than the zero-sum experiment we have been undertaking? Do we think that more fact-checking (or more like fact-slinging) will make us more intelligent than more listening and transcribing from the heart?
Maybe that’s why our policies don’t account for humanity. By that I mean human dignity. It doesn’t account for the immeasurable accounting that the human spirit produces when inspired.
That proverb: all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy…
it now comes to me with a new thought: Work is head. Play is wonder. Dull is, according to the Oxford dictionary (paraphrased), lacking brightness, which I might translate as Wisdom, or Infinite Intelligence.
Without the heart, the wonder, the consideration of human spirit, we find ourselves deep in the Seven Dangers of Human Virtue, per Ghandi:
- Wealth without work
- Pleasure without conscience
- Knowledge without character
- Business without ethics
- Science without humanity
- Religion without sacrifice
- Politics without principle
Savitree Kaur 