The Elephant and the Rider
In The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt introduced the metaphor of an elephant a rider to describe the way the human brain works. The elephant is the emotional bits of your brain and the rider is the rational parts of the brain. The rational rider can come up with any plan they want but the elephant weighs six-tons and if it has other ideas then it wins.
The thing I haven't seen Haidt or anyone else mention is that the metaphor would be more accurate if it were an invisible elephant and the rider didn't know it was there. This is how most people live their lives. They go along pretending to be rational and to make rational decisions and when the elephant does something that rider, not knowing that the elephant exists, rationalizes why that was the best thing to do, or maybe they're just mystified by their own behavior. Either way the rider doesn't getting much use out of their rationality beyond making excuses for the elephant or feeling like idiots because “they” did something dumb.
This is the human condition. We go around pretending to be rational and pretending we're in control of…. something, when in fact we don't even control our own minds. Meditation is how you can see the truth in this.
- include or link to a super simple meditation outline
- talk about how noticing the thoughts is your evidence. Where did they come from? Where did they go? Where are “you” in there?
- probably leave out that last bit because then you end up in all identities are fictional or no self (AKA non-self. Or maybe you just link to that.
- what do you do now that you know? Train the elephant. This is specifically what meditation is about.
- Probably link that text to a page about what's meditation for or why meditate or something like that.
- mention that the elephant is also the Monkey Mind