Are you rational?

 I remember my unwillingness to accept the Time Consistency Constraint when I was an economics student. Why should I think and feel differently about a situation some time in the future when I have made up my mind now? It’s not that I am addict who violates his commitment to stay off the junk again and again, or am I?

 

The reason for the time consistency constraint is plain enough. We are a bundle of memories, emotions, inner conflicts and trigger points. We are just not willing to admit it to ourselves hidden by a veneer of rationality and civility. The enlightenment age in the 17th century and the birth of psychology in the 19th century was supposed to help us with that, but are we really any more rational today than before?

 

The inner conflict that cannot be resolved is that the individual that we perceive ourselves to be does not exist. Each and everyone of us is part of human conscious that is beyond the “me, myself and I” perception. We are the partner who screams at us, the colleague who wants to undermine us and the little girl who loves us no matter what we do. Spotting that Oneness allows us to leave the decision-maker behind.

 

As it turns out 40 years later I still have little appreciation for the time consistency constraint. Here and now Oneness acts and I just show up for the ride. I cannot be rational because what I once perceived to be the “me” doesn’t  exist.