Kahneman’s System
Fast and Slow
In Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, he mainly argues the two systems that our mind uses; the first system is said to be instinctive, emotional and fast. On the other hand, the second system is slower, more deliberative, and logical. Knowing the two systems Kahneman argues, shaped my understanding of my own mental cognition. In my previous journals, I mentioned my personal battle and clinical diagnosis of anxiety and major depressive disorder. There are days when I think of death more passively and days I think of it more strongly. I am now able to register that as an adolescent, now in my 20s, I suffered from emotional addictions, partly because I am a highly sensitive person and many other factors affected me. I became impulsive, had binge-smoked cigarettes at times, starving myself to eating everything, I embarrassed myself multiple times when I lacked control of my drinking, and I hold this strong desire to try out reckless things hence, system 1. My emotional excessiveness shows itself in system 1, I sometimes can’t control my actions, decisions, thinking, I need to do things quickly and on a whim. On the other hand, there are days I think more clearly, rationally, and able to do more practical work done, hence, system 2. Reading Kahneman’s book helped me understand my impulsive nature. I for one, at times associate myself as irrational and reckless but I can also see myself as deliberate and quiet. The two systems proposed in the book showed the two sides of my character; System 1 shows the intuitive, emotional aspect of the mind which I think I associated mostly with as an adolescent, I lacked self-control and I made decisions on a whim. Only later when I began to understand myself, I learned to distinguish System 1 and System 2 in my thinking. System 2 showed me that I can be deliberate, I showed more impulse control and I am more intentional in my decisions.
Sometimes, I still struggle with organizing the two systems of my mind, but it really helps to distinguish the two aspects of the mind through disciplining myself. I find that walking really aids my state of consciousness and flow. I am calmer when I walk or write, and most of my best decisions and understanding of myself were made when I considered them during my walks and writing. Kahneman argues the idea of “flow” in his book, which essentially distinguished concentration on the specific task, and the instinctive control of personal attention as the two main forms of attention. Kahneman pays an homage to Hume’s law of causation wherein he applies the mind and its association of ideas and how ideas are simply habitual repetitions of consciousness. Hume’s idea of association is applied in Kahneman’s use of associative memory, in system 1, wherein I made most of my worst decisions, shaped by a constant and repetitive narrative I made of myself that I believed. I constructed the idea that I am a terrible person, I am not good, and it is from that belief that I acted on it, but challenging my thoughts really helped me understand these habitual beliefs. The image I made of myself is shaped by the faulty narrative of how I associate myself in my mind, which constantly brought me down. Kahneman argues that in our moods, or intuition, when we are happier, or in a better mood we lose control of system 2 which is more analytical, judgmental, and logical.
I lacked awareness of system 2 in terms of my thinking in my adolescence, but gaining consciousness of it, it brought me to a more structured and rational thinking in making my decisions. The association of more rigorous thoughts in system 2 portrays which system I mostly associated myself with in my adolescence which was system 1, I became extremely impulsive and irrational. Learning about system 2 increased my ability to judge and understand logic that allowed me to make better decisions in the long run. The times I apply system 1 in my life, when I am more creative, free, spontaneous, but I make more logical errors. I can not always trust my instinctive judgments from system 1, since it is not always reliable and purely emotional.
Learning about Kahneman’s two systems can be really helpful for me as I work through my mental illness, I understand more my intuitions, my emotional impulses, and it is best that I balance two of those systems together. It is better to balance the two systems of my mind in the work that I do, in terms of my writing, system 1 would allow me to be more expressive, and creative, but system 2 would allow me to recognize the logical errors I made. Future decisions I would also make in the future it would also be crucial to use system 1 and system 2 to make better judgements.
