MY GUT FEELING SAYS...

"But in reality, intuition is the condensation of vast prior analytic experience; it is analysis compressed and crystallized...It is the product of analytic processes being condensed to such a degree that its internal structure may elude even the person benefitting from it...The intuitive decision-making of an expert bypasses orderly, logical steps precisely because it's a condensation of such orderly logical steps in the past."

- Herbert Simon,
The Wisdom Paradox



You decide to buy the ticket and get on the plane. Or not. That little feeling in your stomach that is half-way between a claw and a caress tells you to avoid stepping on the boat, so you do, and the boat sinks. The stranger in line beside you at the movies cautiously asks you for a drink, and you agree, equally cautiously, and you end up getting married. (Then divorced.)

All because of non-rational, non-linear thought processes that we call 'intuition'. (Doctors may call it 'indigestion'.)

Is it as mysterious and cosmically cool as we like to think, though? Or is there a more intellectual, analytic process at work, one that is decidedly more rational but exceedingly less exhilarating.

Apparently Herbert Simon, author of the excerpt from his book, um, excerpted above, thinks so. Intuition, he seems to argue, is nothing more than the repository of experience; intuition is nothing more than a neurological short-cut to the proper choice in any given situation, based on the accumulated wisdom we have made from other decisions we have made in the past.

Hmmmm...

Sounds logical.

But what about when we encounter an experience that we haven't had much experience in, uh, experiencing?

I decided to come to Cambodia, in large part, because I had gone to Japan. I made the decision in Japan, flying here directly from there. I thought about the pros and the cons, the long-term consequences and the short term consequences, the interesting points and the potentially dangerous points. (Via a technique learned from Edward DeBono -- a simple one, but remarkably effective.) So it was somewhat analytical, yes, but I still followed my gut. (Which was much bigger then, my gut, but I don't think weight actually influences the intuitional process.)

But coming to Japan for the first time was a pure 'intuition' decision. I had no experience in much of anything at age 23; I just thought about it and thought about it and thought about it, and the little voice in my head and my stomach said: Ah, fuck it -- just go and see what happens. I didn't rely on past experiences travelling overseas, 'cause I hadn't been overseas; I didn't compare the working possibilities to other high-level jobs I had, 'cause I hadn't had any other high-level jobs. I just went because I felt it was the thing to do.

So the adult and analytical side of me agrees with Simon's article in principle; many of the decisions we make come from remembrances of things past, and evaluation how those memories compare with the choices in front of us in the here and the now.

But the irrational side of me, the eleven-year old side of me that refused to ever watch Star Trek: The Next Generation because it would be a betrayal of Captain Kirk and his crew, finds all this analytical mumbo-jumbo distasteful. (A vow I kept, although I did see a few of the movies featuring Picard and his gang.) There's so much about the brain that we don't know, so many alleyways and caverns within our gray matter that still await exposure. I would like to think that there are mystical underpinnings at work; that intuition serves as a shortcut to some spiritual force in the universe that does not guide our progress, no, but hints at what is karmically best and proper and true for our journey through (what we call) life.

That's just my gut feeling, anyway.

ZOMBIES -- GOTTA LOVE 'EM (OR ELSE)

Last night on TV I caught the first few minutes of the remake of Night Of The Living Dead that came out in the early nineties. (The reason for the remake, I think, was that the writer-director of the original flick, George Romero, was shut out of the considerable profits that resulted from its success, and he, naturally, wanted a bit of financial payback that was long overdue; he was a writer and producer of the new version, which Tom Savini, special-effects grand goremeister, directed.) I hadn't seen the flick in probably eleven, twelve years, and so I was a little surprised to find myself more than a little freaked out by the opening cemetary scene, complete with lurching zombies and a screaming woman and ominous music that sounded, well, ominous. (I remember watching the original version and the new version back to back in my bedroom in St.Catharines with my friend Mike, both of us trying to stay up all night one New Year's Eve back in early high school, and back-to-back zombie flicks seemed like the way to sustain our sleepy selves. Haven't thought about that night in a long time. That was many years ago.)

Zombies are scary. I don't know why. I think it's because there's just something fundamentally wrong with them. Dead bodies dressed in suits are not supposed to shamble around among us. And they're so relentless, zombies are; they shuffle and poke their way forward, never getting deterred, never getting discouraged. They come, slowly, and they will keep coming, undaunted, until they eat you, and kill you. Simple. Primal. Almost unapologetically, ghoulishly pure.

I haven't seen any of the new zombie movies that have popped up over the last few years -- the recent remake of Romero's Dawn of the Dead, or 28 Days Later -- but there's a reason why they keep coming back. (The movies, that is -- not the zombies. I'm sure they have their own reasons, the zombies, but I know not what they are...)

Horror is all about metaphor, and zombies are a perfect, twisted metaphor for who we (sometimes) are and what we (potentially) could become: mindless, shambling shells of our former selves. Romero's original Dawn of the Dead was set in a shopping mall and was a savage indictment of consumption and excess; he has a new zombie film set to premiere sometime this year called Land of the Dead, and I imagine he'll take some more incisive shots at what western society has (d)evolved into.

The one downside about zombie films is that they are, by their vary nature, awfully repetitive, derivative and one-dimensional. There's not much that zombies can actually do; you have to have a pretty clever story, with intriguing characters, as well as appropriately spooky music and visual flair to offset and somehow accentuate the gloomy monotony of zombies shuffling through graveyards and parking lots.

Still, they're an acquired taste, zombie movies are. (As are zombies themselves.) Not everyone's cup of tea. If done poorly, these flicks are atrocious to sit through and easy to forget. If done well...

You may find yourself looking over your shoulder every now and then as you leisurely wander through your local park on warm, spring afternoon, as dusk paints the sky its patented brand of purple. You may glance nervously at the lingering shadows that start to form between the bushes, behind the shrubs. You may start to slowly tremble when you hear behind you footsteps that softly pad their way across the grassy field. Towards you. And you alone.