Abstract: There really is a powerful 'emotion' that comes from the stomach...
Regular readers of this column will know that I have been afflicted with a most colourful malady - I tend to become infected with words and phrases. I doubt if there's a cure for it, and the last time I visited my doctor he literally threw the book at me - it was a rather large copy of the Oxford English Dictionary. Leaving his office, with said book bouncing off the back of my head, I heard him shout, "Come back to me when you have something more worrying than a dose of visceral morality!"
This 'visceral morality' thing had been bugging me for a while. Whereas some words and phrases are like burrs and hook themselves to my conscience during my daily stroll through life; others are like lint, coalescing near
When ‘gut feel’ goes big
Whip out your moral muscle!
Abstract: There's a 'muscle' in your body that could make you healthier...and wealthier...
What's long and hard and brings a smile to the face of many a woman? You're right: it's the decision of whether or not to have another piece of chocolate cake; and if decades of research are anything to go by, it's what makes us successful in life. No, not the chocolate cake...the other thing.
If there's something that separates us humans from our fellow animals, it's the capacity for higher thought. A wild animal never really ponders whether or not to eat something. It never struggles with the greater philosophical question surrounding the morality of consuming another living thing. It just chomps it.
There are of course many examples in the animal kingdom where food, instead of being eaten immediately, is stored for later, or transported to a mate or offspring;