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I think that's true. But we're at the tip of a large iceberg. In general people want to believe that they are in control of their emotions and choices, and that

I think that's true. But we're at the tip of a large iceberg. In general people want to believe that they are in control of their emotions and choices, and that they are rational. The more you learn about psychology and neurology the more you realize how much of a conceit that is. It changes your perspective dramatically. Read about Libet's experiments, sales techniques, anchoring, all that. Or meditate for a while and see what it does to your perception of yourself. We want to believe we're the bit of ourselves that tells ourselves what we are doing and what we will do, but we're all the rest of the wiring too and not a lot of that is fully under our control.

Strom 11y ago
A good example of no control is addiction. A person can do something that they're addictied to, while their rational brain is yelling "no! no! no!" at the same time, perhaps even vocalizing it, but you still perform the addictive action. The more clever individuals may overcome this by planning their defense way ahead, e.g. by completely changing their environment or using other tricks to manipulate their more automatic brain parts. However most people seem to need external help with overcoming addiction, even if they're aware of the problem and want to solve it.