What’s the most irrational thing you do?
I’ll admit to one: using tarot cards.
Sound ridiculous? Hear me out.
Tarot cards have a robust symbolic/archetypical language. Its vocabulary is sufficiently comprehensive to cover situations and outcomes. Its grammar and syntax include enough structures to cover various modalities of sequence, causality, and possibility. Its ambiguity operates in its favor. You simply have to know how it works.
Let’s say I’m stuck on a particular question. Tarot cards can prompt me to consider aspects of that question through various lenses because they include symbols that evoke various concepts such as balance, decisiveness, conflict, transformation, etc. I don’t use them to make decisions, I don’t believe they predict the future. But I do see them as tools to break out of circular thinking. E.g., what would it look like if I reimagined a moment in one way? What would it look like if I considered a positive or negative outcome in another?
I Ching would serve the same purpose if I knew enough about it. Or Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies deck. Or many others I haven’t heard of before.
My real point is there’s always an irrational underlayer to human decision making. Might as well take advantage of it and maximize its benefits.
