WHO DECIDES WHILE YOU IMAGINE YOU’RE THE ONE DECIDING?

There is a comfortable lie we tell ourselves every single day, a fiction so masterfully constructed that we rarely dare question it: the idea that someone is actually in charge. A pilot. A cohesive, deliberate self that analyzes, weighs options, and decides. We picture this “I” seated in a control cabin, evaluating choices, calculating consequences, rationally choosing the next move. It’s a soothing narrative. It is also a masterful illusion.
What actually happens is infinitely more complex and deeply unsettling: we are a confederation of processes that rarely speak to one another, an orchestration of invisible forces operating in deep layers long before any flicker of consciousness appears. And what we call a “decision” is, most of the time, nothing more than an elegant justification for something that was already settled in territories we have no access to. The pilot is not in command. He never was. He is merely the spokesperson for a council that never consulted him.
This discovery is not philosophical — it is structural. Neuroscience reveals something that destabilizes our self-image: feelings are the primary architects of our choices, shaping what we perceive, filtering what we deem relevant, directing attention before reason even wakes up to the game. They are not emotional interferences disrupting an otherwise pure rational process. They are the very foundation upon which reason builds its castles of logic. And here lies the silent scandal: we believe we think, when in reality we feel first — and then invent reasons to justify what was already decided in the shadows.
This explains why we persist in relationships we know are toxic, why we repeat patterns we swore we’d abandon, why we choose paths our own analysis warns against. It is not weakness. It is not lack of intelligence. It is architecture. The feelings have already formatted the decision before cognition had any chance to participate. And when reason finally wakes up, all it can do is craft a coherent narrative that hides the fact it arrived late to the meeting.
We call this cognitive blindness, but the term is imprecise. It is not a bug — it is the design. Feelings are not noise disrupting clarity; they are filters that determine what clarity is allowed to see. They decide which information deserves attention, which memories will be retrieved, which possibilities will be considered viable. Reason operates inside a field that has already been demarcated, believing itself free while walking trails drawn long before it arrived.
And there is an evolutionary reason for this. Feelings are fast. Feelings are ancient survival strategies that require no deliberation to act. While reason is still processing variables, the emotional system has already categorized the situation, triggered physiological responses, prepared the body to flee, fight, freeze, or approach. In contexts of immediate threat, that speed saved countless lives. But in complex, relational, organizational contexts, that same speed becomes a trap. We respond to threats that do not exist. We flee from imaginary risks. We cling to illusory safeties. All of this before reason has time to ask whether the response even makes sense.
The problem worsens because we do not perceive the operation. Feelings work in silence, without announcement, without fanfare. There is no warning saying: “Attention: your perception is now being shaped by fear, desire, nostalgia, or anger.” What we feel emerges as reality — not as interpretation, but as fact. And that is where the illusion of command becomes dangerous: we believe we are seeing things as they are, when in truth we are seeing things as our feelings have painted them. And we defend those perceptions tooth and nail, convinced they are the product of rational analysis, when they are, in fact, the product of invisible chemistry.
The fiction of the pilot endures because we need it. Living without the illusion of control is uncomfortable, almost unbearable. Admitting that we do not command our thoughts, that we do not choose our reactions, that we do not govern our decisions with the sovereignty we imagine — that destabilizes identity itself. We prefer to believe we are the conscious authors of every move, even when all evidence suggests otherwise. We prefer the narrative of cohesion to the truth of fragmentation.
But there is a cost to this fantasy. When we insist on believing we control everything, we suffer twice: first by the experience itself, then by the guilt of not having prevented it. We hold ourselves responsible for intrusive thoughts, automatic reactions, impulses that arrive uninvited. We create an impossible expectation of total self-regulation, and when we fail — because failure is inevitable — we interpret it as personal weakness, lack of discipline, moral insufficiency. The illusion of command generates guilt. And guilt reinforces the illusion in a cycle that never resolves.
Entire organizations operate under this same fiction. They expect employees to make purely rational decisions, as if feelings could be switched off at the entrance. They build cultures that prize “objectivity,” without realizing that objectivity is often just the mask hiding which feelings were allowed to operate. Fear of punishment. Desire for approval. Anxiety of exclusion. All these feelings shape corporate decisions every day, but because they are invisible, because they operate in layers we do not name, we pretend they do not exist. And so strategies are built on unrecognized emotions, and when they fail, we blame the analysis, never the emotional architecture that sustained it.
Relationships collapse under the weight of this illusion. We expect the other to control what cannot be controlled. We demand coherence where there is only an orchestration of disconnected forces. We take offense when the partner reacts in ways we deem “irrational,” without noticing that the rationality we demand is as fictional as the one we pretend to have. And when the relationship ends, we construct narratives of blame — toward the other, toward ourselves, toward circumstances — without ever questioning whether the very expectation of command was doomed from the start.
The disturbing question is: what happens when we stop pretending? When we abandon the fantasy that there is a pilot in command? When we accept that we are, in truth, a confluence of processes that emerge, collide, and negotiate without a central conductor orchestrating the symphony? The immediate answer is: chaos. The feeling that everything will collapse, that without the illusion of control no structure is possible. But that is only the first layer — fear speaking.
The deeper truth is that accepting the absence of the pilot is not surrender; it is lucidity. It is recognizing that absolute control never existed, and that trying to sustain it wastes energy that could be redirected toward something far more useful: observing, understanding, and working with the architecture that actually exists instead of fighting it in the name of a fiction.
When we acknowledge that feelings operate before reason, we do not fight them — we learn to map them. We begin to notice the signals before they turn into irreversible decisions. We detect when fear is shaping perception, when desire is distorting analysis, when anger is steering the response. And with that awareness we gain something the fictional pilot never had: margin of maneuver. Not total control, but room to choose differently. Not absolute sovereignty, but the possibility of not being completely dominated by forces operating in the dark.
This changes everything. In organizations, it means stopping the pretense that decisions are purely technical and starting to acknowledge the emotional layers that sustain them. It means creating spaces where feelings can be named, where vulnerability is not weakness, where saying “I don’t know why I reacted that way” is the beginning of an honest investigation rather than the end of a career. It means building cultures that work with real human architecture, not with the idealized version that never existed.
In relationships, it means abandoning the impossible demand for coherence and accepting that the other — just like you — is inhabited by multiple forces. It means learning to dialogue with those forces instead of demanding that one single voice prevail. It means building intimacy not on the certainty that the other will behave predictably, but on the trust that both of you can navigate together the unpredictability that constitutes you.
And on the individual level, it means something even more radical: stop blaming yourself for not being the perfect pilot it was never possible to be. It means recognizing that intrusive thoughts, automatic reactions, inconvenient impulses — all of this is part of the architecture, not moral failure. It means developing compassion for yourself not because you are weak, but because you are human. And humans do not have pilots. They have processes. They have feelings operating in invisible layers. They have a reason that always arrives a little late, trying to make sense of what was already decided.
Freedom does not lie in completely mastering these processes. It lies in recognizing them, learning to dance with them, stopping the fight against your own nature in the name of a fiction of control. The pilot never existed. But you — this complex coalition of forces, this imperfect orchestration — you have always been here. And maybe it’s time to stop pretending to be anything else.
And here something radical emerges: when you abandon the illusion of command, you gain access to something that was never possible while you pretended to be the pilot — you can, finally, talk to yourself. Not in the sense of an internal monologue where one voice dominates and the other obeys, but a real dialogue, a relationship where “I” and “myself” become interlocutors rather than adversaries. A conversation where both have voice, where no one needs to win, where exploration replaces control.
This requires relearning something we have forgotten: how to establish an inner friendship. How to treat yourself not as a map to be conquered, but as a companion to be understood. And that friendship is not built with answers — it is built with questions. Not questions that seek final verdicts, but relational questions that open space instead of closing it. Questions like: “What is asking for attention right now?” instead of “Why am I like this?” Questions like: “What is this reaction trying to protect me from?” instead of “Why can’t I control myself?” Questions that invite exploration, not judgment.
Because the best version of yourself — that worn-out expression hijacked by performance culture — does not emerge from domination. It emerges from the honest conversation among the forces that inhabit you. It emerges when you stop demanding forced coherence and start asking: “How can we navigate this together?” It emerges when the inner dialogue stops being a courtroom and becomes a council where every voice deserves to be heard, even the inconvenient ones, even the ones you would rather silence.
This is the turning point the illusion of command never allowed: the possibility of becoming your own ally. Because as long as you believe you must control, you are in permanent inner war — watching, repressing, correcting, punishing. But when you recognize there is no pilot, only processes in constant negotiation, the war can end. And in its place, something unexpected: collaboration. You stop fighting yourself and start working with the architecture that actually exists.
This is not self-indulgence. It is not permissiveness disguised as self-compassion. It is strategic lucidity. It is recognizing that the energy spent pretending absolute control is wasted energy. And that redirecting that energy toward building an inner dialogical relationship — where you ask relational questions, explore instead of condemn, and learn to map the forces operating within you — is what truly enables transformation. Not forced transformation that promises an “upgraded” version through brutal discipline. But organic transformation that arises when you stop fighting yourself and start asking, with genuine curiosity: “What is happening here? What is this trying to tell me?”
Because when you abandon the illusion of command, something strange happens: you do not lose control. You gain presence. You stop wasting energy pretending to govern the ungovernable and start investing in something far more real: inhabiting experience exactly as it is. And in that movement — without a pilot, without any fiction of total cohesion — you finally find something the illusion could never offer: the possibility of being whole in your fragmentation. Not because you forced unity, but because you learned to converse with the multiplicity that has always been you.

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