I think the recognition of the validity of "I don't know why I do it. I just do." is a pretty good innovation in social science. A recognition of some intrinsic and unexplainable motivation. Because verbal reason is hardly the largest nor the most important chunk of the brain's functions.
Some introspection and rationalization is good— sometimes necessary to break free of something that holds you back— but often unnecessary if it serves a good purpose that works well with the life you want to live and the world you live in. Finding out where that falls sometimes gets a bit tricky.
But in other words, you don't always need a reason. You just need to know what your values are to take advantage of them. Keeping them in mind helps contextualize surges of emotion, or decide the small steps on the way to the big destination. This is a pretty solid staple in modern psychology and counseling.
But that's for you to live because you feel it. It's your fuel. It's your motivation. It's something about how your brain works, and not a matter of humanity in general.
It's your fuel and not someone else's.
The power of your intrinsic motivation doesn't justify its truth or importance to other people. It's a lesson that even kids have to learn at a young age.
The function of how your mind works makes some aspects of the world more obvious and some less perceptible. Think of the specific artist who is immediately attracted to shapes and color of a thing, but not the aspects that relate to business or prestige.
You can train yourself to see more, but some aspects require more training than others, if you can, at all, catch up to someone else's equivalent, it's possible it's with some other set of perceptions your brain cobbles together to fulfill a similar purpose.
But... being obvious to you doesn't guarantee factuality or applicability. That's sort of the textbook definition of an unconscious bias. And it certainly doesn't mean you should make other people live according to it.
I caught some recommended articles yesterday from writers who were all "smart people are like this" or "not like this", or worse, stuff that boiled down to "everyone should be like me". It was the sort of stuff that anyone who's lived any sort of life in cooperation with people and not lived in some kind of extremely insular social bubble would know are just insane.
One was bad enough but it was one article after another. It pissed me off so badly, I had to unsubscribe to the email newsletter altogether.
It sort of goes in the opposite direction of the development of social science, and reeks of the deepest lack of self-awareness. And in the form of an article meant for other people to read, it was just repulsive.
Because it's stuff like this that form the myopia of many institutions like faith and religion, school and academia, and management of business and government.
