Rationality is not all it’s cracked up to be. I see too many people trying to be rational all the time–under every circumstance, with every person, any time of the day. We are a culture of rationalists–we were ever since the Greeks discovered the power of reason to arrive at “truth”. It is embedded in our culture as much as religion, political ideology, and ethics, but it is just as much a prejudice and just as skewing of our outlook on reality and human nature.
I believe there is always a place for things like rationality, ethics, religion, etc. in human life, but it is a mistake to think one or another of these should always dominate everything we do and think, and that everything else in our lives (emotional thinking in opposition to rationality, selfishness in opposition to ethics, science in opposition to religion) should take its orders from that one dominant standard. I think this is true for rationality as much as for anything else.
Rationality has its place. I would be concerned, to say the least, if I knew that the engineers who designed my car weren’t thinking rationally when they built it. The lives of consumers depend on the engineers of technology to think rationally when building the products they distribute and sell. But there are other areas where I think rational thinking actually works as a disadvantage. For example, dealing with politicians, lawyers, and salesmen. I’m probably stereotyping here, but we all know the type: the sleaze ball manipulator who’s good with people only because he exploits their willingness to listen to reason and try to respond rationally (think of Animal Farm: the pigs who con the other animals into letting them horde all the apples–as the leaders of the farm, they need to do all the thinking for the others, and therefore need the apples because they are good for the brain). We see it in advertizements all the time; I saw one the other day: “Did you know that your child seat has an expiration date?” It does!!! Well, then as a rational parent, the right thing for me to do is go out and buy new child seats for my children. A rational parent would never put their kids’ lives at risk. So go out and make someone rich off my guilt.
But how do I know what an expiration date on a child seat really means? Couldn’t it be just like the expiration dates on food? Namely, that the producers simply aren’t willing to claim that the food will stay good past that date–yet we all know from experience that many of the feeds we eat do stay good well after that expiration date. How do we know that they don’t know it too–those producers–how do we know that they know that the food will be perfectly safe to eat even if they stamped the expiration date as twice the duration that they normally do? How do we know that the only reason they don’t do that is because they realize that the more frequently we throw the food out, the more frequently we’ll be buying replacements, filling the producers’ wallets just as frequently?
So what is an expiration date on a child seat anyway? At first glance, the thought of it seems silly on its face? Does the plastic material grow mold? Does it become soft and pliable such that it can no longer withstand high impacts? Or does it simply mean this: in all the studies that the engineers conducted to test the safety of these seats, the longest period of time they tested for was 2 years (let’s just say), and so they can only guarantee that the seat is safe for two years. But it’s not that after that two year period, the seat begins to degrade or become unsafe somehow, it’s just that they haven’t done the tests. So, of course, they have to put an expiration date on it. Or maybe it’s this: statistically speaking, after two years, there is some probability that your child seat will incur some damage–a crack, a broken spring, a defective buckle. But this is just statistically speaking. Maybe 1 out of 50 parents did something by accident to the child seat–maybe in moving it to a different vehicle–and so when they investigated all 50 child seats, they found some damage on that one, and therefore had to calculate in the statistics that, on average, the child seats they tested has such-and-such a probablity of being damaged after 2 years. But what the hell does that one damaged child seat have to do with mine? What is it about 2 years going by that puts my child seat at risk of being damaged? Hell, what does the 2 years have to do with the damaged noticed on that 1 child seat out of 50? What caused the damage was the parent’s own carelessness, not the 2 years that went buy. Such careless could happen the day after the parent buys the seat. It could happen 20 years later. If this is what they mean by an “expiration date”, it makes no sense.
But advertizers and marketers don’t care. They know that all they have to do is say “Look, parents, your child seat has an expiration date! Are you the type of parent who puts his children’s lives at risk? If you’re not, then the most rational thing to do is go out and buy a new child seat.” It’s a guilt trip–plane and simple. Yet, rationality serves as the bars behind which we stay imprisoned, by ourselves no less, in the manipulative hands of the con artists who exploit our commitment to rationality.
These con artists–that is what they are–know that a man who is devoted to thinking rationally is as manipulable as a computer is programmable. That is what programming a computer amounts to, after all–manipulation–and it is squarely on account of the fact that computers are the quintessential “rational thinkers” par excellence that we can so manipulate them. They were built to be slaves–mechanical robotic slave–and they were only successfully built to serve that purpose because we designed them to think strictly and exclusively with logic and mathematical rationality. If we had built them to arbitrarily decide to do whatever the hell they felt like–even if it was highly irrational–we would have no control over them.
Politicians, lawyers, and salesmen know this. They know that all they have to do to manipulate the people–like robots, like slaves–is (like pigs) to whip up something rational-sounding, something that is difficult to see any logical holes in, and the people, devoting themselves to being rational, will (like sheep) feel compelled to fall in line.
This is why I believe we shouldn’t always act rationally. Sometimes, I think, it’s okay to say “no” to a rationally sounding politician, or advertizement, or priest, or teacher, or professional, in favor of just doing whatever it is one feels like doing. Would it be the more rational decision to buy your product, support your political agenda, follow your professional advice, based on the reasons you supplied? Maybe. But I don’t feel like. Does that make me less rational? Perhaps. But I don’t give a fuck. It’s my life. It’s my choice. I am free, and I’m not about to surrender my freedom to you just because I can’t, right now, find the flaws in your reasoning. I have my–let’s call it–intuition–that’s right: a fuzzy, mysterious, not-well-understood feeling–I’m daring to think emotionally now–that tells me that you’re wrong, and that I do have a good enough reason to follow my own course of action–even if I can’t spell out that reason right now (what is intuition anyway but the brain drawing a conclusion without offering to consciousness the steps it used to get there?).
This is why sometimes, here at ILP, I will not be rational. If I sense that the person I’m having a discussion with merits my reason, I will be reasonable with them, but if I sense the person I’m having a discussion with is a troll–well, then being reasonable with him just makes me putty in his hands. That’s why being irrational with some people can actually help you “win” the argument.
So is rationality overrated? You bet! Should we throw it out all together. Of course not, you idiot! It has it’s place. Rationality is useful when used between people who are sincerely trying to cooperate together–those who intend to honor the implicit commitment they mutually share to arrive at a common goal–understanding, truth, problem solving, whatever it is–but it is a double edged sword: rationality can work against you when you’re up against those who wish to exploit your willingness to be rational for their own manipulative agendas. So use rationality at your own discretion–know when it will work to your advantage, but also when it will not. Find it’s place in your life, and never ever put it above yourself as the god that rules over your life and dominates everything you do and say.