" Why, then, tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison."
Hamlet.
Thinking. What we humans claim we do best, and, claim, is what sets the world in order.
It doesn't.
Rational means based on or in accordance with reason or logic. Our gods.
But a similar word is far nearer to reality:
Rationalize: attempt to explain or justify (one's own or another's behavior or attitude) with logical, plausible reasons, even if these are not true or appropriate.
What ever we wish to be true, we have the gift...should I say handicap....of being able to rationalize....seems to be set with reason and logic.
Seems to.
A great mistake is to believe that society benefits from the rational rather than the moral. Slavery, as an example .rational arguments can be made in its favor: profit, easier life, due to slavery, etc.
But no moral arguments favor it.
When we claim to organize society based on the rational....we run into trouble.
What does this preamble have to do with poverty?
No one is better at explaining the relationship between rationalization and poverty than doctor and psychiatrist, Theodore Dalrymple.
1. " It was in the prison (as psychiatrist) that I first realized I should listen carefully, not only to what people said, but to the way that they said it. I noticed, for example, that murderers who had stabbed someone always said of the fatal moment that the knife went in.
This was an interesting locution, because it implied that it was the knife that guided the hand rather than the hand that guided the knife.
a. It is clear that this locution serves to absolve the culprit, at least in his own mind, from his responsibility for his act. It also seeks to persuade the listener that the culprit is not really guilty, that something other than his decisions led to the death of the victim.
2. The human mind is a subtle instrument, and something more than straightforward lying was going on here. The culprit both believed what he was saying and knew perfectly well at the same time that it was nonsense.
[More common, and less subtle, the SODDI defense in criminal cases: 'some other dude did it.']
a. 'This is the excellent foppery of the world: that when we are sick in fortuneoften the surfeit of our own behaviourwe make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon,
and the stars, as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil
in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star!'
King Lear."
http://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/file/2014_05_06_Imprimis.pdf
'I couldn't help my misbehavior.....why blame me???'
Hamlet.
Thinking. What we humans claim we do best, and, claim, is what sets the world in order.
It doesn't.
Rational means based on or in accordance with reason or logic. Our gods.
But a similar word is far nearer to reality:
Rationalize: attempt to explain or justify (one's own or another's behavior or attitude) with logical, plausible reasons, even if these are not true or appropriate.
What ever we wish to be true, we have the gift...should I say handicap....of being able to rationalize....seems to be set with reason and logic.
Seems to.
A great mistake is to believe that society benefits from the rational rather than the moral. Slavery, as an example .rational arguments can be made in its favor: profit, easier life, due to slavery, etc.
But no moral arguments favor it.
When we claim to organize society based on the rational....we run into trouble.
What does this preamble have to do with poverty?
No one is better at explaining the relationship between rationalization and poverty than doctor and psychiatrist, Theodore Dalrymple.
1. " It was in the prison (as psychiatrist) that I first realized I should listen carefully, not only to what people said, but to the way that they said it. I noticed, for example, that murderers who had stabbed someone always said of the fatal moment that the knife went in.
This was an interesting locution, because it implied that it was the knife that guided the hand rather than the hand that guided the knife.
a. It is clear that this locution serves to absolve the culprit, at least in his own mind, from his responsibility for his act. It also seeks to persuade the listener that the culprit is not really guilty, that something other than his decisions led to the death of the victim.
2. The human mind is a subtle instrument, and something more than straightforward lying was going on here. The culprit both believed what he was saying and knew perfectly well at the same time that it was nonsense.
[More common, and less subtle, the SODDI defense in criminal cases: 'some other dude did it.']
a. 'This is the excellent foppery of the world: that when we are sick in fortuneoften the surfeit of our own behaviourwe make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon,
and the stars, as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil
in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star!'
King Lear."
http://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/file/2014_05_06_Imprimis.pdf
'I couldn't help my misbehavior.....why blame me???'
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