The Rationality Trap

"You can make philosophical and evidence-based arguments for protecting our species and future generations. But sadly, human beings are not rational. It’s not that easy."
     BBC Article

The suggestion here is that if human beings were "rational" they would do what "is good for them."

But "rational" is merely the statement that an argument is correctly structured.  If that statement is correct, then the conclusion of the argument, based on its assumptions (the facts), will be correct.

But if the assumptions or "facts" are not correct or "true", then the conclusion of the argument, while correct, is not "true".
     All men are mortal,
     Aristotle is a man,
     Therefore, Aristotle is mortal.

Correct and "true".
But what if Aristotle is not a man; a statue, for example.
A statue cannot be considered mortal.

The conclusion is therefore "false".

Maybe the problem, then is not that people are not rational, but that the wrong argument is being used to reach the desired conclusion.

In addition, of course,  the desired conclusion is also in dispute.


"To foster longer-term thinking that goes against our psychological base instincts, there need to be approaches and arguments that inspire and engage the non-rational part of our brain too."
     Same BBC article

 Why would we want to go against out "base instincts"?  They are instincts. 

Is it an instinct to want offspring?  Is it an instinct to provide for those offspring?  Is it an instinct to do what improves the quality of one's life?  Is it an instict that the wealthier the family, the lower the birth rate? 

Perhaps the problem is that we refuse to work with our instincts, rather than work with them to achieve our ends.

The Weaponization of Racism

The label of "racism" or "racist" has been weaponized.

A weapon is meant to hurt.  The term "defensive weapon" is oxymoronic. 

A person gets defensive when threatened by a weapon.  A person gets defensive when called a "racist".

This is not to deny that there is such a thing as racism. 

Similarly, there is no denying that there is a thing called evolution.

These terms are similar in how they are misused, or misapplied.

It seems that many people believe that evolution applies to individuals.  Thus, early opponents of Darwin's theory criticized it by declaring that they did not descend from monkeys, implying that only a few degrees of relationship separated monkeys from humans, and therefore that humans, after only a few generations - or even after one generation -  evolved from monkeys; even, according to certain caricatures of Darwin, that they, the critics themselves, had once been monkeys.  The basic argument was that Darwin was suggesting that each person was once a monkey and has subsequently evolved into a human.

But individual humans do not evolve.  The group of humans, a species of primate, has differentiated itself from other groups of primates,   to one extent that members of different species cannot sexually reproduce with each other:  The group evolved, not individual members of that group.  What makes a group (or species) a group is that members share certain traits.  These traits, which all members of the group have in common, are what make each person a member of the group.  If a person somehow comes to no longer share the group's traits, then that means that that person is no longer a member of that group, which also means that he or she can no longer sexually reproduce.  Thus, that person's "evolution" ends before producing a second generation, making that person's "evolution" a meaningless event.

The point of the story is that "evolution" is not a terms usefully applied to individuals.  Evolution is a group phenomena.

Similarly, racism is a characteristic of a group. 

Also, this group is not simply a collection of people.  Rather, it is a society, a structures group, a collection of people who share certain rules, laws, cultural practices and expectations.  Racism, then is what is expressed by a society:  Its rules, expectations, practices which disadvantages one group of people within that society to the advantage of another group with that same society.  One person alone does not constitute a society; neither do two people unless they share a relationship. 

A society, then, is or is not racist.  People interact within a society.  One member of that society may have an advantage over the outcome of an interaction with another because of race.  Take that person out of that society, put them in a society where the rules and expectations and practices are different, then race will no longer play a role in the outcome of an interaction.

This does not mean that a person's feelings will not be hurt or that the outcome of an interaction will not be "fair", bad results will still occur, but if race is not a factor in interactions, then the issue is not racism.

A metaphor might be of two packs of dogs living in a penned-off area through which a river, their only water supply, flows.  The two packs are of the same species, but of different breeds - say long-hairs and short-hairs.  The short-hairs live up stream of a sewage plant outfall while the long-hairs live down stream of the plant.  The pen and the river is the racist society.  Since the two packs live in a constrained, penned-off, area of the river, each population only has limited space.  Like humans, the upstream dogs would prefer not to be crowded, and would thus prefer to keep the downstream dogs from migrating upstream above the sewage outfall that pollutes their water supply.

Human beings have built into them a feeling of dominance and hierarchy.
Human beings are social animals.
Human beings are creatures of habit.
Human being pass on and preserve behaviors through learning and habit.
The strength or relationships between human beings is a function of commonality, propinquity, familiarity, and dependency.  Family bonds are strong partly because a person's first experience is with family members.
Human beings will act to preserve themselves.
Human beings will act to preserve their group.

Ambiguous Words: Politically Correct, Racist, Sexist, Identity Politics

Some ambiguous words appear to describe something concrete or socially agreed-upon and at the same time be expressions of emotion - of hate, of pain, of rage, of frustration, of disdains.  The two state do not have to exist at the same time, but when they do, there is little hope for a meaningful or peaceful outcome. 

More importantly, terms like Politically Correct, Racist, Sexist, Identity Politics have clear and commonly understood definition, and are so emotionally charged that any formal definition is overwhelmed by the emotional content.  It is likely that one person, using one of these terms ten time in ten different situations, means ten different things.  If this is so, the how can two people, using the same word, but meaning different things, come to a real agreement.

For this reason, they are not only useless in discussions which try to reach mutual understanding, but rather tend to inflame emotions and destroy any attempt at mutuality.

Mutuality may not be the best word.  This is about trying to find common ground, where people can live in peace, both socially and within their own souls.  This latter is important, because just because we are not killing each other, can we truly say that there is peace, if in their hearts people are not at peace.

Identity Politics and the Basis of American Law

Identity politics is about labeling individuals as a member of a group.  This seems to be the theory in law which is the basis of a class action suit. 

But while a class action suit can proceed in court, members of the class labeled as participants of "identity politics" cannot bring suit.

On Being Unable to React to Meaningless Terms

Rutger Bergman said, in a Guardian interview, that Gallup polling suggests that "since the end of the 1990s, the vast majority of people in the US have wanted the rich to pay more taxes."  In other words, for a generation, have thought that tax rates on the rich should be "higher", but but nothing was done about it. 

Why is that?

Perhaps because having the rich pay more in taxes is a good idea in principle, people do not have a gut understanding of what it means, why it should be done or how it should be done.

What it means?

Why do people think that the rich deserve what they have?

One answer is that they "worked for it".

But in this context, "worked" is such a sleezy word because it could mean so many different things depending on one's own experience with work.  It means one thing to a person whose only experience with work has been hard manual labor, but something completely different to whose life has been spent manipulating laws and people.  To a person doing hard manual labor, work can mean inescapable physical pain and exhaustion, despair and frustration because there is no stopping, the dulling of one's senses to escape the pain, and the only triumph may come when the pain stops.  For the wealthy, it means playing a game of trying, with social skills, clever arguments, threats, to get other people to do your will, a process painful only in the process of having to learn these skills or development these arguments; and the reward is wealth, the fulfillment of one's schemes and dominance over other people.

The only equivalence between these two kinds of work is time.  For some work, like mindless labor, the reward comes only after the time has been spend doing it, while for other more "intellectual" work, the spending of the time can be a reward in itself.

One could make the argument, then, that one should be paid less for the latter kind of work than the former. 

If all work is necessary to support society, then the work that nobody wants to do should be paid more generously.

But this is complicated by how people understand the value of a particular job. The person who cleans sewers does so out of sight and generally out of mind, and if that job is never done, the result may not be perceived or understood for many years. 

Humans respond only to immediate situations and consequences unless trained to do otherwise.

People do not know how the rich came to be rich or how they keep their wealth.  They respond only to the trappings of wealth.

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Wealth comes from stealing just a little bit from many many people, so little that they don't notice.

The bank computer programmer who was taking only the fraction of pennies generated by interest, whose theft was invisible to the victims only because the fraction of a penny was not visible, was only caught when his bank balance became too large, and the bank realized that that money was theirs, not his. 

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It is also difficult for people to understand how they benefit from the common good, as the common good is so ubiquitous that it is taken for granted.

The more that the common good can be hidden, privatized, or individualized, better it is for the rich and the worse it is for society.