Rationality Meets Status-seeking

Monday Map

Rationality meets status-seeking

Any thinker worth his salts knows this: rationality is a quality of knowledge not a quality of persons. Human beings are at their best, irrational, and fallible. If it were not so, we wouldn't even need anything like rationality as gods don't need tools and rationality is a tool we use to make sense of the world.

In last week's essay, I wrote that Achilles without the betraying heel is allowed to be as stupid as he wants. But this week, I am saying that an omniscient watcher has no need for discursive reasoning; logic itself is proof of our limitations.

Moving on, I have a bigger claim: rationality is a status symbol. There are two questions we should ask about this. The first question being is why it is so. If it is just a tool for arriving at a result, why then do we treat it better than we will treat farm tools like hoes and cutlasses? And the other question is about what happens to people who inflate the importance of this tool. If you have read Nietzsche, those questions are centuries old.

Beyond Good and Evil and The Birth of Tragedy was Nietzsche articulating his grouse with philosophers who try to wrap their gut feelings in philosophisticated terms and processes to pass them off as objectivity. And so, we answer the first question: rationality like a farm tool is used to arrive at an objective and robust result similar to a rich harvest. If the farmer with the best harvest receives prestige, the best rationalist will too. It is all about producing a rational result; has little to do with the rational process.

I have, after carefully observing some of the thinkers of the rationalist and empiricist tradition, concluded that rationalism is not a personal tool; it is a communal one. The communal quality of rationality - and knowledge if you may - is exactly why free speech, free inquiry, debates, criticism, and the marketplace of ideas are a priority. It is something you participate in as a spontaneous collective, not a solitary project. But as we begin to see personalization of rational knowledge, or as a quality of persons rather than the quality of knowledge, rationality itself becomes a tool – not for farming knowledge of the world – but for beating one's other over the head. Rationality then becomes tyrannical because two answers cannot be right. Meanwhile, it is the tyrannical individual that hides behind acquiring the correct opinion to shut others out who possess an ‘incorrect’ opinion. I believe the anger at this tyranny is what animates postmodernism.

The conflict starts when rationality meets status-seeking. We stop caring for the truth (if we cared in the first place). We now care to one-up one another as we need that edge and consequently, the prestige. 

Now, what happens to those who inflate the importance of rationality? Or let me rephrase? What happens to those ashamed of any itch of irrationality? Simple: they must lie to themselves. They must lie to themselves that they are objective. But they don't start there. They start by telling others that the other is the irrational one. As Mark Manson rightly said, "we have two excuses: the ones we tell others, and the ones we use to convince ourselves." (paraphrased). The lie gets so bad that we cannot enjoy something unpopular without either rationalising it to give it a rational appeal, or 'normalising' it so that we can bring others into the fold knowing that the more (participants), the better (we enjoy it), and the less guilt we feel.

I mean, you want to eat (and enjoy) at that expensive restaurant but you don't want to appear 'classist' (you know, for solidarity) so what do you do when you are 'caught'? Simple, talk about how hard it is to dismantle a social structure if you are on the outside so you are being an ally from the inside and your subsequent plan is to subvert it. But you actually love the cuisine and you are not dismantling anything anytime soon.

I have it on good record that rationalisations work best when we fail. The objectively good things require little explanation and instead receive much celebration. However, when we fall short we explain where things went wrong to temper the ensuing perception, reaction, accountability, and judgment. When a thing succeeds, we celebrate. When it fails, we reconcile. This is why rationalisations are fit for hypocrisy. Hypocrites are not free. Also, hypocrites are free.

Hypocrites who try to reconcile are not free. Hypocrites who accept that they are inconsistent at best and accept that they will remain inconsistent (because truly, we are condemned to such inconsistency) are free. Those who support their friends in spite of the inconsistencies in rationale are free. So let's talk sentimentalism.

For so long we have tried to fight our sentimental nature to an absolute zero. That, I believe, is one of the goals of people who personalize rational qualities of knowledge. But isn't sentimentalism what makes life colorful? That's why you love your kin and close circle closer to yourself than everyone else in the outer circle. I mean, we allocate our emotions based on sentiments as to where our skin is most invested; we cry with those who cry in our beloved circle and share in their joy as well. And mostly, we proved our love by deeds and our strength of character through time and action.

However, as things changed, and we started to prove our love and character by merely stating the correct opinions, we attempted to shove sentimentalism in the box of shame. Now, an opinion is a badge of objectivity, love, character, of everything that defines human relations. Mehn, that is misery.

Now, we cannot stand with our murderer friends in these trying times because the urban dictionary of our minds interprets "stand with" as "yes, I support everything that he did and he will do it again". Folks expect you to throw your husband under the bus to prove that you are objective and rational. People of the world, please be free.

Let’s return rationality to its rightful place as a communal tool for farming knowledge rather than as the personalised Coca-Cola bottle from the movie The Gods Must be Crazy. If you saw the movie, you know that the people went crazy over the bottle from the sky. People killed for and with it. The same has happened with rationality. But you, be liberated.

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Have More Conversations

So, philosophy begins with wonder. This spawns curiosity and everything that comes out of it. However, there is a ditch somewhere in all these which is the tendency to enjoy the depths of your wonder in solitude and derive your answers in solitude. That is a bad sign. And no, I do not antagonize solitary thinking. What you instead need to do is have more conversations. Others carry a sense of wonder too – even if they don’t know it. By having more conversations you tap into their well of wonder, straighten out your crooked views, and build a community.

Anyways, read the article in the link above for more.

Recency bias

The link in the title is to my latest podcast episode on recency bias. Enjoy.

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