Irrational Man: A Short Guide for Communicating with Complex People. Rational person
INTRODUCTION
In the 90s, in an attempt to instill market behavior in the Russians, they were urged to abandon the use of summer cottages as subsidiary plots. A simple calculation showed that it is unprofitable for the urban population to spend time and effort on the own-hand cultivation of vegetables and fruits, it is much more profitable to spend this time on additional earnings, and buy everything in a store. Suburban subsidiary farming is unprofitable in terms of pure economic calculation. But most Russians do not stop it.
Dozens of similar examples can be given, both from real life and from experimental situations. People far from always perform economically significant actions as rational egoists.
Of course, the examples given have their own unconditional logic - inside a small team it is extremely unprofitable (and psychologically unpleasant) to be a competing egoist, no one will just have to do business with you, and a summer cottage, unprofitable for 20 years in a row, can literally save your life in a situation of food shortages and a sudden economic crisis. The adoption of such decisions is influenced not only by cold egoistic calculation, but also by emotions, cultural and moral attitudes, psychological characteristics of thinking. Moreover, if the mechanisms for making the most profitable decisions are widely studied, for example, in game theory, and the psychological specificity of thinking and the role of “irrational”, emotional components in this are seriously studied by psychology, the role of people's cultural and moral attitudes in economic actions, despite the obviousness the subject of equally serious study is not to this day.
CHAPTER 1. ECONOMIC MAN AND RATIONAL BEHAVIOR
1.1 Economic person
An amazing but indisputable fact: from the time of Adam Smith to this day, in most economic theories and mathematical models, despite their extreme complexity today, the extremely primitive “human model” known as Homo acts as the person making economic decisions Economicus.
Economus has four main qualities:
1. It operates in a competitive market, which implies a minimal relationship with other economic people. "Others" are competitors.
2. An economic person is rational in terms of decision-making mechanisms. He is capable of setting a goal, its consistent achievement, calculation of costs in choosing the means of such achievement.
3. The economic person has the completeness of information about the situation in which he operates.
4. The economic person is selfish, that is, he seeks to maximize his benefits.
It is these assumptions that lead to the fact that economic behavior is regarded as an area free from all that is “human”. As if they were doing business, playing the stock exchange, working and making purchases are not the same people who are motivated by very diverse motives - here is the desire to be safe, and vanity, and excitement, and the need for love and respect, and envy, and struggle for world peace - and some kind of abstract robots. And most importantly - as if in their actions these people are not at all guided by their ideas about what is good and what is bad.
You do not need to have any special knowledge to discern the obvious "attraction" of each item. People rarely act selfishly individually. Even the most cruel and cold-blooded person divides people into friends and foes, applying completely different rules to these groups. And any action "in the interests of the group" is already different from the pure competition of all with everyone. Point 2 on the rationality of all actions is refuted by the whole history of mankind, which is full of fatal miscalculations that cost the lives of millions of people. Even the most experienced military strategists and statesmen constantly make mistakes both in setting goals and in methods of achieving them. What can we say about ordinary people or average businessmen.
The argument about the completeness of information is generally the most odious. A person almost never owns the entirety of information about what is happening around. That is why the mechanisms of our psyche and thinking do not act like a computer, but are able to work in situations of high uncertainty using the so-called heuristic strategies. Far from always correct and logical, and not guaranteeing faultlessness, they nevertheless allow a person to draw conclusions, generalize and predict where any computer would save due to insufficient source data. And if we talk about the situation of awareness in purely economic situations - whether it is an exchange game or corporate intrigues, then the opportunities for access to information by large and ordinary players are simply incomparable, and access to "insider" information is therefore a key resource in these situations.
Maximizing personal gain is also not the only common strategy, not only among people, but also in wildlife. Although we are used to using the expression “like in the jungle” as a synonym for a ruthless struggle for survival, scientists have long known many examples when altruism strategies are used for this very survival of a pack or species by specific animals. There is no need to even turn to examples among higher animals, just look at any anthill. Genetics come to more and more interesting conclusions about the nature of the "altruism genes" that are responsible for animal collaboration strategies.
1.2 Theories of economic behavior
In order to better understand where all this modern "entertaining mechanics" came from in economic science instead of a holistic view of a person, one needs to take a closer look at when the first theories of economic behavior arose. From the 18th century, the ideas of progress and enlightenment began to win the minds of Europeans. Against the background of mysticism and superstition, the ideas of the triumph of the mind and materiality of the world, which can be studied to the end with a compass, microscope and test tube, are exciting and promising. Man is a complex mechanical device that can only feel and think. The soul is “a term without content that does not contain any idea and which a sound mind can use only to vest the part of our body that thinks,” writes the philosopher and physician Julien de Lametri, who immortalized the idea of \u200b\u200b“human machine” in the same name work of 1748. It is not fashionable to be an idealist, it is fashionable to consider a person as a creature led by natural instincts, a desire for profit and pleasure, and a fear of deprivation and affliction.
Equally rational and selfish are people in the writings of most theorists of economic thought of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Adam Smith, autonomous individuals are driven by two natural motives: self-interested interest and a penchant for exchange. At John Stuart Mill, people are led by a desire for wealth, and at the same time an aversion to work and an unwillingness to put off until tomorrow what can be consumed today. Jeremy Bentham considered a person capable of arithmetic to maximize happiness and wrote: “Nature placed a person under the control of two sovereign rulers: suffering and joy. They indicate what we should do today, and they determine what we will do tomorrow. As the measure of truth and lies and chains of cause and effect rest at their throne. " Leon Valras saw man as a maximizer of utility based on rational behavior. In the 20th century, the theory of games grew on the basis of these ideas - a branch of mathematics that studies optimal strategies in processes where several participants are fighting to realize their interests.
It should be noted that an understanding of the limited understanding of man in the economy as a mechanistic rational subject existed in the past. Even the classic John Mill nevertheless recognized the influence of national characteristics on the economic person and wrote that in the countries of continental Europe "people are content with lesser money profits, not so dear to them in comparison with their peace and their pleasure." In the writings of the representative of the German historical school of economic theory of the 19th century B. Hildebrandt, man "as a social being, is primarily a product of civilization and history. His needs, education and attitude to material values, as well as to people, never remain the same but, geographically and historically, they are constantly changing and developing together in all the education of mankind. " Thornstein Veblen believed that people in economic actions are not driven by rational calculation at all, but by the desire to improve social status, which is far from always rational and depends on the cultural and historical context. Veblen in a sense can be considered the ancestor of the current theories of prestigious consumption in marketing.
However, supporters of the "anthropocentric economy" have always remained in the minority, and the idea that the economy is a field in which the main motive of people and organizations is to maximize their profits, regardless of what kind of people and organizations what country they are in and what worldviews they share.
1.3 Rational economic behavior
Even if one does not refute abstract theories, then at least asking them many unpleasant questions became possible with the accumulation of experimental experience in psychology. The mechanisms described in game theory are far from always realized in real life situations.
First, the rational decision-making is greatly hindered by the very structure of the human psyche. So, back in the 60s, psychologists found evidence of the surprisingly powerful influence of situations on people's actions, the effect of "flies and elephants", where the fly is a rational motive and the reasons for the act or decision, and the elephant is a momentary situation. We are all familiar with this effect. In one of Conan Doyle’s stories about Sherlock Holmes, the great detective explains to Watson why he didn’t add to the list of suspects a lady who was obviously very nervous when answering his questions — she simply had a powdery nose. The most insignificant detail, said "by the arm", the intonation of the interlocutor, a sudden change in mood can often affect a person’s behavior, outweighing all rational and long-considered arguments. Explaining their actions, people often do not analyze at all, but try to find explanations that they and others will like, and even analyzing, tend to take into account precisely those arguments that confirm their initial position, they consider events with which they personally to be more likely met.
The amount of accumulated data on such “deviations” from “normality” eventually became impossible to overlook. The fly of irrelevant errors turned into an elephant - a simple man who could not be easily explained, and in 2002 the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to economist Daniel Kahneman for showing that "human decisions naturally deviate from the standard model." Kahneman wrote that "in the decision-making process, subjects ignore the most basic principles and rules underlying the theory of rational choice." Instead of calculating their benefits, people simply follow habits and traditions, ignoring probabilistic cranes, choose reliable tits in their hands, underestimate the possibility of a negative outcome in “familiar” situations (“professional mistake”), as a rule, they are ready to take risks only in order to avoid trouble , and not for winning.
You can recall the famous stories about reckless behavior of Russian merchants. Everyone knows the stories about the shocking enlightened Europeans of cigarette smoking from cigarettes. And here is another eloquent example of "irrationality" - the legend of how the Moscow Psychiatric Hospital No. 1 named after him was built. N. A. Alekseeva (known as the "Kanatchikova Dacha"). In 1894, fundraising for construction took place on the initiative of the mayor of Moscow N.A. Alekseeva. One of the wealthy merchants told Alekseev: "Bow to my feet at all, and I will give a million to the hospital." Alekseev bowed, and the hospital was built. And how many millions are spent today in order to amuse self-esteem, and not to rationally increase capital? It seems that just all the modern marketing technologies of a consumer society with its image products and prestigious consumption disprove the existence of Homo Economus. On the contrary, “human”, playing on irrational desires and aspirations, has become a key commodity in consumer markets.
1.4 Collective Interest
It is curious that even within the framework of the formal logical theory of games, one can refute the thesis of the rationality of selfish individualism.
One of the most famous in game theory is the Prisoners Dilemma. Figuratively, its essence can be described as follows: - the police catches two criminals, A and B, for a minor offense. There is reason to believe that in reality they are gang members guilty of more serious crimes, but there is no evidence. If one prisoner testifies against another, and he remains silent, then the first is released for helping the investigation, and the second receives a maximum term of imprisonment (10 years). If both are silent, they are sentenced to a minimum term of 6 months. If both testify against each other, they receive 2 years each. Each prisoner chooses to be silent or testify against the other. However, none of them knows exactly what the other will do. In this game, if a player cares only about himself, it is always more profitable to betray, but if the players have a common interest, then it is more profitable for them to cooperate.
A successful strategy in this game was considered “eye for eye” (tit-for-tat) - do not betray the first, but then always answer the opponent the same if he betrayed - betray, if he is “friends” - “be friends”. But it turned out that this is beneficial only when everyone plays for himself. Otherwise, the cooperation strategy presented in 2004 at the 20th anniversary of the repeat dilemma competition concluded by the team of the University of Southampton from England is more successful. It is based on the interaction between the programs in order to get the maximum score for one of them. The university put up 60 programs for the championship, which recognized each other by a number of actions in the first 5-10 moves, after which they began to "play the game" - one program always collaborated and the other betrayed, which gave maximum points to the traitor. If the program understood that the opponent was not Southampton, she would continue to betray him further to minimize the opponent’s result. As a result, the programs of the University of Southampton took first three places in the competition.
Thus, formal proof was obtained that, in the presence of collective interest, an integrated strategy based on competition and cooperation, as well as the principle of separation of “friend or foe”, has advantages, that is, cooperation with “friends” and competition with “foes” , compared to purely competitive strategies.
CONCLUSION
Why do these theories have any meaning for us? Does it really matter what ideas the leaders of the era of “machines and steam” shared, and what beautiful constructions mathematicians build, describing abstract competing players? Unfortunately, theorists are guilty of launching “viruses” of supposedly simple ideas into the ordinary consciousness of people. No need to read Adam Smith to know that "business is business." However, talking about the fact that only personal good is the way to the common good, the adherents of these theories forget that super goals can be achieved only as a result of cooperation and willingness to work not only for personal gain. You can’t fly into space, study the ocean and look for a cure for cancer based on only the immediate tasks of profit. Moreover, this is even harmful, as it can lead in the long run to economic shocks and changes in established markets.
Another sad consequence of such ideas is the atomization of society. Because it is possible to compete rationally and ruthlessly only with "strangers", because even criminals do not belong to "friends" like that. The “economic man” is all the more successful, the fewer around him those whom he looks at as people, and not at abstract competitors. Therefore, clanism and nepotism flourish here - albeit in such primitive forms, but still people prefer to be with someone. A small collective or group united by common interests is a serious obstacle to the ideas of universal competition, "the war of all against all."
But it is not only a matter of limited theories of economic man. The idea of \u200b\u200bextra-morality of economic activity, taking out of the brackets everything except profit and rational calculation, is much more dangerous than it seems at first glance. Hypocrisy, deceit and small betrayals that occur daily in large corporations, because, as you know, they earn money here, and do not do charity work. "Hackwork" instead of culture. Why are you so poor if you are so smart. Accustomed to this reality, it is easy to justify everything with some abstract rules of the market, where there is no room for reflection, what is good and what is bad.
True, history knows at least one example of where to go along this road. When in 1961, Hannah Arendt arrived in Jerusalem for the trial of the main Holocaust performer Adolf Eichmann, she was struck by the ordinariness and ordinaryness of this man and his arguments, subsequently calling her book about this "Banality of Evil." Unlike theory, in life indifferent decisions - because "it’s so accepted", "it’s just work" and "we are not like that - such a life" - lead not only to abstract personal gain, but to very real troubles. And treating other people simply as a means of “winning” is the main trouble of the entire modern economy.
"People can pursue their own interests without fear that this will harm society, not only because of the restrictions prescribed by law, but also because they themselves are products of restrictions arising from morality, religion, customs and upbringing." And this is not a quote from some utopian philosopher, but the words of the founder of a market economy - Adam Smith. His followers threw out such ideas about moral and educated entrepreneurs from their theories as unnecessary. As Milton Friedman stated briefly and clearly two centuries later, the firm's sole duty to society is to maximize profits. How in real life not enlightened entrepreneurs behave, but real "economics", Russians know firsthand. Moreover, in the market they are fighting among themselves in the struggle for consumer wallets, not only competing entrepreneurs are fighting among themselves. Here is a fresh example from this series. Workers at a locomotive depot in Moscow fought with traumatic weapons with their potential rivals, who were heading to the depot to get a lower salary. As a result, four people were injured. Competition in all its glory.
These theories still tell us about their dead mechanical models, although the everyday practice of modern economics itself proves that the ideas about a person who were embarrassed and astonished at the balls of a gallant age are, to put it mildly, somewhat outdated. Isn’t it time to follow the advice of the aforementioned La Mettrie: “A sage should dare to speak the truth in the interests of a small circle of people who want and know how to think. For others who are free slaves of prejudice, it is just as impossible to comprehend the truth as frogs learn to fly”?
Tutoring
Need help learning a topic?
Our experts will advise or provide tutoring services on topics of interest to you.
Send a request indicating the topic right now to find out about the possibility of obtaining advice.
Perhaps your intuition is well developed; it manifests itself in the fact that at a certain moment there is a feeling of what decision needs to be made. Or perhaps you have more rational abilities. And before you do something, you carefully weigh everything. There are specific signs of each type, and you can find out what is characteristic of you.
This is not to say that a person has only features of the same type. This means that each person at certain times relies on intuition, and, likewise, each of us thinks about his problems and affairs before making a decision.
But one cannot deny the fact that some people behave more impulsively than others. They rely more on intuition and forebodings, while others are more careful, they think everything over before taking a step.
Such behaviors and decision making are often associated with personality type. But it will be interesting to know that laying on intuition, for example, is by no means an irrational characteristic. Experts assure that in fact, we make many decisions, taking into account intuition and sensations. But this does not mean that this happens spontaneously. Below we will explain why.
Intuitive thinking
Guesses, premonitions ... We all know how this happens. There is a sudden feeling that tells us which path is better to choose. For example, something tells you that you should not expect anything good from a certain person and it is better to avoid communicating with her.
We often do not consider such premonitions to be smart, because they come from our own emotions and feelings, and are not a product of the brain, which would make them logical and reasonable. But this is not true. A hunch is actually very quick value judgments that rely on the characteristics of our personality and previous experience.
Everything that happens in our life, we remember and keep in memory along with the feelings that accompanied these events. As a result, when we encounter a certain stimulus, a sudden feeling arises that says: “Do it, go this way, choose a person, take a chance, or better abandon your plan” We draw these conclusions based on events and decisions made in the past . They are also associated with a person’s personality.
The complex mechanism of intuition is reflected in the sudden feelings that the mind engenders, and we ourselves do not understand why. There are people who do not ignore them, but act in accordance with them. They listen, as they say, to their instinct.
But you should be careful. It must be remembered that laying on intuition is not always the best solution, since such sensations are very quick and it is difficult for us not to make a mistake. So, intuition does not always work. People who belong to a different type are more cautious and, despite their “hunches,” ignore them, and rely more on reason. This type of personality is much more rational.
Rational thinking
Rational thinking relies on conscious information: what exists around it, on things that can be seen and felt by touch, on information that can be read or compared.
Rational-type people make decisions more slowly and carefully. This does not mean that they have the worst opportunities, but testifies to their thoughtfulness and, possibly, insecurity. But sometimes it’s good, because before making a decision, such individuals subject them to “quality control”. People of this type are also afraid to make mistakes and always carefully search for the right answer and the best solution.
Therefore, this type of personality is cautious, but sometimes we do not have much time to make a decision. In addition, sometimes it is not possible to get all the information we need before deciding something.
For example, you cannot know everything about a person to decide whether it is worth falling in love with her. This happens regardless of the mind, so in fact most people act intuitively. Emotions always have more power than reasonable reasoning. To a large extent, people tend to be guided by emotions.
In this matter, as in most others, the best thing is to maintain balance. Take your time too much when deciding, but excessive caution will not be the best solution either. Uncertainty is often generated through some types of existential suffering. So, it is certainly better to maintain a balance on both sides.
Do you agree with this? What do you think of your personality? Which type do you consider yourself intuitive or rational?
The issue of “flight of thought” has occupied great minds since ancient times. However, to this day, neither the wisest of the philosophers, nor the smartest of the scientists can say that they "understand thinking." The level of knowledge of consciousness can be compared with the degree of knowledge about the oceans. We understand the surface roughly, but almost nothing is known about the depth. You can talk about it endlessly, but here we will touch on only two methods of thinking:
- rational;
- irrational.
Many people often act on emotions without considering either the consequences or their own decisions. This is due to too "hot blood" or banal unwillingness. If this is definitely not about you, then we can say that you are a rational person. This does not mean methodology in actions or other special factors. Rational thinking is just the ability to think about your decisions and act according to logic.
Rational thinking structure
Three main forms of rational thinking can be distinguished:
- concept;
- judgment;
- inference.
We can represent the concept as the name of any object or action. We simply point out the subject of discussion, presenting it to the audience. For example, we say “bird”, “flight”. The following is a judgment. We bind objects together. In other words, we explain the meaning of the concepts given earlier. It turns out the statement: "The bird flies."
As a result, we will conclude. Here judgments are combined, and on the basis of their analysis new conclusions are built. We reasoned that the bird is flying, and we know that it has wings. We also know that a person has no wings. So, our conclusion is the statement that the bird flies thanks to the wings.
On these forms is the basis of rational thinking. For a clearer picture, you need to look at it a little differently.
Rational thinking in stoicism
In everyday situations, rational thinking often means the need to "turn on the head." Abstain from emotions and analyze the situation calmly. However, such thinking takes some time. Without a strong habit, it is difficult to immediately begin reasoning. Especially in moments of emotional shock. Emotions flow over the edge, blood hits the temples and the brain refuses to work rationally.
This problem has been recognized since ancient times. Recall, for example, stoicism. When a person is called a "stoic", then in his imagination he seems truly calm and solid, like a rock. He keeps himself apart from petty everyday problems, does not pay attention to them and does not worry. This is true, but only in part. Stoicism covers many aspects of life, but here we will talk only about one of the central parts - maintaining the mind in difficult situations.
Example of stoic thinking
Marcus Aurelius is the great Roman emperor. The last of the "five good emperors." He spent most of his rule on the borders of the empire, protecting it from enemies. He went through two major wars. Despite many problems, he worthily led the empire and did not lose his mind in the most difficult situations. In this he was helped by stoicism. perfectly illustrated the topic of rationalism in his "Reflections":
From Apollonius, independence and calm before the game of chance; so as not to look at anything except the mind for a moment and always be the same - with acute pain or having lost a child, or in a long illness.
How can one be calm in such terrible situations? Let's take a look at the quote in more detail. An important point is “calm before the game of chance”. He actually answers our question. Everything that happens around us is a chain of events, fate, if you will. We, as humans, cannot control these events, so why worry about them? We can only control ourselves and our attitude to these events. If something bad can happen anyway or has already happened, is it not more reasonable to maintain rational thinking and not succumb to emotions?
If we talk specifically about how to stop worrying (and therefore act unreasonably) in a routine life, then preparation is necessary. That is, you need to be prepared for any vicissitudes of fate. Then there will be no “surprise”, which means that emotions will remain under control.
In the morning, tell yourself in advance: I will meet with the vain, with the ungrateful, the bold, with the sly, with the greedy, non-social. All this happened to them out of ignorance of good and evil.
Of the many philosophical trends, it is Stoicism that is most applicable in everyday life. With it, we can learn to control the mind and make informed decisions in difficult situations. But this is the basis of rational thinking.
“That guy has a money scoop.” What kind of "chuyka"? Well, he understands at the level of intuition how to make money. After reading the previous chapter, we think rationally, and such an explanation does not suit us. Let's figure it out for ourselves.
Intuition itself can be understood as an unconscious management of facts. This is the main difference from rationalism. Irrational thinking covers the surface, barely looking deeper. Reason does not enter into ornate reasoning. This is done unconsciously, and therefore it often seems to a person that he acts "on a hunch." Such thinking is often called feeling. It is emotions, not logic, that become the driving force of thought.
We often think that a person commits some action without reason or logic. Such a person is branded "irrational." However, nothing happens simply, and there are reasons for everything. It's just that in an “irrational person” thinking acts superficially, in express mode. Because of this, reasoning and logic may be distorted. But since this is done unconsciously, it is not always possible to understand these tricks of consciousness.
Disadvantages of rational thinking
Adherence to the principles of rational thinking can play a trick on a person. Here, for example, is the situation. You see a cake that looks quite delicious. But do not try it. Why? And, you tried it before, and the taste seemed disgusting. This is rational thinking. You put forward the concept - "pie". Your judgment on the cake is that it "looks delicious." However, the conclusion tells you a different fact: you already ate such a pie, and it was not so good. But if at that ill-fated time the cook was drunk or wasn’t there at all, but was prepared by an incompetent newcomer? But you do not know this, and by this, perhaps, you are depriving yourself of a delicious meal.
What is the conclusion from this stupid story? The moral is that rational thinking is limited by the available information. It is no secret that the human brain rejects everything new and unknown, such a conservative he is. It turns out that when a person thinks rationally, the brain uses only the information that is available. He does not want to take into account the fact of the presence of something unknown to us. He’s actually that sly one.
The benefits of rational thinking
But it is not in vain that so much is said about rationality. Of course, in many life situations, the forms of rational thinking are most suitable. You can reason and foresee different outcomes of events, which is of great benefit. Rational thinking - this is what helps to avoid the state of affect, excessive exposure to emotions. And in this state, you can do terrible things. In general, it is difficult to overestimate the benefits of rationalism in life.
However, it is sometimes worthwhile to let the inner fire flare up. Constantly restraining emotions can lead them to push through the door of their prison and spill everywhere. Then imbalance will really come, and few will be glad of it. It, of course, will lead to a rethinking, which is very important, but the method is extremely tough. There are many less painful and no less effective ways. The main thing is to know where it is possible to let a primitive beast out, and where it is better to remain civilized. If this understanding comes, then life will become a little easier and a little clearer.
Total
Ultimately, we realized that although thinking is different, each has its own pros and cons. Rational thinking is not a panacea for all problems, but life, driven only by emotions, carries a lot of problems. Rationalism is ice, irrationalism is fire. By choosing only the first, you risk becoming “cold” and freezing the “inner self”. If the choice fell only on the fire - you will burn yourself and burn your loved ones. A wise decision is to learn to skillfully combine these forms or find balance.
Can a person be rational?
Publication 1941
I am used to thinking of myself as a Rationalist; and the Rationalist, I suppose, is the one who wants people to be rational. But these days rationality is subjected to many harsh attacks, so it’s hard to understand what is meant when we talk about rationality, or in cases where the meaning is clear, the question arises as to whether a person can be rational. The question of determining rationality has two sides: theoretical and practical: “what is rational opinion?” And “what is rational behavior?” Pragmatism emphasizes the irrationality of opinion, and psychoanalysis emphasizes the irrationality of behavior. Both theories have led many people to believe that there is no such thing as an ideal of rationality, which can generally correspond to opinion and behavior. From this, apparently, it follows that if you and I hold different points of view, it is useless to appeal to an argument or decision of an impartial person; we have no choice but to bring the argument to the end by rhetoric, advertising or war methods in accordance with the degree of our financial or military strength. I am convinced that such a view is very dangerous and in the future fatal for civilization. Therefore, I will try to show that the ideal of rationality remains unaffected by ideas that are regarded as fatal for this ideal, and that it retains all the importance that it had until now, when it was considered as the guiding principle of thought and life.
Let's start with rationality in opinions: I define it simply as the habit of taking into account all the relevant evidence when developing a certain opinion. Where confidence is unattainable, a rational person will attach the greatest importance to the most possible opinion, while at the same time holding others that have a tangible probability in their mind as a hypothesis that future evidence may confirm as more preferable. This, of course, suggests that in many cases facts and probabilities can be established by an objective method, for example, a method that will lead any two attentive people to the same result. It is often questioned. Many say that the only function of intelligence is to help satisfy individual desires and needs. The committee for the publication of textbooks "Plebs" in "Fundamentals of Psychology" writes: “Intelligence is, above all, an instrument of partiality. Its function is to ensure that those actions that are beneficial to the individual or the human race must be performed, and those that are less beneficial should be prohibited. ” (Italics of the original.)
"The Marxist faith is completely different from the religious faith; the latter is based only on desire and tradition; the first is based on a scientific analysis of objective reality. ” This seems contrary to what they say about intelligence, unless they really mean that the intellect did not participate in their conversion to the Marxist faith. In any case, since they recognize that a “scientific analysis of objective reality” is possible, they must recognize that opinions that are rational in an objective sense can be had.
More erudite authors, those who defend an irrationalist point of view, such as pragmatic philosophers, are not so easily refuted. They argue that there is no such thing as an objective fact, which our opinions should correspond to, if they are considered true. For them, opinions are only tools in the struggle for existence, and those that help people survive will be called "true." This view prevailed in Japan in the VI century. n e. when Buddhism first reached this country. The government, doubting the truth of the new religion, ordered one of the courtiers to accept it experimentally; if he succeeds more than the others, religion will be accepted as universal. This method (modified for our time) is upheld by pragmatists in relation to all religious disputes; but I have not heard from anyone a statement that he converted to the Jewish faith, although it seems that it leads to prosperity faster than any other.
Despite this definition of “truth”, in everyday life pragmatism is always guided by completely different principles for less sophisticated issues that arise in practical matters. The jury pragmatist will think about what happened just like any other person; whereas if he adhered to his principles, he would have to decide who would be more profitable to hang. This person, by definition, will be guilty of murder, since the belief in his guilt will be more useful, and therefore more “true” than the belief in the guilt of some other person. I am afraid that such practical pragmatism is sometimes encountered; I heard about the "fraud" in America and in Russia that fit this description. But in such cases, everything is done to hide this fact, and if these efforts fail, then a scandal occurs. Such harboring shows that even police officers believe in objective truth in a judicial investigation. It is this kind of objective truth - very mundane and prosaic - that scientists seek to find. It is precisely this kind of Truth that people also seek to find in religion, as long as they hope to find it. Only when people give up hope to prove that religion is true in the literal sense, they take up the work to prove that it is “truth” in a newfangled sense. It can be openly stated that irrationalism, that is, disbelief in objective facts, almost always grows out of a desire to prove something for which there is no supporting evidence, or to deny something that is well confirmed. But faith in objective facts is always maintained in relation to particular practical issues, such as investments or hiring servants. And if it were indeed possible to verify the truth of our beliefs everywhere, it would be a test in all areas, leading to agnosticism wherever it is carried out.
The above considerations, of course, are very inadequate in relation to the topic. The solution to the problem of objectivity of fact is hampered by the vague discussions of philosophers, which I will try to analyze in a more radical way. Now I must assume that there are facts that some facts are knowable, and with respect to some other facts, a degree of probability can be established in relation to facts that can be known. However, our beliefs often contradict the fact; even when we only believe that something is likely to be based on appropriate evidence, it may be that we should consider it improbable on the basis of the same evidence. Consequently, the theoretical part of rationality consists in substantiating our beliefs rather on the corresponding evidence than on desires, prejudices, traditions. Thus, either an impartial person or a scientist will be rational.
Some people think that psychoanalysis showed the impossibility of rational beliefs, revealing the strange and almost insane origin of many people's cherished beliefs. I highly respect psychoanalysis, and I believe that it can be extremely helpful. But public opinion lost sight of the goal, which mainly inspired Freud and his followers. Their method is initially therapeutic, it is a way to treat hysteria and various types of insanity. During the war, psychoanalysis proved that it was one of the most important treatments for neurosis obtained in the war. Rivers’s book Instinct and the Unconscious, which is largely based on the experience of treating shell-shocked patients, provides a brilliant analysis of the painful manifestations of fear when this fear cannot be directly indulged. These manifestations, of course, are largely unintelligent; they include various types of paralysis, all types of apparently physical illnesses. But in this article we will not discuss this; focus on intellectual disabilities. It has been established that many hallucinations of madmen are the result of instinctive obstacles and can be cured by purely psychic means, for example, by bringing to the patient's mind the facts that were suppressed in his memory. This type of treatment and the worldview that inspires him suggest an ideal of sanity, from which the patient deviated and to which he should be returned by understanding all relevant facts, including those that he most wants to forget. This is the exact opposite of the lazy concessions to irrationality, which are sometimes incited by those who only know that psychoanalysis has shown a predominance of irrational faith, and who forgets or ignores the fact that his goal is to weaken this predominance by a certain method of medical treatment. A very similar method can heal the irrationality of those who are not considered crazy, provided that they are treated by a specialist who is free from their illusions. Presidents, the Cabinet of Ministers and Outstanding Personalities, however, rarely fulfill this condition and, therefore, remain untreated.
So far, we have considered only the theoretical side of rationality. The practical side, which we now turn to, is more complicated. Differences in opinions on practical issues stem from two sources: first, differences between the desires of the debaters; secondly, differences in their assessments of the means of fulfilling their desires. The differences of the second grade are actually theoretical and only indirectly practical. For example, some reputable people argue that the first line of our defense should be equipped with battleships, while others - that of airplanes. There are no differences regarding the proposed goal, namely national security, the difference is only in the means. Reasoning, therefore, can be constructed in a purely scientific way, since disagreement causing a dispute concerns only present or future facts, certain or probable. For all these cases, the type of rationality that I called theoretical is applicable, despite the fact that a practical issue is being resolved.
However, in such cases, there are complications that are very important for practice. A person who wants to act in a certain way will convince himself that by acting in this way he achieves a goal that he considers good, even if he didn’t have such a desire, he did not see any reason for such a conviction . And he will judge facts and possibilities in a slightly different way than a person with opposing desires. Gamblers, as everyone knows, are filled with an irrational belief in systems that ultimately must lead them to win. Those interested in politics convince themselves that their party leaders will never be guilty of the fraudulent tricks practiced by other politicians. A man who loves to control thinks that it is good for the population if he is seen as a flock of sheep; a person who loves tobacco says he soothes nerves; a person who loves alcohol says that it stimulates wit. Preferences caused by such reasons falsify human judgments about reality in a way that is very difficult to avoid. Even a scientific article on the effects of alcohol on the nervous system will generally give the author, based on internal logic, whether he is a teetotaler; in any case, he will have a tendency to see facts in a light that justifies his own practice. In politics and religion, such considerations are becoming very important.
Most people think that in shaping their political opinions they are guided by the desire for the public good; but in nine out of ten cases, a person’s political views can be predicted based on his lifestyle. This leads some people to the conviction, and many to the conviction expressed in practical actions, that in such cases it is impossible to be objective and that it is only possible to “pull the rope” between classes with opposing interests.
However, it is precisely in such cases that psychoanalysis is partly useful, since it allows people to recognize those interests that until now have been unconscious. It provides methods for self-observation, that is, the opportunity to see ourselves from the outside, and the basis for the assumption that this view of ourselves from the outside is less unfair than we tend to think. In combination with teaching a scientific worldview, this method can, if widely taught, enable people to become infinitely more rational than in the present with respect to their beliefs about reality and the possible consequences of any proposed action. And if people are united in their views on these problems, the discrepancies that persist will almost certainly be resolved amicably.
There remains, however, a question that cannot be solved by purely intellectual methods. The desires of one person cannot be fully harmonized with the desires of another. Two competitors on the exchange may be in complete agreement regarding the consequences of one or another action, but this will not cause harmony in practical activities, since each wants to get rich at the expense of the other. Nevertheless, even here, rationality can prevent most of the harmful consequences that would otherwise be realized. We call a person irrational when he acts out of passion, when he cuts off his nose to disfigure his face. He is irrational, for he forgets that, indulging in the desire that he had the most to experience at that moment, he will interfere with the fulfillment of other desires, which will be more important to him in the future. If people were rational, they would have held a more correct view of their own interest than they are doing now; and if all people proceeded from conscious self-interest, the world would be a paradise compared to what it is now, I do not say that there is nothing better than self-interest as a motive for action; but I affirm that self-interest, like altruism, is better when it is realized than when it is not realized. In an orderly society, a person is very rarely interested in doing something too harmful for others. The less rational a person is, the more often he does not understand how much that offends others offends him, because hatred and envy blind him. Therefore, although I do not claim that self-interest is the highest morality, I argue that if it becomes universal, it makes the world immeasurably better than it is.
Rationality in practice can be defined as the habit of remembering and taking into account all our respective desires, and not just what is most powerful at the moment. As with rationality in opinions, it is a question of degree. Undoubtedly, complete rationality is an unattainable ideal, but as we continue to classify some people as crazy, it is clear that we think of some people as more rational than others. I believe that any lasting progress in the world is to increase rationality, both practical and theoretical. Preaching altruistic morality seems to me somewhat useless, because it will appeal only to those who already have altruistic desires. But preaching rationality is something else, since rationality helps us realize our own desires as a whole, whatever they may be. Man is rational in the proportion in which his intellect forms and controls his desires. I believe that the control of our actions on the part of the intellect is, in the final analysis, the most important thing that makes social life still possible as science increases the amount of means at our disposal for harming one another. Education, the press, politics, religion - in a word, all the great forces of the world - today are on the side of irrationality; they are in the hands of people who flatter His Majesty the People, in order to confuse him. The means of salvation is not in any heroic achievement, but in the efforts of individuals aimed at a more sane and balanced view of our relations with our neighbors and the world. It is to an increasingly widespread intellect that we must turn to solve all the problems our world suffers from.
Recently, I had the idea to write an article on types of resistance. And while the article is not ready, I will write a little blog post about one of the types of resistance -. We are used to thinking rational people smart and reasonable. Such people often inspire confidence, can explain anything, and probably, any way, especially if they are businessmen or by type of activity communicate a lot. Unfortunately, or, most likely, fortunately, not everything can be measured or explained logically. We have feelings and emotions, and they are irrational, and to explain why a person feels, somehow, experiences such an emotion or another in relation to any situation is a rather ungrateful affair.
What is resistance? In addition to electrical, mechanical or other resistance, which I will not consider, there is psychological resistance. This is a natural mechanism of the human psyche, aimed at protecting it from changes in behavioral, mental patterns, etc.
The human psyche is designed so that once having received an experience from which a way has been found with the result of which one can exist, this experience is remembered. There are many such experiments (first, new) in our childhood. And since the child for the most part leads an unconscious lifestyle, all this experience and exits from various situations are unconsciously recorded “on the crust”. Further, this experience is protected from change, as it once led to an acceptable result, that is, after which it was possible to survive. In the life of a small person, as in animals, everything is arranged precisely on this principle - "you need to survive." That is why the psyche of an adult is not so flexible.
Everything would be fine, but there are traumatic experiences, that is, those that cause serious damage to mental development. No need to think that it should be a car accident or something else terrible. A child is small and lonely, in an existential sense, a creature like all people. Everything happens for him for the first time, and sometimes, having not received the support of his mother in some seemingly adult situation, he stumbled, tied his shoelaces not so, got dirty, and at the same time having received condemnation, a pathological irrational behavior pattern is formed. For example, my mother scolded me for getting dirty - I should always be clean. In adulthood, this can turn into an obsession and will seriously interfere. Starting to disassemble at a psychotherapeutic session, why does a person wash his hands every five minutes or should he have perfectly clean and ironed clothes, we go, for example, to the situation in childhood described above.
Then, in childhood, the child received a condemnation from the only native person whom he fully trusted and loved, because he got dirty - he became bad overnight. Such an experience created a construct: for my mother to love me, I must always be clean. When we approach this in a therapeutic session, we begin to gradually transform this pathological bundle, and resistance appears, because then for a small creature to be clean was the only chance to survive. So he decided based on his experience. Because if the mother does not like, then how can I continue to live? Indeed, at this age, the child is completely dependent on the mother. Now, with our minds, we understand that this is not so or not quite so, but our current mind is rational, but emotions have neither logic nor rationality, and then, as a child, having arisen, they remained alive, because emotion does not know , what is time. We are transforming the only true decision made then, which helped the child to survive, and we leave to fear. In addition to the fear associated with the situation that lives in conjunction with pathological behavior, we are destroying this frozen behavioral decision, while the psyche does not yet know, and how to act differently too. And when the psyche does not know something, it resists - the old one is better than the unknown new.
This is where the mechanism turns on. A person begins, first of all, to explain to himself why this happened. “Our family has always been clean.” "I like cleanliness". “And what's bad about that?” “Do you need to grow dirt, or what?” Often such people in life and others explain their position, and often impose it simply because they need support in their own. Indeed, in the depths of the soul lives that emotion that arose in a situation of condemnation, and a person feels it, although it does not realize it, and also feels the precariousness of its judgments.
In the process of work, with the support of the therapist, as in the described example, the fear associated with condemnation and the impossibility of further existence without a pathological construct can be experienced. Human emotion, unlike ideas, is finite. After that, the pathological structure is destroyed or transformed. Usually, a person becomes easier, and he becomes freer.
There are more clear ones that lie on the surface. Once I had a client who brought himself to psychosomatic disorders (bodily manifestations), explaining to himself what his normal life was, a good partner, children and work. There are very frequent cases when a partner, seeing a disregard for himself, his life or for something joint, justifies the other partner and rationalizes - “no time”, “work”, “still not grown / la”, “lived together for many years "," Yes, in his heart he / she still loves "and so on. No matter how close such an understanding was, it still has deep roots from childhood, mostly not healthy. And deep down, feelings are completely different from positive excuses. I myself sometimes did this, “good work, I’m my own boss, I have time for my own affairs, I’m only sick when I go to it, but that's okay, there are minuses everywhere.” In the process of life, we often forget that feelings are the truth. This is us. No work and no relationship will bring satisfaction if you do not experience emotions of joy, but tell how joyful they are.
Remember, in the movie “Beginning” there was a very correct idea that the idea can be implemented? So, that’s true. Building your assumptions on ideas and arguments, rationalizing, it is easy to make a mistake, because this idea may not be yours at all, but, for example, borrowed from someone. But emotion or feeling cannot be introduced. Therefore, feel, learn to understand your feelings and emotions, trust them, and decide as they prompt you.
