IAP Political Forum

Are Humans at their most basic level rational beings? Do we in general value rationality and logic over the lusts and desires of our unconcsious minds?


and if so, what rammifications does this have for a democracy?

Have you met people?

At the most basic level we are all animals.  It takes a practice of intellect to be able to get control of who we are biologically.  The more we practice our intellect, the more we move away from being impulsive, lustful animals and become enlightened creatures.

A Democracy only works perfectly when there is a well informed public.  While mankind works on that, I go by this mantra.

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
 - Winston Churchill

Seriously.

Being rational is unnatural.

this would have been better stated with have you met babies...

seriously, rationality is learned.  Also have you met me?  Honestly I know people tell you that I lack rationality.  If we're generalizing yes on some levels I am rational but on so many others it's just not there.

I concur.  Rationality is like a factory for logic and reason.  If everyone is logical and reasonable, than for a democracy it would be SPECTACULAR... no?  However, thats not the case, in REAL life: people are hardly rational and those who are are not the ones running the show. 

Rationality is a potential, a byproduct of the machinery used to manufacture that monkey with a brain too big we call a human.

Rationality is a part of our duality. And as most elements of our duality, it usually si the alst resource, the rarest event, as compared to just being monkeys. We are in a stage very very vey very early of the development of the potential of rationality. Currently we live in a backwards age where monkey brain is pressing on rationality and rationality shrinks; we're getting ready to be awful monkeys again in our history, after just too many years of being closer to angels than to beasts.

So no, rationality does not rule, is not primal. It just is of the best we have, and as all best things, it's both precious and uncommon.



(And, off-topic, I never figured P&R sectiom could be interesting... but ti's being once we're temporally rid of the usual atheism vs theism useless bullshit)

Hey! you got smited for that

It seems to me that we probably need to decide from the start what we mean by ‘rational’.  If we mean that to indicate that we do things ‘for a reason’ then we have have to admit that many higher animals are ‘rational’ – they have desires and perceptions that combine to drive them to action.   I guess the topic is really suggesting that there is something special about the way humans react to events – and I suspect that that’s right.  I once thought that the special thing was the way in which we could put our desires, and projects and plans, ‘on hold’ – just waiting for the right situation to occur before we progressed them.  But there seems to be evidence that other animals can do that – studies of chimpanzee ‘social climbing’, for example.  What I think gives the difference in degree that humans have is the way we can entertain many visions of how things may turn out, and can either take one line that best satisfies our occurent desires or judge that it is better to suppress the desire in order to better satisfy it later – a sort of control over timing.

This certainly gives our species an advantage over other species.  The predator can of course decide not to go ahead in an attack, since the physical danger may be too great, but the human potential victims can plan defences and traps and offensives that the simple predator cannot match.   So it’s good for us to give value to this sort of rationality – it benefits the species.  But whether it is a paramount value, or, to follow the first posts line, whether that makes a difference to ‘democracy’ seems an empty question. 

To begin with, rationality is the servant of our ‘lusts and desires’ – it helps us satisfy them.  At best, it is pari passu: BOTH make us what we are.

Secondly, democracy is but a device to maintain power for the powerful – as such it is a conflicting influence rather than one to demand the support of rationality.  It may be instrumental in helping the underclasses break away from tyranny, but in no way stops the powerful from their over-exercise of power.

Thirdly, democracy as practised in most of the countries we call democratic is as far from rationality as deciding on which mate you prefer – just follow any electoral campaign in any of the western countries: no appeal is made to rational faculties (how to make decisions as to preferable outcomes, how to prioritise what is desirable, how to get the best out of those activities that can be influenced by our actions). 

Fourthly, does anyone believe that a purely rational person is ‘human’?  Who wants to be Mr Spock (who wasn’t even totally rational)?  Rationality (and the term still needs some more definition than I’ve given it) is without doubt a human characteristic – but the ONLY one?   Human essence isn’t a democratic race where the aspect voted for by the most people is the ‘best’.  Try that and you’ll get the usual ‘democratic’ results – the hero with feet of clay, the ‘mission accomplished’ dope with no exit strategy, the disillusion and reality check that follows on from over-valuing the ordinary.

I think the best direction for this topic is in trying to define just what we mean by rationality.

I don't see the two as mutually exclusive. Even at the most primal level, we use some amount of rational thinking, and as Callum said, rationality is just a servant of our desires.

Say a guy meets a girl. Even if it is just lust that propels him to talk to her, he must do so in a rational manner, saying something to make her laugh, to endear her to him.

Another not so happy example is the behavior of crackheads. Smoking crack is obviously not a rational goal, but in the pursuit of that goal, crackheads tend do display very direct logic and rational thinking sometimes. Knowing where to look for copper wiring and such, removing it and selling it.



In some cases, instinct and emotion can even become a tool of rational thought. There are many good examples of this in athletics. To be the best and win, one must release the instinct of the winner within. I don't mean to be cheesy, or suggest that listening to "Eye of the Tiger" can substitute for training and practice, but to finish the marathon takes more than the ability to run. You've got to want it.


When it comes to democracy, we see another way that emotion is put to use by rational thinking. People get emotional about some issues, and rational political managers will use this to their benefit.

Well... would I be a theological/phylosophical jerk if I asked what "rational" was?

I mean, we all have differnet levels of response and some respond differently than others, and sure you have the psycho paths that murder friends because their ice cream melted, but in the center of af it all.. what is "rationality"?

I would like to consider myself a rational person and a large majority would agree that they themselves are rational... but there are times (on this board, even) where I kinda snapped and wrote an irrational responce to someone elses post.

I guess what I'm wondering is are we really all that good at gauging others, or even our own, level of rationality?

Your snapping was a natural response. When you take time to make decisions, that is an unnatural way to respond. It is something that needs to be taught and trained. At this current point in time, the training hasn't become natural, though I think in a thousand years or so it will.

I always saw rationality as being the opposite to emotionality (it that's a word).

If humans were perfectly rational then any form of government would work - even anarchism.

Freud wrote: "Man is a wolf to man."

Civilization requires that we subsume some of our natural desires to civilization's rules. Some people are not taught the civilizing lessons in the first place (Newt Gingrich comes to mind). Others are taught, but are unable to find socially acceptable outlets for their passions. They become criminals or become mentally unstable.

Yung wrote:

   Man’s reflecting consciousness, on the one hand, and his hereditary, archetypal nature on the other, in a sense, tear him apart, because his desires pull him in different directions. In this way he falls into continual conflict with himself. Buddhism calls it attachment to the “ten thousand things.” Such a condition cries out for order and synthesis.
   When any natural human function is denied conscious and intentional expression a general disturbance results. Thus it is natural that with the triumph of the Goddess of Reason a general neuroticizing of modern man should set in. This boundary line bristling with barbed wire runs through the psyche of modern man.
       We can recognize our prejudices and illusions only when, from a broader psychological knowledge of ourselves and others, we are prepared to doubt the absolute rightness of our assumptions and compare them carefully and conscientiously with the objective facts.
--The Undiscovered Self

If there were truly human rationality on any significant scale, Social Fascism would reign over the world.

OswaldTheOsprey

I would think Democracy or Communism because both rely on the power of the rational and intellegent public.

But then again, if the leaders and people of every type of government were "rational" it is unlikely any would be labled better than the other.

If everyone weas rational, this planet would be a lot better.

Democracy rational? The perfect example of pure direct democracy in action is a lynch mob. Mob rule and nothing more.

OswaldTheOsprey

A lynch mob is irrational; if everyone was rational then democracy would be the perfect system. Nobody can rationally expect that people will avoid have dissenting opinions or will silence them. Dissenters could be right an everyone else be wrong, fai.

Suppression of dissent means supression of error detection...

Of course a lynch mob is irrational but you can not escape the fact that it is the purest form of democracy. Democracy is based on egalitarianism which is totally preposterous. The one eternal and immutable fact of life is that of human inequality. In a democracy the stupid, the ignorant, the criminal and the greedy run the show. In sum, Democracy is the tyranny of the stupid over the intelligent and Social Fascism is the tyranny of the intelligent over the stupid.

OswaldTheOsprey

Tyranny by majority.

The worst type of tyranny.

OswaldTheOsprey

...where the definition of "inteligent" and "stupid" is written by the ones who rule as to the first include them and the second incldue everyone opposing them, right or wrong. ;)

Tyranny is always the empire of particular arbitrarity under the disguise of reason or the threat of force.

Democracy enables everyone to have a say in what arbitrarity must rule and how long until being confirmed or replaced.

By the way, you say "tyranny of majority"? What is a "majroity", but INDIVIDUALS with a COMMON WILL? What you pretend, that the individual whose ideas are shared by most individuals loses all his rights for sake of "not tyrannize" the individual who disagres?

Then this is TYRANNY as it comes, and in a TYRANNY the MOST suffer for the FEW... which you claim it's preferable over that a FEW suffer for the well of the MOST?

(Not to mention, that a dmeocracy respects the few as part of its principles... unlike tyranny)

If everybody was rational, anarchy would be the best system.

It's interesting though. I have held the belief that humans progressively become more rational as time goes on. In the early stages, concepts like religion were created in order to keep the irrational majority from remaining, well, irrational. Further down the road, different (and better) religions were created for the more rational, but still wholly irrational, majority. Also, better forms of government have evolved with the percentage of rational people growing.

If this keeps going, then in about a thousand years or so the majority of people will be rational, which would lead to either straight up democracies, or communism (ones that work). Plus religions will either die down or new ones will be created (for the more rational).

If this were a rational, civilized and intelligent country, all of the Bushes, Clintons and Kennedys would be in prison and Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Phil, Maury Povich, Rush Limbaugh, Al Franken, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Keith Olbermann, Jerry Springer, and Ann Coulter would be short order cooks.

OswaldTheOsprey

And if Fascism was rational, then we would be speaking German here. ;)

Check out Austrian Economics.  Their belief is that if all human beings are held rational, the best system of government is no government at all.  Just complete economic anarchy where everyone makes rational economic decisions in perfectly free markets; the supposedly most efficient way of doing things.

And when that happens, there will be no more humans.  But robots.  ;D 

Not necessarily. Fascism is nationalistic rather than internationalistic. It adapts to each nation as to that nation's particular needs.

OswaldTheOsprey

Oswald, are you in favor of Robert Heinlan's idea of a global federation as illustrated in his book "Starship Troopers?"

I am more interested in individual nations controlling their own destiny. Social Fascism is the type of government I prefer as it is both nationalistic and socialistic (not National Socialism as it evolved in 1930s Germany however). Hope I answered your question.

OswaldTheOsprey

Yep.

A consequence of nationalism is fear of other nationalisms, which eventually ends in conflict. If conflicting nationalisms are linked to independent nations, then you got international conflict as consequence of an exaggerated concern about the own nation. ;)

Nationalism itself is irrational. The effect of nationalism is to blind a nations citizens to the ill's of it's society and government. If you base a government(fascism) on an irrational system then you will have an irrational government.


Still, I think we are missing a point on rationality.


Considering that the the majority of our actions and emotions are run by unconscious drives it appears that we are at the most basic level irrational. However, it is possible to train yourself to be more and more thought provoking and rational. So, if we can train ourselves to question everything and to think for ourselves then it should be possible to improve our society by rational thought.


Granted that our politicians and buisness leaders don't manipulate the publics  irrational thoughts...

bullshit!

Nationalism is essentially another religion.

Rationality does not denote intelegence.

Just because an individual makes the most reational decision does not mean they made the most intelegent. I think leadership is required, especially with populations of countries being what they are (US > 300 million)


One religion I came across seemed interesting; Foundationism.

What they do is sift through other religions and remove common themes that exist in all of them.

How rational.  ;)


Yeah, and this has nothing to do with intelligence, it has to do with rationality. Where did I say anything about intelligence?

But anarchy would only work if everyone were intelegent as well.

Personally, I don't think anarchy would work unless everyone involved were rational AND intelegent.

Says who? Example:

An unintelligent person can't figure out a way to make money. However, being the rational person that we all are, said person does not go rob a 7-11, but continues to figure out a way to make money. This dose of rationality will actually cure unintelligence.

What if he runs out of options? Would the rational responce be to starve to death or to take money from those who don't need it? And the other side: a rich person has money. What would a rational responce be? Save what he needs and give away the rest? Or stock up and garuntee a good life for his children and children's children?

Many arguments have 2 moral decisions... otherwise, there wouldn't be debate. Look at the issue of abortion. If the "right" thing to do was so easy to see then there would be no debate at all.

Unless you think everyone who disagrees with you is irational.

What I'm saying is that rationality and intelegence are not the same thing because if they were, choices would be far easier to make. Some times the most intellegence decision is not always the most rational and vice versa.

That's all I'm saying.

We went from rationality to intelligence to morality...

I talk too much and go OT.

Sorry.

I just think morality, rationality and intelegence sometimes prompt conflicting choices... which is why we have choice in the first place.

Alright... NOW I sound like a phylosphical jerk...

(http://www.mysmiley.net/imgs/smile/confused/confused0050.gif)

Ignore me.

It's better that way.

I'll do my best. (http://www.mysmiley.net/imgs/smile/winking/winking0004.gif)

anarchy will never be the best system. If people were rational it might be workable but the best system would always be one with an elected body to run things.

What a gem!  But after doing some research supposedly it isn't a real one?  Something that just appeared on Babylon 5...

A religion that looks at every world religion critically and then amasses all the similar themes together to show us that we all have the same wants and needs is a great way of embracing understanding and abolishing intolerance.  I like!

So, who wants to be my disciples?  :D

Damn... you cought me.

I'm a B5 fan and I couldn't resist.


To be honest, considering the simplicity and universality of the concept, I'm surprised there isn't some kind of movement. I'm sure the agnostics of this world would love it if it had some literature (other than a SciFi show) to go off of.

Intelligence, rationality and logic are all essentially the same thing: The ability to recognize, predict and copy a pattern.

Seriously. Down to a sentence. Unfortunately the minds main malfunction is that it needs to recognize, predict and copy a pattern or it will derail and basically blow up. Yes, it will.

So when we look up at the stars, even if we can accept that we don't know what we're looking at, or how they got there, we will put a temporary answer there until we know better. A best guess. Until we can put something, anything as a place holder at the end of a question we can't move on. Very very hard. This state of not putting an answer in place of the unknown is on of the characteristics of meditation, or zen...("sound-of-one-hand-clapping", etc. the unanswerable question exercise). Subsequently we build an entire mythology based on the stars and start to worship them when we have no better way of knowing. And of course the unknown, the unanswerable is one of the most fearsome things to humans, or most intelligence.

One of the biggest unknowns is death. We live are entire lives with this uncomfortable connection to  our unseen mortal finish line. This is not an easy thing for a rational, pattern seeking mind, a mind that might just end-o off the edge without a reasonable answer. In my humble opinion it drives most people a little crazy. Merely getting out of bed could be seen as an exercise in mortality denial - the denial of a pattern we know is locked. This is fear, constant fear and it drives our worst vices, our insatiable wants and in some cases our best heroism.

To live content, without this distraction, is when we are at our best. It is the happiest state we can hope to realistically achieve. We drive for career, for riches, for marriage, for family in order to be happy, anything to 'get the most' out of life, but even when things work out as planned you may not be happy. The realization of a dream, a foe conquered, a milestone broken there is no guarantee of happiness when these desires are fulfilled.



What rationality or logic has to do with government or the question of how to govern ourselves, well I'm not sure it has anything to do with it. Political winds only change when somethings gone wrong or people just aren't happy. The essential reasoning for government is fear or frustration. Fear of mob rule, unrest, anarchy. We do our worst logical, rational thinking when under this stress, especially since we rarely "know" anything. Democracy or not we generally make bad decisions on government.


Ahk

:o  I don't want to die...  :'(

Well luckily for you I'm starting a cult to address just this kind of axiety.

you can join the many many others who now live at peace with the idea thanks to me. The deal is simple, all your Earthly goods for my guarantee there's a life for you after death. A bargain at twice the price.

Besides, how can you be so sure you dont want to die until you've tried it?





Ahk

I don't like catholicism...

:)


Butchugonna. That's not even the good part. The the good part is you don't even know when or how.


Whatcha gonna do about it?
Ahk

Forget about it.  ;D

When the time comes I will bawl my eyes out. 

Hopefully, it won't come to that.  Hopefully it'll happen while I am choking on my dreams.

Like they say, the only thing worse than dying is living.

Then rejoice: It will only happen to you once! ;D

It's not death I am afraid of...

It's nothingness.

Then again, the whole ide of "Pure Being" is to become nothing.  Strip your individual self of everything and let your thoughts become the uncarved block, or whatever that crazy monk was trying to tell me...

I just think it would be funny that once we die, we wake up somewhere's else and some fat dude in a teeshirt with God written on it says "Pretty sick joke wasn't it?"

Cuz that would be phucked up...