The crux of subjects like philosophy, economics, politics, sociology and business is rationality. However, they all depend on the rationality of humans, which has left me with a question floating around my head for a while. That is - are humans rational?
In short - yes and no. We're capable of logic and rationality, but we are also capable of completely illogical and irrational behaviour.
Quick question. Have you ever done anything on just "a feeling"? Have you ever impulsively thought, said or done anything?
If you've answered yes (and it's highly unlikely that you didn't), you've acted irrationally. It's highly likely that you'll act like this on a day by day basis, perhaps hour by hour. Of course, these are only tiny events. But what about larger events? Look at current events in the world. The implementation of free-market economic theory in the lead up to the Global Financial Crisis - it could all have easily been avoided if the guys at the top had fixed the problem instead of going along with the misguided belief that the "invisible hand" of the market would fix things.
Well, that invisible hand didn't fix shit. It was completely irrational behaviour on their behalf - hell, they encouraged irrational behaviour in the public arena by telling everyone it was ok when it clearly wasn't.
All too often in these big subjects there are always people who ignore contradicting evidence to what they believe. They'd rather act irrationally, under the guise of rationality (we've all heard people justify irrationality by making the claim "it's just rational") than confront the flaws in their thinking. The very fact that some people will believe something that's unproven or in some cases proven wrong than admit that they're wrong about that particular topic is completely irrational.
A significant portion of the worlds population is religious. Many of it is completely unfounded belief. Again, cases of complete irrationality. It simply doesn't make sense when you really think about it, yet still they believe.
It's my opinion that emotions are at the heart, or atleast a very large contributor, to irrationality. Anger, pride, sadness, fear, hope - all things that cause people to act irrationally. It's not rational for me to hit something that isn't working when I get angry enough, yet I still do. It's not rational to go out and think that maybe i'll meet the love of my life, to hope I will, but I still do. Feelings interrupt and corrupt rational thought and skew quite plain and simple thoughts. It's not rational for a drug addict to continue to consume drugs until they're a bag of bones, yet the phrase "did you miss the elephant sitting in the corner?" exists for a reason.
However, it is also very important to note that humans are very capable of rational thought. It's abundant. The fact we can think critically and act on the logical and rational ideas that come from that is testament to human rationality. Look at the progress of the human race as a species - it would almost disprove the idea of humans as irrational. That is, until you notice the fuck ups we make.
Humans are not stupid - all too capable of stupidity, certainly, but not stupid. The exponential growth of our knowledge base, technological progress, on-going trade, an increasing push for equality among all people (atleast in some societies and schools of thought). These can only be a result of rational thought.
The Australian government has managed to avoid recession because of a huge spending package. Out of all the industrialised countries, we've fared the best during this economic crisis. While I disagree with the way some of the money is being spent, it wasn't because of reckless, idiotic, irrational action that this result was achieved - it was because of rational, logical thought.
All of this leads to another question - is this balance of rationality and irrationality a good thing?
In a sense, it is. While there are certain issues that certainly do require serious thought and rationality applied to it, we need not apply our rationality to every aspect of our lives. At the start of this blog I talked a bit about making seemingly irrational thoughts on an hour by hour basis. While it may be irrational to make such choices, it's irrational to attempt to be rational about them. You'd waste large portions of your time thinking about insignificant crap. A life without irrationality would be awfully dull.
Some things require split-second decisions, some things aren't significant enough to require anything more than a moments thought.
In the end, no humans are not entirely rational, but sometimes that's not necessarily a bad thing.
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Human Rationality blog
