People Are Rationalizing

There is this meme going around that you shouldn't use rational arguments because people only respond to emotional argumentation. In online debates with me, people have even said that my argument is wrong because it is rational and not emotional. For instance, I have argued that a plant based diet is superior, and someone (who claimed to be in politics for the Marxist pvda party) responded to my reasoning that I shouldn't use rational arguments and that people would revolt if they didn’t have their daily piece of animal carcass.

The irony or paradox is that "you shouldn't use rational arguments BECAUSE people only respond to emotion" is a rational argument. They should be saying "I feel you shouldn't be rational." And even that is a reason.

What is logic or rationality? It is stating a hypothesis of cause and effect. This will happen when that happens. That happened because of this. It's what science tries to uncover. Cause and effect is the fundamental nature of stories.

People are definitely rationalizing all the time, even if they may be wrong.

People have a narrative. It is often simplistic and black and white. They often stick things to this narrative that don't belong. (Like claiming every problem is caused by billionaires, immigrants, government, white people.) Often people believe the first thing they heard and resist changing their mind. They may rationalize their hopes and dreams.

People are very protective of their narrative. Some fly into a rage when someone has a contradicting view. They accuse them of the worst thing they can think of. Murder, genocide, molestation, racism. If you believe something different, you are evil. Some people care more about their narrative than they do about their own flesh and blood children.

I once had a debate online with a person about sustainability and they could not understand what I was writing. Finally they wrote "listen, are you a liberal or a conservative?" This person could not understand a text if it didn’t fit into the right-wing or left-wing box. I was trying to talk science. They couldn't understand things outside the political narrative. 

For some people, perhaps lacking critical thinking, it is very much "what comes in is what comes out." I heard a podcast about a man, narrated by his daughter, who went from liberal to raging racist because he started listening to right wing talk radio. But after years, they moved his radio to another room for some reason, and he turned back into an agreeable person and voted for Obama. 

You can also end up making arguments for something in a debate, that you no longer believe to be true, because you don't want to admit you were wrong. And some people are not trying to be truthful.

Emotions often have a rational cause. They at least always have some cause, even if it's a drug or a brain tumor. You can use reason to deal with negative emotions. Emotions are often trying to tell you something that is true. But they can also lead you down a harmful path.

Emotion and reason are inextricably involved with each other. Reason causes emotions and people rationalize their emotions. We have, however, brains that developed in nature, in tribes, which is very different from our current globalized community.

Reason can be very powerful. I remember the first podcast I ever heard. It was around the year 2000. It was about a deeply religious Christian missionary who had turned into an atheist because of a contradiction that occurred to him. The contradiction was: You have to believe in Jesus or you go to hell, but why would a loving god send all those good people in history, that weren't introduced to the good news, to hell for not having had access to this information. This rational thought turned him into a completely different person. 

How can you know that you are being rational? How can you know what to believe?

I have a diploma in Industrial Science. A science teacher once said: the only way to know for sure is to test/measure it yourself. And indeed for six years our class did experiments on the basic foundations of science and wrote papers. I can stick new information to this narrative. 

The same science teacher also gave us this wisdom (it rhymes in Dutch): "Meten Is Weten." It means: "Measuring Is Knowing."

Science is not infallible or incorruptible. It's important to consider the argument from the other side. Science also doesn't deal in certainty but in probability. Something a lot of people don't understand. The illusion of certainty is very seductive. So are simple black and white narratives. But doubt is the beginning of knowledge. Most of the time you have to conclude: I don't know.

Peace! ✌️💜