Posted by Racer on May 9, 2004, at 15:20:24
In reply to Re: Re: Bellyaching etal, posted by finelinebob on May 9, 2004, at 14:25:59
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> I think there's a Cult of Rationality out there that is the root of the problem. The cultural ghosts of BF Skinner and Behaviorism are still too strong. People should act rationally, and irrational behavior is to be shunned and feared.
>
> Yeah, right.
>
You know, that fits right in with a couple of recent debate-style conversations I had recently, with two different scientists. One is a particle physist, and we were talking about Rationality versus Human Nature. Specifically, we were talking about science education, and the problems there are reaching girls, but the general is probably the more interesting issue. Sure, we're rational animals, we can reason, but we're also Mammals, Vertebrates, and more and more we try to avoid that part of our nature. Watch the animals around you: they don't behave rationally, they act on their instincts. Guess what? We, human beings, have instincts, too. Those instincts are evolutionary artifacts that may no longer be adaptive for us in our concrete jungles, but they are no less real. Pain avoidance, for example, makes really good sense when the world around us is such a painful, dangerous place as the early savannas. These days, though, aside from a few sliced thumbs when the carrot rolls or a really nasty paper cut, the pain we experience tends to be more psychological, or emotional, or social, than physical -- but it is no less real. We really do a disservice to our unique place in the wider world by denying our animal natures, that which links us to our hominid forebears, because it is part of what makes us human. We are *not* pure mind, Pure Reason is a concept that has very little to do with reality.There's a new organization for science education, modeled after the Boy Scouts, that has proposed gender segregation in their programs. Gee, everyone is up in arms: "That's 'Separate But Equal' and it's unconstitutional! It's *wrong*!" In the conversations I've had about this group, every woman over 35 has said it's a GREAT thing to have girls learning science away from boys. The Politically Correct crowd, though, say that it shouldn't be a problem to teach science to girls and boys together, because we should be able to get past the sex roles and just learn. OK, great idea, great abstraction, but in the Real World, there's a hell of a lot of pressure on adolescent girls when boys are around. It Just Is. That's the problem with trying to live in The World As It Should Be. Really simple: maybe it's the way it should be, but it ain't the way it is.
The other conversation was with an oncologist at the National Cancer Institute. It was about medical care, and whether Patient Care was a priority for appropriate medical care. We never did agree on it... But we were split on the same lines: It Shouldn't Matter if the patient feels rapport with the doctor, since the drugs do the work. It Shouldn't Matter But It Does.
> I remember rather clearly being upset about what some other kids were saying to me. Can't remember what they said, but I remember what my dad said: "Just because someone calls you a 'rat-tailed baby babboon', it doesn't mean that you are one." Well, I'm sorry dad, but the way MY mind works, yes it does. A rational response doesn't take away the pain.
>Similar experiences, including the invalidation, and I'd say that it hurt more that way, when there was no one to turn to who understood. (It was always me having to understand -- and I do and did understand, but you know what? They lied to me: To understand all is not to forgive all, it's just that all that pain and anger gets turned in on me instead of being directed in the appropriate direction and processed. Guess where that leads?)
> If you ask me, irrationality is more natural than rationality. So, perhaps irrational pains and fears are more natural and more real than rational ones. But that's just me.
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> flbYou know, you've really got something there -- and it's something I'd love to take up, but haven't the energy right now to express myself. I may try again later, if I can. I think, though, that "rational" is an artificial construct that does us a lot more harm than good. Sometimes it's just a case of finding the basis for the seemingly irrational. (Like a horse I had who couldn't be tied: found out years later someone had tied her badly to a log, she got scared and pulled back -- and the log chased her! Of course the feeling of being trapped would stay with her, even if there was no immediately apparent reason or rationality behind it. You have to look for the basis of the response, before you say it's irrational.)
Thank you very much for bringing up some really interesting ideas, and doing so with so many fewer words than it takes me ;-D
poster:Racer
thread:344965
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040503/msgs/345119.html