Football
I don’t like football by itself, by I do enjoy what it tells us as a civilization. It’s at the same time the sign that we are intelligent beings able to live together, and also the sign that deep down we’re irrational animals. On one hand, it’s a game with rules agreed on by all, that joins people together from different nations and continents. On the other, it brings to the surface the most primitive emotions and behaviours. It gets a human being all worked up about an abstract game, which the outcome won’t affect anything “real” – it won’t change your ability to reproduce, your ability to survive. How can we get so irrational about a rational construct?
I was reminded of this dichotomy by this article on the New Scientist technology section, about a system to disrupt offensive chants on football stadiums.
I’m not complaining about irrationality, but about the destructive force of our primitive behaviours. Good things like art, some might say, come from our irrational side, but it would be a better world if our rational sides could tame what leads us to war and killing.
Well said. It is our irrational side which allows us to create (possibly) something completely new.
Well, without irrationality, we wouldn’t be impulsive, and that would cut short a lot of the things that make life fun.
One definiton of rational is sane or of sound mind. To me very ambiguous. Given the level of our knowledge of the mind we would have to categorize rationality as a subjective concept. Therefore, depending on your definition of sane, averting war cannot be categorized as a rational concept. I think it has more to do with morality. Is morality a rational concept?
Depends on how you define morality. I think the best “morality” systems are based on time independent reciprocal rules, e.g., the Golden Rule – do to others what you would like others to do to you, and don’t do to others what you wouldn’t like others to do to you, both on equivalent circunstances. Of course you have to couple this with other rules for it to work (where it gets complicated, because “equivalent circunstances” is a very broad concept).
The important word (for me) that you used is “rule”. I don’t think things that important should be categorised as rules. It should be part of us. Which I think it is possible if people are able to free themselves from their misconcepts and see things as they really are. Do you see what I am trying to say? Very difficult to achieve, though, given all the external factors involved.
What I am trying to say is rationality is a cold concept. It does not involve love. Morality is less cold. But you can argue it is also based on a set of rules possibly based on hedonistic concepts. What is needed is an inner awakening and an ever growing respect for yourself and as a result for others. Then things come naturally and dont have to be governed by anything.
P.S. Aunt Rita says we should be working 
Can you imagine how terribly boring we would be if we were totally rational beings. Complete rationality to me equates to complete predictability. Like a computer program which always responds in a “correct” fashion when confronted with a problem.