Behavioral economists and “Intellectuals” love to talk about rationality or more accurately irrationality. Steven Pinker recently tweeted out a description of a course he’ll be teaching. The description reads, “Rationality is, or ought to be, the basis of everything we think and do.” This is ludicrous.
When intellectuals speak of people acting irrationality, what they’re mean is that you are acting in a way they cannot comprehend. Irrational is polite society’s way of calling you a heretic. You are not acting in accordance with their best interest for you. Trump supporters are irrational. The religious are irrational. The disagreeable are irrational.
The intellectual finds the alcoholic drinking a beer irrational. They say the alcoholic is not acting in his own best interest. The alcoholic drinking a beer he is irrational because he is not acting in a sober man’s best interest. I say the alcoholic drinking a beer is the most rational, precisely because he is acting in the alcoholic’s best interest. In fact, had the alcoholic denied himself, then I would accuse him of acting irrationally. An alcoholic ought to drink beer. For an alcoholic to deny himself a beer is like a fish to deny himself water. Sobriety would make him a fish out of water preciously because he did not drink like a fish.
To act rationally is to act logically or reasonably. It is rational for the thief to steal. It is logical for the murderer to kill. And it is reasonable to think a pompous professor pompous.
Animals are rational. They act in accordance with instinct and impulse. If food is left out, the cat will eat it. And if enough food is let out the cat will get fat. A fat cat is not irrational. The fat cat is supremely rational. Cats have no virtues. To imagine a cat practicing temperance is to imagine a unicorn. Neither exists, and both are absurd. A beast always does what it ought.
And while many an alcoholic can be a beast, because they are irrational they can be a man.
Pinker a proud devout atheist would obviously detest the irrational. Precisely because the irrational is divine. For the most irrational things are divine. It is irrational to move and yet be unmoved. And it is irrational for bread to become flesh. And it is completely irrational for God to become man.
