On Clueless Rationalism

I resent the ubiquity of throwing invective - "stupid", "libtard" "bigot" "racist" "fascist" etc. - on other people on the internet. It is a sure sign of intellectual laziness that has become a norm of the discourse these days, not just on the internet but in general. More specifically, it is an act of avoiding the difficult task of trying to understand motivation behind other people's thoughts or behavior in favor of simplistic demonization of them. Someone says or does something we dislike - we judge him a bad person because it is much easier than making an effort to understand the reason behind this behavior.

Take for example, the Left's favorite blood sport of posting quotes by conservative politicians and media personalities and treating them as evidence of ignorance, stupidity, racism, bigotry etc. There is double irony here. First, this practice of publicly deriding "stupid" or "bigoted" figures enormously boosts their public outreach beyond their original audience. That reason alone is sufficient to explain why these politicians and media personality say such things. Any rational person in the business in which his/her success critically depends on his/her popularity would use attention grabbers to expand that popularity. And what is a better attention grabber than saying or doing things that you know will outrage people your perceive as your enemies?

But the second layer of irony lies much deeper than attention grabbing gimmicks. A lot of what people say or do does not have only a utilitarian function - communicate an idea or obtain some utility - but a ritualistic-expressive function as well. This means that people often say or do things to express who they are where they stand in society. In such situations, their choice of words or acts is governed by this ritualistic-expressive function rather than the truth function of what they say or the utilitarian function of what they do. What they say may be patently false and what they do may serve no utilitarian function whatsoever, but they say or do it anyway because it serves the ritualistic-expressive function.  An obvious example is people saying things that may stretch the. truth or be even patently false to bond with their spouses, children or friends.  A kid flunks school because he is lazy, skips classes, and gets zero parental support.  All his family and friends know that darn well, but will tell the kid that it was bad teachers, bad schools and "racist" society that failed to provide him with proper education.   This is not a statement of fact, but a statement of social solidarity.

This is what the rat-choice folk, which includes most of the Left, fail to understand. They hear something they find not only patently false i.e. irrational but also objectionable, but in their reaction to it they focus only on the rational aspect of it (truth function) while totally ignoring the emotive aspect (ritualistic-expressive function). And since the irrationality of what they hear is obvious on its face, they easiest explanation these rat-choice folk can find is that the person saying it is ill-informed or, using the vernacular, "stupid" "bigoted" "racist" and so on.

But this is also a wrong explanation, because the chances are that things in question were said not to communicate the logical truth function, i.e for rational reasons, but to express the social identity position of the speaker- i.e. for ritualistic emotive reasons. If I see myself as a folksy homeboy in the "heart of America," this defines not only who I am and who are my peers are (i.e. my "ingroup") but also who I am not and who are not my peers (i.e. my "outgroup"). Consequently, a lot of what I say or do will serve ritualistic-expressive function to mark who I am and who I am not. Wearing a plaid shirt, driving a pickup truck, avidly watching NASCAR races, carrying a gun, and believing certain common-sense platitudes serves that ritualistic-expressive function because it effectively distinguishes the "in-group" of "homeboys" from the "out-group" of "city dwellers" or "liberal elites."

What is more, this ritualistic-expressive function is likely to be evoked more often when the identity of the "in-group" is being threatened. In such situations, speakers often resort to hyperbole as a more forceful way of marking their social identity and status. If the "homoeboy" identity is threatened by economic and cultural changes, people espousing this identity will likely use exaggeration to mark that identity. This entail conspicuous displays of identity symbols, like pickup trucks, guns, etc, as well as conspicuous displays of markers that differentiate them from out-groups, such as saying or doing things that out-groups consider outrageous, e,g, disparaging comments about minorities and women, disdain for the environment, or various expressions of anti-intellectualism.

This explains the nonsense that politicians and media personalities say - it is designed to mark their in-group affiliation to gain popularity among their target audiences. In the same vein, "converting" to radical Islam, Judaism, Hinduism etc. is a social identity and status marker to differentiate the respective in-groups from out-groups, such as Western liberals, secularists, etc. The extremism of these beliefs is proportional to the sense of threat the believers feel from the out-groups. The greater the threat the more the belief or action would differ from those accepted by out-groups. If the outgroup professes modernity, the ingroup would espouse going back to medieval times. If the outgroup professes equality, the ingroup would espouse extreme inequality. If the outgroup espouses rationality and science, the ingroup espouses extreme-anti-intellectualism. If the outrgoup rejects physical violence, the ingroup would engage in extreme acts of such violence complete with public executions and beheading.

The greatest irony in it is that the folks who engage in these seemingly irrational and barbaric forms of speech and behavior show a greater understanding of their enemies than the rat-choice folk who find their behavior and ideas repulsive. The former understand what motivates their enemies, what makes them like or dislike things, what makes them toe the line, and what makes them cringe, and guide their speech and actions accordingly. The latter, otoh, fail in this difficult intellectual task of understanding their enemies, and cover up their ignorance, or perhaps intellectual laziness, with simplistic demonization.