RULE BY REASON...OR NOT

      A debate of sorts has popped up in our corner of the Blogosphere recently about the relative position of reason and emotion driving social thought these days. It's an old debate, one side argues essentially that emotion (or intuition) can tell us things beyond what our reason can grasp, there is truth to that. The other side argues that perception frequently doesn't equal reality, and there's truth to that view also. Human beings are mixture of the two: emotions are often instinctual and act as a check on cold reason, while reason is developed to solve problems and seek solutions. In our structure of complimentary genders, it's noted that each gender has a particular strength towards one or the other. 

   As for the debate itself, my position might surprise some, but I believe that in our postmodern society---which I don't by any means believe is an advanced one---is that neither reason nor emotion is driving much of anything. To set this up, let's look at an assessment of postmodern American culture that I published a few weeks ago:

   "Postmodern Americans, by and large, are an ignorant and spiritless race, where the Rule of Law is no longer respected but instead people are governed entirely by the arbitrary will of a handful of petty political satraps who rule over them for the sole purpose of sponging from them as large a share of their property and production as possible to support the grandees in Supranational Commerce...

  "Utterly apathetic to either political or social affairs, and considering ourselves (as we really are) the despised subjects and de facto slaves of the Moneyed Interests, we have no national or community spirit to keep from falling into the most degraded intellectual poverty and moral degeneracy imaginable. In fact, all throughout human history and even in most of the world today it would be difficult to find a nation more devoid of character than the 21st Century United States has produced...

  "The current race of Americans are always agog for anything novel or scandalous in sexuality and also for new and increasingly potent narcotics: if news headlines and the entertainment media are any indication, they seem to care for little else. In this depressing atmosphere, these credulous fools are easily imposed upon by celebrities, influencers, or any con-artist who knows how to 'work' a crowd."

     Concerning reason; we only need consider the depressing fact that the top-selling new technology in America in 2023 is Artificial Intelligence. The very idea that we actually need machines to tell us what to think or what decisions to make speaks volumes. We're not talking here about machines of convenience: computers which can calculate complicated mathematical formulae, online archives or encyclopedias and such. A great example is the so-called smart home, where apparently a computer can take over such complex tasks as operating dials, switches, faucets, etc. They can even enforce Cancel Culture in some instances. 

    AI is even being widely deployed in relationships---Heaven forbid one should have their own tastes and interests. Not surprisingly, even AI partners are starting to be reported. 

    Reason is a very personal thing; and we're obviously a culture which doesn't rely very heavily upon it. I've literally seen people standing outside in the rain checking their smartphones for a weather report. For the most part, no one will have an unqualified opinion on anything unless 'experts' tell them they should. Who's paying these experts or what their agendas might be, no asks nor cares to know. In cases like the recent submarine disaster or the numbers of casualties from the Loyalty Vaxx, this rejection of reason sometimes has fatal consequences.

  What about feelings and emotions? Many Conservative pundits argue that our culture is too 'feelings-driven.' I disbelieve that. I don't believe that feelings play any more part in our collective national meltdown than Reason does. As evidence of this, consider Americans' astronomical rates of narcotics consumption and addiction (both the illegal and prescription varieties). Narcotics are designed to blunt emotions and feelings. 

  Many of the Conservative critics of 'feelings' are mistaking cause-and-effect. They mistake the hysteria and outrage often exhibited by the Whacko Left Wing (although there are expressions of it on the Right too) as a genuine outpouring of sincerely felt emotions. That's not what it is at all: to put it bluntly, it's mob psychology reinforced by mass and social media. In other words, it's feelings by consensus. 

   

   The last three years have shown hysterical reactions to carefully managed viral stories from the Floyd Riots to the 'I Stand with Ukraine' nonsense resulting in all sorts of chaos. It's obvious that nearly everyone engaging in these outbursts were impervious to reason; but it doesn't follow that they blindly were following their feelings. They were simply reacting. The reaction came because others were reacting, and if everyone's terrified of a Chinese weather balloon---that's simply how one is supposed to feel.  Just as Ameroboobs are content to let others do their thinking for them, they let everyone do their feeling for them as well. 

   This largely postmodern phenomenon of Consensus-driven culture is a self-reinforcing loop. That's why controlling the narrative is a concept so important to our would-be cultural elite. Pay off some 'experts' and manipulate a few algorithms and one can run the table with no regard for either reason or feelings because they effectively control both. Anybody who actually thinks or feels gets marginalized as a crank because---everybody, including the experts, all agree.

  So it's not really a contest anymore about Reason or Emotion, it's getting people at large to start using both again. How we do that, I don't know.