The common understanding is that humans are irrational. You can leave off the "beings" part. Instinctual? Sure, yes. Emotional? Mhm. Logical? Ehhhhh... sometimes? Reasonable? By turns. The common understanding is that humans are rational. It's unfortunate that the base assumption is so. Where it is born, who knows. My thought is that the seed of the assumption is formed in the assumption that you are a human and you're decisions and behaviors are rational to you and have furthered your survival and existence so if another human exists their behaviors and decisions must be rational too because they are also surviving. Something along those lines. It gets reinforced all over the place from every angle and channel of input. You get it. You are rational. Why would you choose to do something that would jeopardize your very existence? You don't have a death wish. You are alive!
Humans are irrational. Please stop building arguments and drawing lines in the sand from the standpoint of echos reverberating from advertisements and observed actions sculpted into frameworks and canned calls and responses and your pasts and your futures. We are not rational. Beings? Sure. Yes. Rational? No. Rational some of the time? Sure, yes. If you want to make it absolute, one or zero, then we are one. No being or thing is rational all of the time. Okay, some things are. Coins are rational. Geometry is rational. Math is rational and even when it's irrational it's rational (I think... I knew mathematicians existed and played at the fringes... pretty sure that foggy math is still relatively... okay, maybe not... you get the point). Alright, everything is irrational!
In all seriousness, life has been very frustrating trying to understand why events bring out expressions of concern for well being and continued survival in strange ways. The most recent shooting is not a tipping point, but mumbling to myself while I worked through the day and the following day was telling. Enter vice and criminality.
When the argument is made that laws have to stay the way they are because the criminal element will find a way to get what they want regardless of what laws are or are not in place and the citizenry must be able to protect itself from this shadow force, I cringe. That shadow is being cast from the rational mind inside.
Is there a criminal element in the human population? Yes. Is that criminal element rational? Of course not. The percentage of the human population that makes up that criminal element is extremely visible and equally small. It skews perception. How much of that perceived element is gratified and punched up by the echoed reinforcement of "I am a rational human being and criminals are humans and therefore also rational." It is incredibly basic. If you make laws to prevent something from happening or encourage something to happen to promote survival, a lot of humans will see the outcomes, understand mutual survival, and continue to be. Those same communal laws will be ignored by some humans for all sorts of reasons and interactions and protein chains and chemical reactions. We are not rational! As much as you want to believe it.
Let's bring it to weapons. I need to be able to purchase a weapon capable of defending my life against the criminal element. The rational criminal will find a way to get the weapon they want. I need to be able to get one capable of answering whatever challenge that may be and limiting my options is sending me to certain harm. You're flinching away from your own shadow. Life is insecure. Life is irrational. The penalty for your crime is twenty years in prison. I'm still going to do it. The penalty for your crime is 40 years in prison. I'm still going to do it. The penalty for your crime is 80 years in prison. I'm still going to do it. The penalty for your crime is consecutive life sentences. It's the principle! The penalty for your crime is death. You don't understand how much I've been through! The penalty for your crime - will never be able to influence some humans actions. That population is a lot smaller than advertised.
So you have to carry a gun because if you were them you would have a gun and you are rational, unlike them, and you follow the law because the law keeps everyone alive and well and they'd have one anyway because that's what you would do. You have to protect yourself against the irrational ones. Sometimes it makes me giggle the way people perceive laws because we see their statements about them and wonder how much of their conviction comes from what they've observed and how much comes from the little voices inside their own heads that they mash and thumb down and keep inside because they are reasonable humans doing what's best for human survival instead of slamming the door shut on who they are only to have it pop open a slip with a loud screeeeeeeeaak an inch or two because the bolt didn't quite seat to the strike plate, but the door's hinges are stout.
Getting what you want, when you want it, when you need it, if laws and community prohibit it, is not nearly as easy as television and hearsay and books and articles make it sound. How many times have you followed an instruction manual to the letter and failed? How many times have you gone to a holiday office party to be sociable and improve your image and come away exactly the same as you arrived? How many times have you turned right on a red lit intersection with a dedicated right lane lamp because you were late and the lanes were clear? How many times did you walk fifteen minutes away from the bar to get a pack of smokes and fire one up on the way back to the bar because they didn't sell them there and disallowed smoking on the premises? The easy stuff. The forgivable stuff.
Ramp it up. Imagine that gas station is thirty miles away. Imagine that intersection has five cameras pointed at it. Imagine that party was organized by you and you showed up fashionably late too. Imagine holding that instruction manual in your hand, closed, as you flipped the switch to "on" and the entire K'nex set whirred, wobbled, and cracked to pieces in seconds. Getting what you want, when you want it is not an easy task, but it's fun to think hypothetically as a rational human.
"If I were them, I could do that. I would do that! If we are to survive we must make sure that if they do that (they are rational because that's what I would do and I am rational) we can stop them." No, you couldn't. It's hilarious and frustrating at once. If I want to do drugs, I will find a way to do drugs! No, not really. If it's convenient, why not. The feeling may pass. The chemical programming may or may not. The decision making is tied to the chemicals and past experiences hard coded upstairs. It may take a while to shift. It may never shift. If it's not readily available, fifty one miles is just too damn long to go get it so I'll stew and grind on with my life without it. The rational addict goes to get it, makes a way, finds someone who knows someone who heard about someone that was seen somewhere once and goes there to meet them for lunch. The irrational human stumbles on through the next day and the next day and sits down some afternoons to cuss quietly or aloud and does something else with its time until it becomes a little more convenient and sometimes reflects on why its so upset in the first place. Sometimes it kills itself, sometimes it hurts others, sometimes it decides to drive fifty one miles to ask a question. Sometimes it decides now is now and another day is another day.
It's guffaw disappointing when the shadowman is invoked as a reason to do or not do something. The shadowmen are arming themselves, laws be damned; do you want me to die?! The shadowmen are circulating drugs all over the place; what of the children? The shadowmen, the shadowmen, the shadowmen! Without laws keeping step with the threat of the shadows no one is safe!
Yes, no one is safe. No ones safety is ever guaranteed. That goes back to when humans had to worry about giant nocturnal multi-legged hunters stealing away their curious young. People die. People will be killed. Someone may murder you. Someone you know. Someone you know may murder someone you know. People find ways to get what they want or need and laws don't stop them no matter how much they have to risk or harm themselves to get it. The answer isn't lowering the threshold from irrational decision to action. Raise it. Otherwise you might as well be trying to fix a hole in a canoe by punching more holes so that everyone is treading water. If everyone is under threat of drowning we are all safe, right? Another terrible analogy. Believing making something proven and observed to be extremely hazardous to other people readily available to everyone to level an imaginary playing field is just flat laughable.
Why are you so afraid of the shadowman?
Who's been whispering in your ear?
How do you not see the upside-down superimposed on what you advocate for and not pause?
We are not rational people. Hearing arguments bounce back and forth with real ramifications, buoyed by this ghost echo of an assumption of reasonable behavior, it's stupefying. The invocation of this evildoer for all seasons with no regard for law or just basic basic basic irrational humanness is disheartening. But we are rational people. We will survive.
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The Shadow
