Rational Irrationality:Intro
Narrative is King
I have touched upon this topic before. I keep coming back to it because it is (in my opinion, education, and experience) the key to understanding humanity and what it does and why it does what it does.
Back in the halcyon days of the late 80s/early 90s when I was a grad student in communication/rhetoric, one of the hot topics was the “rhetorical construction of reality.”
This is something that was never really understood by anyone outside of the field. I am not sure that a lot of people in the field understood it, either. That was my impression from reading their work—especially in retrospect.
Far too much of it was down in the weeds of details. The mechanics of reading/speaking and of language. The minutae of behaviors and body language. It was very hard to build a big picture of what was actually going on—at least, that is my memory of it.
After a few decades of thinking about it, researching, writing, teaching, observing—I think I have devloped an understanding of it. One that is reasonably understandable.
Things that are important to understand (most importantly, this is a TLDR version of this):
There is a gulf (often vast) between what IS (what we can call objective physical reality (OPR, for brevity) and human reality;
Experiences are mediated through our biology (senses, brain structure/function/chenistry) and the cognitive and sub-cognitive structures supported by the brain.
Human experience is ego-centric, intersubjective, and social.
Human behavior/interaction is rooted in 2 and 3 and bears no necesary relationship to 1 in many cases.
Much (if not all) of human behavior is deterministic (people are NOT going to like this one)—that is, you do things that you do not actually think about, you just do. Big arguments about this one, I recommend reading the work of Robert Sapolsky to get an idea of it.
With respect to number 1, this seems rather obvious on the basis of observed human behavior and the human willingness to ignore or change “reality” to suit its needs desires. More on this when we get to #4. Take it as a given, for the moment.
I am not going to go into the mechanical details of the brain and brain function here. That is not my area of specialization/interest. I am relying upon the work of people who are specialists/experts.
Human experience is ego-centric, intersubjective, and social. We start off a few thousand years ago with this one:
“Of all things the measure is Man, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not.”
This was taught by a fellow by the name of Protagoras. Protagoras was a Sophist back in Athens in the 400s BC. He made his living teaching people how to win court cases, basically.
Our reference for reality is ourselves. We measure reality in terms of relationship to ourselves. Because of human variability (arising from a variety of factors) each human “measuring stick” differs to a greater or lesser degree from every other one. Each set of experiences is unique, because of that variability. Each expression of those experiences is different because of that variability.
The statement (and what it expresses) are NOT an argument that reality (OFR) is subjective. It is the argument that our EXPERIENCE of OFR is subjective. This is a point that many miss.
Basic, simple example:
Person A: “It’s hot today, need to take this jacket off.”
Person B: “Actually, I am kind of chilly, I was just thinking about putting a sweater on.”
Both of these people are correct, despite standing next to each other in the same room at the same time. The are verbalizing their EXPERIENCE. Because this is subjective, they can both be correct—and they can also argue about it (to no good resolution, however).
Importantly, however, if one says (reading a thermometer):
It is 25 degrees C.
THAT is a statement of fact (OPR). The other person can disagree, but would be wrong. One is still hot and the other chilly, however. That did not change.
What did change is that they stepped out of direct human experience into the abstract. A temperature scale was created. Devices to measure temperature were created and used.
It does not matter if the measuring scale is ARBITRARY, so long as it is uniform across uses.
The separation of the human experience from the thing (temperature) is what makes things like science possible.
The problem is that it is very very difficult to seperate the human experience from the thing, especially in daily life.
In other words, so long as you are talking about your actual experience—and nothing beyond that—(and not lying), you cannot be wrong. Difficultly, no one can prove that you are right, either. We have to take your word for it (and hope you are not lying).
Have to go to work, so going to stop here, for the moment :)