Irrational Animal

The progressive outcry and mob intimidation (a distinction without a difference) in the wake of the George Zimmerman not guilty verdict serves to demonstrate in microcosm the single most disastrous cumulative effect of contemporary psychology, public education, and popular entertainment: the denial of our rational faculty.

Throughout most of Western history, reason has occupied an exalted place among human powers -- for good reason. Without it, civil society would be impossible, as modern man is in the process of proving definitively. It is the moderating faculty, the buffer between the ever-changing feelings to which we are susceptible and the physical responses to stimuli of which we are capable. It distinguishes us from the beasts -- or if you prefer the more contemporary vernacular, from machines. If "stimulus and response" is all we are, then our reactions cannot be helped, and entire categories of human existence -- responsibility, guilt, dignity, self-control, endurance, grace under pressure, and tolerance -- are reduced to delusions. We are entirely what circumstances compel us to be, and all our actions are merely misnamed reactions, irresistible impulses, produced not by ourselves, but by our "drives."  (more...)

Irrational Animal