Rational Behaviour

RATIONAL BEHAVIOUR

Very often when I am entrusted with a work by family members, friends or colleagues, in order not to rely on memory, which fails me frequently, I always look for the ‘rationale’ behind the work or action. As many of our actions are not driven by ‘reason’, but arbitrariness, mere dependence on “reason’ alone would not take us far, I learnt to my dismay.

Why we are not rational? When we act on emotions, reason disappears. Emotions are powerful feelings that overwhelm us and there is suspension of human intelligence of which ‘reason’ is a part. The Ratio Emotive Theory (RET) says that one should detach himself/herself from emotion and view it independently. When likes and dislikes, drive us, they drive ‘reason’ too. Likes and dislikes come out of experience and often from inaccurate application of logic. From, a mere two or three incidents, we tend to generalize and tab them. To borrow a term from logic, we make an inductive leap without establishing causal connection. When we are intoxicated with power, we fail to act rationally. We believe, power gives us the sanction to act in a manner we choose to, whether with ‘reason’ or not. Power induces fear in others and when they act under fear, they act disastrously. The products of some of the finest schools and colleges, often brim with confidence. But confidence, when it borders on rashness, deviates from the path of reason. Misplaced confidence too is a sort of intoxication. When we act on pre-conceived notions or when we act with a mindset, which very often we do, we lose our power of reasoning.

We must always allow our knowledge to be questioned else it would degenerate into belief. Reason can withstand questioning and our knowledge can get strengthened in that process. Faith is an unquestioned belief and to make it rational, it needs to be questioned. One certainly can find enormous reasoning power in Sankara's Philosophy. Sankara was and continues to be the greatest Indian logician. His Bashyas are epitomes of excellence in reasoning powers. In Socrates's dialogues, constant questioning and answers lead to a new finding.

At times, we choose not to be rational for a purpose. To create fear in the mind of children, we tell them that God would pierce through their eyes ( Ummachi Kanna Kutthuvar), if they remain adamant in not taking food regularly or for any misbehaviour.

Edward de Bono, the lateral thinking man, gives an example, where we are so obsessed with the means that we lose sight of the objective or purpose. A man wanted to drink wine from a bottle and was struggling with opening the lid. Bono says that the objective was to drink the wine and not to remove the lid and removing the lid was one means of taking out the wine. Bono says that if means was not possible, it could have been done by just putting a hole on the lid.

Bono gives another classic example where even a perfectly rational act, is difficult to decipher. A young man, works in the fifteenth floor of a building. He would go by lift upto the 10th floor and the remaining five floors he would climb through the stairs. He has no qualms in using the lift to come down to the basement. Different explanations were offered for his strange behaviour. One explanation was that he wanted to do his morning exercise through climbing the stairs and he did not have enough energy to climb all the fifteen floors. Another explanation was that he had a girl friend in a tenth floor office and he wanted to whisper sweet nothings into her ears before he went to his office and having done that, with rejuvenated energy he could climb five floors. Another man, contested this theory saying that he would have had energy before meeting his sweet heart and having met her, he would have had no motivation to walk through the floors. Bono finally comes out with a simple but perfectly rational explanation. The man is short and even in full stretch, his hand would reach only up to 10th floor button. This would be the position, in whichever floor he gets into the lift. After coming out of the lift at tenth floor, he is under compulsion to walk through the remaining stairs. While going down, he has no such compulsions and therefore he uses the lift. One certainly can pick hole in this 'rational' theory also.

And finally, the advantage of every one acting rationally is that one need not always rely on ‘memory’ and also one need not put in efforts to be consistent. If one chooses to follow the deductive method of reasoning, one needs to have a strong premise and sound inference technique and in the inductive method, causally connected inductive leap. Reasoning is not an ornament to decorate an argument. It is the soul that sustains it.
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by

V.Mahadevan

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