Irrational Survival

neptewn
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Irrational Survival

I was just thinking about how I would behave if somebody did something horrific to one of my kids. I believe this is an instance in which I would lose all reason. It begs the question, is there a reason for irrational thought? Does it allow us a measure of survivability agaisnt these emotional climaxes?

 

 

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. - William S. Burroughs


digitalbeachbum
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neptewn wrote:I was just

neptewn wrote:

I was just thinking about how I would behave if somebody did something horrific to one of my kids. I believe this is an instance in which I would lose all reason. It begs the question, is there a reason for irrational thought? Does it allow us a measure of survivability agaisnt these emotional climaxes?

I've thought of this too but I would hope that I could keep rational enough to see a non-violent resolution of the situation. I think different levels of the crime would be more difficult to deal with than others; such as verbally abusing my child or raping them.


A_Nony_Mouse
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.

neptewn wrote:
I was just thinking about how I would behave if somebody did something horrific to one of my kids. I believe this is an instance in which I would lose all reason. It begs the question, is there a reason for irrational thought? Does it allow us a measure of survivability agaisnt these emotional climaxes?

What is irrational about killing the son of a bitch? This is a quid pro quo. Doing anything to my kids without my consent is unacceptable. Horrific is beyond unacceptable. It has nothing to do with losing reason. It is the only rational response.

Grow up and smell the roses. Do not initiate force. Kill anyone who does. That leads to a polite society.

 

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neptewn
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digitalbeachbum

digitalbeachbum wrote:

neptewn wrote:
II was just thinking about how I would behave if somebody did something horrific to one of my kids. I believe this is an instance in which I would lose all reason. It begs the question, is there a reason for irrational thought? Does it allow us a measure of survivability agaisnt these emotional climaxes?

 I've thought of this too but I would hope that I could keep rational enough to see a non-violent resolution of the situation. I think different levels of the crime would be more difficult to deal with than others; such as verbally abusing my child or raping them.
 I had a friend who was a marine in the first gulf war, after he got out, he started down the path of becoming a cop. At some point along that path, he realised there would be situations he would be faced with, that he believed he wouldn't be able to maintain control against, and at that point took a detour to another career. The sad part being is he's the type of guy you would probably want to be a cop.  

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

neptewn wrote:
I was just thinking about how I would behave if somebody did something horrific to one of my kids. I believe this is an instance in which I would lose all reason. It begs the question, is there a reason for irrational thought? Does it allow us a measure of survivability agaisnt these emotional climaxes?

What is irrational about killing the son of a bitch? This is a quid pro quo. Doing anything to my kids without my consent is unacceptable. Horrific is beyond unacceptable. It has nothing to do with losing reason. It is the only rational response.

Grow up and smell the roses. Do not initiate force. Kill anyone who does. That leads to a polite society.

While I understand and agree, in these scenarios, the only reasonable responce would be, too want to kill the mother fucker. This is probably why crimes of passion in some situations can be legally defended. I'm not saying I wouldn't kill the fucker, I'm saying it's not reason that would get me there, but emotion.

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. - William S. Burroughs


Zaq
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The (causal) reason we have

The (causal) reason we have non-rational thought is that it's a hell of a lot faster to just use cached responses or wild approximations.  If you ask a computer to find the 500th prime number, and it doesn't have any prime numbers stored in memory, it will have to calculate all the first 500 prime numbers, which takes a really freaking long time.  If it has a massive table of prime numbers that have been passed to it by its manufacturers, it can tell you the 500th very quickly.

 

For tasks that need to be done super fast, it's necessary to shortcut the process that would let us reason out what to do and just doitnow!  So we have "rules of thumb" and emotional answers because we can get at them immediately.  If some guy does something terrible to my kids, the rational response is that society should do something to keep the incident from occurring again.  This will involve some combination of rehabilitation and incarceration (keep him away from kids while we teach him not to do that) and a legitimate punishment (to serve as a discincentive to others that might consider doing the same thing in the future).  But the shortcut method is slayhimnowbeforehedoesitagain! This achieves all the goals pertinent to the continuation of my genes and over a much shorter time span to boot, but it happens at the cost of the dude who messed with my kids.

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http://silverskeptic.blogspot.com/2011/03/consistent-standards.html

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Kapkao
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neptewn wrote:I was just

neptewn wrote:

I was just thinking about how I would behave if somebody did something horrific to one of my kids. I believe this is an instance in which I would lose all reason. It begs the question, is there a reason for irrational thought?

Yes; instinct, biological drive (lack of iron causes "pica" ), hormonal stress (unhealthy maternal behaviors), and neurotransmitter imbalances (too many mental illnesses to list on one page).

 edit2; granted, those are just a few examples of irrational behavior due to medical/physiological basis.

Quote:
Does it allow us a measure of survivability agaisnt these emotional climaxes?

It does "weed out" the congenitally mentally ill during times of social stresses; ergo retaliation/narcissistic injury does reduce survivability. Otherwise their is little reason to remain irrational for a sustained period of time.

edit; stupid fucking fckeditor

edit3; Underline + "Narcissistic injury" is a potent cause of irrationality described by neptewn.

“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)