To a large extent our society encourages rational as opposed to impulsive thinking. Rational thought is what makes one look smart; the logical person is believed more capable to make effective decisions. It is profitable to discover what this rationality is, if it exists at all.
It’s necessary for a person to be called rational to make decisions free from bias. Is this possible? Early psychologists told and their philosophical protégés tell us no – most of our decisions are not made by sequential, cold logic – they are manifestations of suppressed, irrational desires. Even the desire for rationality, so they like to say, may be nothing more than a morphed, childhood desire for the certainty of a father figure’s rigidity.
Of course, pure Freudianism is now thought to be at best fanciful - however popular it may be among literary theorists, unadulterated psychoanalysis has largely been discounted by the current psychological community. But one fact remains – what we do and think is largely unavailable to us. One isn’t aware of everything one does, and often one does act quite mindlessly. The situation is even more problematic with thought. This fact, however, was known long before Freud interviewed his first patient – just consult the ancient meditative traditions.
The question, therefore, isn’t whether people think before they do and know what they think; though classical economists loudly scream to the contrary from the very top of their ivory towers, most of the time people don’t act to their self-interest. What is the question is the following: do we have the capacity to be mindful? That question is not for continental philosophers, the various stripes of psychoanalysts, or those in the tradition of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman. That is a question for the individual, for by definition only he or she can perform their own introspection.
-Vishwanath
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