What exactly is Rationalization?

Red_Faust · 2016-09-08T14:35:24+00:00

Rationalization is the generation of rational excuses by your neocortex to justify an emotion-based decision made by your primate brain.

"Hamster" is a nice shortcut, and the image it evokes is powerful, but this word has been abused on TRP. People use "hamster" here all day long, like "male hamstering exists", "everyone hamsters" as if rationalization was not a psychological mechanism deeply researched by a buttload of scientific studies.

When religious men here say that religion is Red Pill because it contains truth about women's psychology, they are rationalizing full speed. The fact that it contains truth about women's psychology (which is a true fact) doesn't make religion a truth. But it sounds logical.

The brain is an organ that has evolved to attach to its beliefs, keeping a consistent worldview. When your worldview is challenged, your mind perceives it as an attack, your primal brain gets angered, and your neocortex comes up with logical-sounding arguments that are, in reality, utter bullshit.

For me it's a constant vigilance to see where might I be rationalizing, keeping an open mind and always try to challenge my so-called beliefs - which are nothing more than hypotheses created by my brain pattern recognition software - are accurate by reality or are instead the byproduct of my ill-evolved monkey-head-steering-wheel gray mass.

Ultra-recommended reading: "The Believing Brain: from Ghosts and Gods to Politics" by Michael Shermer

BobBobCan · 2016-09-08T15:19:21+00:00

Essentially rationalization is the search for good reason. One of the prominent inner needs of man is to feel that he is right. This can take several forms: right in his own eyes, in the eyes of others(family, co-workers, friends,..), and finally to belong to a group which he considers right and which he can proclaim as noble, just and good. But that righteousness is not absolute righteousness, true and authentic justice. In fact, what matters is not to be right, to act right or that the group is right, but to seem right. To find reasons for asserting that one is right, and have these reasons shared by others.

So rationalization occurs when the individual is prey to the difficulties of social life. The collision with various groups and other individuals provokes tension, conflicts, frustrations, failures and anxieties for which we have a low tolerence. What follows is usually an attempt to give oneself excuses and reasons for avoiding the disagreeable consequences of such conflicts, or fabricates a conclusion, which explains his failure and gives it the appearance of success("sour grapes"); or he justifies it by creating a scapegoat, or justifies his conduct by showing that the other party is to blame(racial prejudice), and so forth. Of course this is an unconscious process.

All this really corresponds to the refusal to see reality - his own reality first of all - as it is, for that is often intolerable; and his refusal to accept that he might be wrong.

Title	What exactly is Rationalization?
Author	NeoreactionSafe
Upvotes	9
Comments	4
Date	September 8, 2016 1:13 PM UTC (9 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/TheRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/51r88u/what_exactly_is_rationalization/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/TheRedPill/what-exactly-is-rationalization.62099 https://theredarchive.com/post/62099

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