Tolstoy said, 'The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed either by a change of life or by a change of conscience.' Many of us have elected to adjust our consciences rather than our lives. Our powers of rationalization are unlimited. They allow us to live in luxury and indifference while others, whom we could help if we chose to, starve and go to hell.
Randy AlcornTags: compassion power change indifference conscience hell guilt stewardship tolstoy hunger conviction starvation rationalization caring
When I was a young philosopher, I asked a senior colleague, Pat Suppes (then and now a famous philosopher of science and an astute student of human nature), what the secret of happiness was. Instead of giving me advice, he made a rather droll observation about what a lot of people who were happy with themselves seem to have done, namely:
1. Take a careful inventory of their shortcomings and flaws
2. Adopt a code of values that treats these things as virtues
3. Admire themselves for living up to it
Brutal people admire themselves for being manly; compulsive pedants admire themselves for their attention to detail; naturally selfish and mean people admire themselves for their dedication to helping the market reward talent and punish failure, and so on.
Tags: happiness human-nature ego rationalization self-love the-secret-of-happiness
Your explanation is good, but your herring doesn't fry, as we say in Ramaldah," he exploded.
Andrew AshlingTags: truth excuses explanations rationalization obyann-merlinger-meadows ramaldah
If someone were to propose that the planets go around the sun because all planet matter has a kind of tendency for movement, a kind of motility, let us call it an ‘oomph,’ this theory could explain a number of other phenomena as well. So this is a good theory, is it not? No. It is nowhere near as good as the proposition that the planets move around the sun under the influence of a central force which varies exactly inversely as the square of the distance from the center. The second theory is better because it is so specific; it is so obviously unlikely to be the result of chance. It is so definite that the barest error in the movement can show that it is wrong; but the planets could wobble all over the place, and, according to the first theory, you could say, ‘Well, that is the funny behavior of the ‘oomph.
Richard P. FeynmanTags: science imagination theory evidence rationalization rigor scrutiny pseudoscience explainability
I didn't know that empty rationalization was part of your programming," said Ram.
"We would not be fit companions for human beings without it.
Tags: rationalization chapter-20
ingenuity was apparently given man in order that he may supply himself in crises with shapes and sounds with which to guard himself from truth.
William FaulknerTags: truth plato rationalization
At cocktail parties, I played the part of a successful businessman's wife to perfection. I smiled, I made polite chit-chat, and I dressed the part. Denial and rationalization were two of my most effective tools in working my way through our social obligations. I believed that playing the roles of wife and mother were the least I could do to help support Tom's career.
During the day, I was a puzzle with innumerable pieces. One piece made my family a nourishing breakfast. Another piece ferried the kids to school and to soccer practice. A third piece managed to trip to the grocery store. There was also a piece that wanted to sleep for eighteen hours a day and the piece that woke up shaking from yet another nightmare. And there was the piece that attended business functions and actually fooled people into thinking I might have something constructive to offer.
I was a circus performer traversing the tightwire, and I could fall off into a vortex devoid of reality at any moment. There was, and had been for a very long time, an intense sense of despair. A self-deprecating voice inside told me I had no chance of getting better. I lived in an emotional black hole.
p20-21, talking about dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder).
Tags: reality social despair emotion denial depression acting perfection social-anxiety puzzle hopeless hopelessness mental-health rationalization mental-illness circus pieces pretending dissociative-identity-disorder multiple-personality-disorder black-hole parts mpd did functioning
When we look at Abraham, Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael, we see that God's grace can survive our three-ring-circuses of compromise, rationalization and weak faith.
Carl Edwin Prude Jr.Tags: faith grace compromise rationalization anchored-in-light
Many common lies and hypocrisies are like that, just out of the harmony of the moment.
Saul BellowTags: hypocrisy lying harmony rationalization
We live Law to ourselves. Our reason is our Law.
John MiltonTags: rationalization relativism legalism
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