Why get something for nothing when you can pay for it?

I have been asked why I portray human beings as being irrational. As I have said earlier, human beings have the capacity for rationality, and, we can be very rational when we put our minds to it, but we do not start from that position. Human beings pay lots of money in supermarkets for bottles of water which they can get for free any time they wish by turning on a tap. A rational being would buy a bottle of something, perhaps Coca Cola, and then, after having consumed the Coca Cola, fill the empty bottle with tap water if they wished to have a bottle of water for their convenience. When you buy a bottle of water in a supermarket, do you really think that the people who produced that bottle actually made the water, or that their water is somehow different from that which you get from a tap? As I said before, I am as irrational as the next person, but I draw the line at buying water; that is a descent into insanity, it is quite extreme irrationality. Bottled water is, however, a good metaphor for our consumer society and the power of advertising. The modern discipline of marketing is the science of fooling people and exploiting their irrational nature. It convinces you that the water you are buying is better than normal tap water when even a moments reflection will tell your rational self that this is an impossibility.

However, as I have also previously noted, I do not claim any great insight into such matters. It was David Hume who taught us the basic concept that our reason is a result of our feelings, that is, we do not feel the things we do, for example about what is right and wrong, about what is good and bad, from the application of reason, in fact the opposite is true, that we reason about things because of our feelings (that reason is, as he said, the slave of the passions) which are dominated by our socialisation. It was Sigmund Freud who taught us that when our feelings (what he termed our affective interests) motivate us in relation to any kind of phenomenon, we are liable to act like imbeciles and our reason flies out of the window. It is only when we master our feelings and consciously apply reason that we are able to act in a truly civilised manner, that our intellect can only reliably function when it is removed from the influence of our emotional impulses. You see our intelligence is not an independent force, it is, as both Hume and Freud point out very dependent on our emotional life.

I was drawn to this topic by the fact that the last post I published, warning you that this new year may be your last, attracted more views than any other post I have published. I may be wrong, but I suspect that was because some people may have thought that I was about to predict the end of the world, instead of just the end of your annual holiday. Such ideas of Armageddon appeal to people's irrationality, whereas they are not particularly interested in reasoned argument, it is too boring. I can sympathise with that as I am an avid fan of Terry Pratchett and appreciate escaping from reality from time to time.

I have come to the conclusion that the capitalist system that dominates our Western nations is in the early stages of its death. That is because, as I continually post here, it is founded on a false set of premises and theories. The capitalism that it purports to represent was abandoned many years ago, and the discipline of economics has become basterdised to the point of unrecognisability. Economists simply no longer quite know what they are talking about. Have a good new year and be tolerant and kind. Ps. I watched my favourite English team win 2.1 on Boxing Day thus recovering from their 3.0 drubbing last Saturday. I thought I'd share that with you!

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat