Rationalization....oh no please.

Perhaps the single thing that outrages me most is a rationalization. I can, in my good days, sympathize to crime, robbery, corruption, hypocrisy or even fanaticism but rationalizations are something that makes me crazy, it sucks all my equanimity out of me. I abhor all rationalizations. Rationalization (confused? don't misconstrue it with relation to rationality) is a kind of pseudo-reasoning that apparently seems true but beneath it lies sheer prejudice or in some cases vested interests of those who put it. Rationalization is an intentional/unintentional effort to exploit methods of logical reasoning in order to achieve personal ends. Its a massacre of proper reasoning. Ayn Rand explains it quite nicely, there are two kinds of what generally passes as truths, one is called 'metaphysically given' and the other 'man-made'. For example, The sun is metaphysically given hence it has to be accepted as it is, you can make fairy tells around the sun but can't deny the existence of it, it is there whether you accept or not. On the contrary the concept that heavens (or hells for that matter) exist is purely man-made, it is not given in nature or if it is given by chance we mankind has yet no demonstrable evidence about it, so at best we are ignorant about the existence of heavens, and in this condition to accept the notions of heaven as truth is purely man-made and technically irrational. In it's general application, in order to ascertain veracity of a belief, it is assessed in light of 'metaphysically given' things if our belief can be made to correspond with what is metaphysically given, our beliefs are true otherwise only mane-made crap. The corollary that can be drawn from this is that, question everything assume nothing and the truth will come to you effortlessly.

Examples of some broadly accepted rationalizations.

1. " shorter clothes makes a girl vulnerable to rapists so more a girl is covered safer she is. "
This gibberish is well known in private but I have heard it publicly being projected in a speech of Dr.Zakir Naik(if you don't know him he is a modern,educated orthodox Muslim. sounds like pravin togadia huh?). This is sheer ignorance of criminal psychology or common sense or both. This reveals strong prejudice of a male dominated society toward females, this kind of beliefs are just a tool at males' disposal to subjugate women. Actually an exact opposite psychology works in a criminal's mind. They tend to find a 'soft target', a shy, timid girl who at first don't resist much while being raped and second don't run into a police station to lodge an FIR. I do not say that this happens in all the cases but this psychology also constitute a rapist's motives and you can never know which one is working when, a tendency to find a sexier victim or a safer one.

This was an information based correction in a fallacious reasoning and not all have that information, but all do have common sense and anyone who lacks it better migrate to some other world. OK statistically in India every year deaths occurring by road accidents far outnumbers incidents of rapes. So according to probability, when a son rides the bike he is more likely to die or suffer serious injuries than a daughter be raped. And here comes the manifestations of a double-standard society a father will never really demand that his son ride bike slowly(or if demands, often its only perfunctory) on the other hand he will show great intolerance towards his daughter's dressings. why so? perhaps a mixture of love of power and fear to lose social pride should the girl get actually raped(and characteristically both the reasons don't have to do anything with daughter's betterment).

2."During their cycles women feel uneasy all the day therefore men in ancient India disallowed them to do any household chores during periods and this adversely evolved into total isolation of woman during periods"
well, well who believes this? if the pioneers of this custom were really concerned about women rather than their self-interests, there were hundreds of other ways to accomplish the same thing. I don't know how well spread is this practise in India but it is well spread at least in my community, although in its minor or less severe form. Now-a-days woman are only kept away from gods and all religious worshiping during periods, but nevertheless the practice is totally irrational and above mentioned justification is only a lame defence of Indian culture.

3. "Untouchability started because the toilet washers used to be very unhygienic, full of germs and they due to their regular exposures to such filth, developed their immune system so well that they become immune to adverse effects of such germs but we the common people(read elite) do not have such powerful immune system so our ancestors thought it better to be away from them."
Another lame defence of Indian culture and lineage. And I seriously doubt the scientific base for this sophistry. If untouchability was the necessary step to be taken to obviate health disaster, how could non-Indian culture survived without untouchability? History do not show us any example of civilizations fatally affected by the lack of untouchability nor does India show any sign of extraordinary salubriousness in her civilization due to presence of it.


"fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity"-from internet