Comment by psunavy03
5 days ago
The point remains. People are not 100 percent rational beings, never have been, never will be, and it's dangerous to assume that this could ever be the case. Just like any number of failed utopian political movements in history that assumed people could ultimately be molded and perfected.
Those of us who accept this limitation can often fail to grasp how much others perceive it as a profound attack on the self. To me, it is a basic humility - that no matter how much I learn, I cannot really transcend the time and place of my birth, the biology of my body, the quirks of my culture. Rationality, though, promises that transcendence, at least to some people. And look at all the trouble such delusion has caused, for example "presentism". Science fiction often introduces a hidden coordinate system, one of language and predicate, upon which reason can operate, but system itself did not come from reason, but rather a storyteller's aesthetic.