Rational Philosophy

Judging by a report on the California wildfires, some residents seem intent on refusing to see things logically. They want the world to be other than it is. Angry that wildfires again have put their homes in danger they don’t accept any responsibility for continuing to live in what is a well-known and, for the forseeable future at least, incurably hazardous danger zone.

Another story got me wondering whether, as Merrill Lynch’s CEO, E. Stanley O’Neal steps down, those who have fostered ire at the company’s recently slumping stock price have stopped to consider what part O’Neal played in lifting that stock price in the first place. Under O’Neal’s more aggressive leadership, for instance, the company made $7 billion in 2006 using capital to trade for itself and clients, compared with $2.2 billion in 2002. The stock that recently slumped, slumped from a dramatic peak. Was O’Neal responsible for the slump but not the peak? Or was he the victim of those now in denial about whether they were getting what they asked for — a more agressive and therefore more volatile company. These are finance types, they surely know that it cuts both ways.

And President Bush, still in denial about his administration’s culpability for the lousy federal preparation for and response to hurricane Katrina, this week siezed the opportunity of California’s tremendous response to its wildfires to again shift Katrina blame from himself to the Louisiana governor. “It makes a big difference when you have someone in the statehouse willing to take the lead,” Mr. Bush said. (The same could be said of the White House, Mr. Bush.)

The concept of being in denial presents us with a curious psychological and philosophical circumstance. To be in denial one must be aware of the logic or reason of a situation, or at least aware that one could find such logic or reason, and suspend that awareness in order to act contrary to it. It is a willful refusal to accept reality.

As an evolutionary function, being in denial may be a technique that has helped us survive. When facing the reality of a situation means that we must admit that life isn’t worth living, it must have helped us as a species to be able to ignore the unhappy truth and carry on. In the course of human history countless millions of people’s lives haven’t been worth living and still aren’t today. People have put up with hopeless situations of drudge, oppression, hunger, war, drought, poverty, you name it, living wretched lives that ultimately end… well, wretchedly. If we had seen this for what it was and given up, we wouldn’t have survived long as a species.

Denying one’s perception of reality must mean that one creates and holds a conceptual framework of the world in one’s mind. This seems like a lot of work when you don’t have to do it. I’m an advocate for less denial and more reality in the cases cited above. It doesn’t help the California homeowner to deny that he or she has picked a lousy spot to live. Nor does it help the investor, employee or director of Merrill Lynch to ignore the fact that the leader they’re kicking out has been doing quite well by them up until recently. And although Bush can’t hope to salvage any political legitimacy at this point in his tenure, as a person he would do well to start admitting that, yes, even he can make mistakes.