Rational Philosophy

I saw a news clip today about a New York City stockbroker assaulting a fellow spinner in a spin class (he pushed him and his bike against the wall). The reason: he was enraged by the man’s grunting.

And yesterday I was introduced to the term “Dumbfounding.” As reported in the science section of the New York Times, Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist, has proposed that human beings have an innate and pre-rational sense of judgment about right and wrong that evolved as useful to our survival, but leaves us “dumbfounded” when our rational mind can’t explain why we feel that something is abhorrent or wrong.

I would guess that the NYC stockbroker’s ire derived from a pre-rational response; when he wakes up tomorrow he’ll wonder how he could have been so enraged as to assault another person for grunting, and get himself into so much hot water in the process.

Haidt’s hypothesis concurs with my own thinking on the origin and evolution of our moral sense. In LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do to Survive I propose that our sense of morality has been baked into our genes through evolution, and came about for the very simple reason that if we are to persist as an organsim we need to react in certain ways that will help us survive (all of which I tie to the very concrete principles that shape the universe). This also gives us a very concrete basis by which to understand and discuss our sense of morality.

But upon reading about the poor stockbroker and his unfortunate victim I was struck again by something that occurs to me regularly. We live in a world, in a society, that has evolved very rapidly, and evolves ever more rapidly. We are evolved but we’re less evolved than sometimes we’d like to think. We step out into the world feeling that we are equal to its challenges, but it’s like stepping out onto a moving sidewalk. Whether it’s the grunting of a fellow spin class member, or a jittery stockmarket, or a pair of dirty socks left lying on the bedroom floor, we’re not always as psychologically well-equipped as the world demands. Our rational minds have created a mental world that has a dizzying range of customs, procedures, laws, etiquette, social and workplace demands, and underneath the surface our innate urges and responses sometimes can’t keep up.