Rationality, perfectibility, and mutability, which I will
refer to as the three premises, aren’t exactly something that I can say I
believe in. It would be easier for me to say that I agree with the ideas in
principle, but that in reality they are all flawed. Something I learned early
on is that contradictions cannot exist in reality. If you encounter a
contradiction, check your premises, one of them is wrong. The simplest way to
explain this would be to put it in terms of flight. To say humans can’t fly,
would be a false statement. To say humans cannot fly without assistance from an
apparatus would be a correct statement.
The rationality premise in general holds true, however, in the
information age, we find that what is being analyzed is in many cases
incomplete if not altogether false. Good decisions require accurate information
and an ability to see beyond the moment. As previous chapters have stated, as
an audience we can bring our own experiences and prejudices into a situation
which can also lead to making bad decisions.
The mutability premise, like the rationality premise,
generally holds true, but only partly. As I stated in a previous post, while
environment can shape an individual, it cannot define them. The flaw in a
universal education system that uses this premise would be that it assumes that
all human beings are capable of reaching the same level if environmental factors
are the same. However, such a system would mean that none of us would know who
Einstein is.
The perfectibility premise, which I intentionally left for
last, is the one that holds up best. America was founded on the idea that
perfection wasn’t something that could be achieved, but rather something that
we could strive for daily. As Americans we know that there is always going to
be room to improve the system, which is why we have the ability to change the
Constitution. That isn’t to say that we cannot meet our own definitions of what
it means to be perfect, but that is a subjective belief rather than an
objective one, which is really the only flaw in the premise itself.
I don’t think that the rationality premise is true. As you stated I think that we make decision based on our personal experience. Not only that, but two people may go through similar experiences and yet, will remember and perceive different things. In other words it is not only the experience but also the attention. After all as we learn from this chapter and the ones before, people from different cultures have different and therefore different rationales. For some people it is rational to stone a woman as a punishment while others see it as an irrational act. Even more we constantly receive information through our senses which sometimes deceive us.
ReplyDelete