Rational

While writing about Shakespeare the other day, I started reflecting on the way that people will fight an onslaught of facts with the weapon of rationalization. This came to me, of course, because of the supposed “authorship question,” in which people routinely confuse rationalizations for rational thought. Facts are something to be refuted and got around, not the basis on which suppositions are made.

Take the current favorite in the authorship sweepstakes, Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. Now his “candidacy” (for a position that logic dictates is not even open) immediately comes acropper of one very inconvenient fact. He died in 1604 and Shakespeare kept spitting out plays until 1612 or 13. Now, rather than concede that his Lordship could not possibly have had anything to do with the writing of Shakespeare’s plays, they develop intricate theories to explain the discrepancy, theories that are not explanations, but rationalizations meant to try to circumvent the facts. Belief predates the rationalizations for that belief.

I’ve seen this phenomenon in other areas of life. An interest of mine that few who know me would suspect is my interest in the career of the Zodiac, a serial killer who suddenly became very prominent in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s. My interest in the case is personal. We lived in San Francisco at the time, and one of Zodiac’s victims, a cab driver named Paul Stine, was murdered four or five blocks from our house. I used to walk past the crime scene whenever I went to visit my friend, Mark. I realized that I needed to look into this when I came across a tawdry book called Zodiac by Robert Graysmith. Just seeing the title unnerved me slightly, and I almost came apart at the seams when I read a phrase in one of the letters the Zodiac sent to the San Francisco Chronicle: “and pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing off.” I had remembered it word-for-word over the span of over two decades.

Anyway, I say all that to say this. I made the mistake of getting involved in a messageboard that was frequented by amateur sleuths who wanted to discuss the case. What I found was an assortment of armed camps, groups of people who supported various “suspects” in the case, most of which had been gotten from the last chapter of Zodiac. There was also a small contingent that supported Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, and one lone fellow who thought Bruce Davis, a member of the Manson Family, was the killer. There were also a couple of skeptics, which, for a small amount of time, included me.

The facts were meaningless for most of these folks. Eyewitness accounts were discredited. Hearsay evidence was highlighted. Theories involving elaborate disguises were proposed and tortured logic ruled the day. Eventually, ABC paid to have a DNA profile done from the back of one of the stamps on one of the letters, and the most popular suspect–a guy who died in 1992 named Arthur Allen–was cleared.

Now, you would think that DNA evidence clearing a man’s name would be sufficient, but it wasn’t. Truckloads of rationalizations were wheeled out and dumped all over everywhere. He must have divined, in 1969, that DNA testing would eventually be developed, and he must have gotten somebody else to lick the stamp, one theory read. Can you imagine the conversation that would have had to have happened? “Hey, Bob! Would you mind licking this stamp for me? I’ve just been eating crackers.”

When the facts don’t suit your purpose, alter them with a wild theory. I think this accounts for the plethora of conspiracy theories that abound these days. If the facts don’t support your personal fantasy, find a conspiracy. If your ideology keeps running aground on the craggy shore of reality, blame reality and trumpet your ideology louder.

We are the animal that believes. We bind ourselves together in tribes with beliefs. The mistake of the Enlightenment is that the people who developed the theories that made the Enlightenment run believed man to be rational, but he is not. He is a creature of belief. And when belief is challenged by rationality, man attacks it with his most convenient weapon, rationalization.