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People Aren’t Rational

Unfortunately, very few people make decision based on logic and/or rational calculations.  Most go by emotion.   If their pre-existing belief system is confirmed by something they will do it (or buy it, or learn it) but if not, then forget it.  Data doesn’t matter.

I am sure you’ve all encountered this in your own lives, perhaps by trying to spread the warnings of The Crash Course to otherwise intelligent, thoughtful people who somehow just cannot even bring themselves to confront the troubling data.

Not because they are unable intellectually, or even that the data is all that troubling, but usually because their belief system cannot digest the information contained therein.  One of the more dominant belief systems out there is that “the government will take care of me/us.”

This is not at all surprising given that we are raised in a very structured and authoritarian educational system.  Most of us that is.  The repetition of believing that a right answer always exists at the front of the room subtly reinforces the idea that you can trust in the hierarchies present in your culture.

And so it’s not much of a stretch to then invest that same comfort of knowing in the hierarchy of the political structure, or government, too.  To attack or undermine the idea that there is a large, benevolent set of public institutions out there is to undermine the very basis of faith in authority.

That’s a biggie for most people, and not easily dislodged.  This is why it can be so difficult to get someone to even consider storing an extra months’ worth of food in their otherwise barren pantry.  It has nothing to do with cost or space…it has to do with the new belief system that  would have to be installed first which is something along the lines of “maybe the system I trust so completely is slightly untrustworthy, and the people operating are not really as in control of it as I like to think.”

And even then, it’s not that simple.  Dislodging a belief system and installing a new one is not an intellectual process, but an emotional one.  Those are expensive for people under even the best of circumstances but really quite difficult if one lives in a country where emotions are clamped down, not permitted, drugged away, or otherwise subjugated and not allow to flow freely.

The point of all this is to be able to rotate the cube a bit and ask what happens when a mass of people suddenly all decide that their existing belief system isn’t working out anymore?

The herd is now skittish as a result of the tensions which are, in my experience, as high as they have ever been across the social fabric.

Rich people are feeling nervous because…