There is a fascinating juxtaposition of articles in the New York Times today that if read in tandem can offer some clarity and despair. First there is John Tierney's report Go Ahead, Rationalize. Monkeys Do It, Too. Tierney describes recent studies which illuminate some of the primitive roots of the psychological defense of rationalization. A brief excerpt can not do justice to the report; the key findings, with capuchin monkeys and four year old children is that once one has made a choice, one automatically and unconsciously adjusts one's preferences, ex post facto.
The compulsion to justify decisions may seem irrational, and maybe petty, too, like the fox in Aesop’s fable who stopped trying for the grapes and promptly told himself they were sour anyway. But perhaps Aesop didn’t appreciate the evolutionary utility of this behavior for humans as well as animals.
Once a decision has been made, second-guessing may just interfere with more important business. A fox who pines for abandoned grapes or a monkey who keeps agonizing over food choices could be wasting energy better expended obtaining the next meal.
The idea that this defense exists in full form at such a young age should surprise no one. What does surprise most people is the idea that rationalization is an unconscious defense. That is, when we rationalize, most of the time, we do not recognize we are doing so. It is always easier to recognize rationalizations in others rather than in ourselves. For people and cultures that eschew introspection, recognition of one's own rationalizations becomes impossible.
Rationalization grows from the humble beginnings seen in the four year olds that Tierney describes and reaches its full fruition in the elaborate rationalizations adults construct to protect themselves from painful awareness. As Tierney puts it:
Psychologists have suggested we hone our skills of rationalization in order to impress others, reaffirm our “moral integrity” and protect our “self-concept” and feeling of “global self-worth.”
We rightly value our ability to reason but that very ability is what allows us to create the rationalizations that trap us in dysfunctional cages.
[The very highest forms of rationalization are found in academia where the logic becomes so rarefied and so distant from reality that we need a new name for the defense, intellectualization.]
It is troublesome when obvious rationalizations infect our society and take on the weight of reality. In foreign affairs it can lead to disaster when our leaders do not have a decent sense of what their rationalizations consist of and how they are used.
David Brooks has an interesting take on the current push for "Peace" talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians. In Present at the Creation he starts with a question and proceeds to offer an answer:
What is Condi doing?
This is the question that’s been floating around foreign policy circles over the past few months. It is then followed by more specific questions: Why is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spending her remaining time in office banging her head against the Israeli-Palestinian problem? Why has she bothered to make eight trips to the region this year? What can possibly be accomplished when the Israeli government is weak and the Palestinian society is divided?
It took a trip to the region for me to finally understand that this peace process is unlike any other. It’s not really about Israel and the Palestinians; it’s about Iran. Rice is constructing a coalition of the losing. There is a feeling among Arab and Israeli leaders that an Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas alliance is on the march. The nations that resist that alliance are in retreat. The peace process is an occasion to gather the “moderate” states and to construct what Martin Indyk of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center calls an anti-Iran counter-alliance.
It’s slightly unfortunate that the peace process itself is hollow. It’s like having a wedding without a couple because you want to get the guests together for some other purpose. But that void can be filled in later. The main point is to organize the anti-Iranians around some vehicle and then reshape the strategic correlation of forces in the region.
The number of rationalizations required for Condi Rice to imagine she can succeed, exceed one's ability to count. There is no question that the Sunni states, the so-called moderates, are frightened of the Iranians, with good reason. Yet to believe that there is any basis on which to create even a modicum of agreement between the Arab states and the state of Israel, whose very existence is a "nakba" and a humiliation, is to believe in fairy tales.
The Arab world to this day survives on a diet of the most vicious anti-Semitism, which serves to protect its feudal structure, externalize all its problems, and keep the populace (and their ineffectual leaders) in a position of aggrieved injury and mental weakness. They are being held down by the Israelis, Americans, et al, and nothing they can do can change their hopeless and helpless condition short of extortion of the West and violence against Israel and Jews. Since Israel has not yet decided to sacrifice itself for the benefit of an illusory peace that will never come, the Annapolis meetings can only end in failure. The Arab world has shown over and over again that it prefers death to dishonor and its honor is exceedingly sensitive to slights. Nothing short of the destruction of the Israeli interloper can satisfy the honor of such benighted societies. Condi Rice should know this but convinces herself that because the men who sit across from her wear suits and speak eloquently, they are civilized and can be dealt with honorably. Perhaps her greatest rationalization, approaching the level of a self-delusion, is the classic error of the diplomat, to imagine that because murderers, thugs, and tyrants use language, their enlightened self-interest (as defined by Rice) can be appealed to using words rather than forced via actions.
If Rice truly believes she can compel or create a breakthrough she is already lost; if she believes that it is better to convene a conference based on lies and obfuscations than to tell people the truth, her conference will surely fail.
The truth is that only the Arabs can force the Palestinians to make the concessions necessary for Peace and there is no indication that the Saudis, Egyptians, Fatah, or any other actor is ready, willing, or able to make the mental leap required for peace.
All else is rationalization.
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