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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

"Rational" Sociopaths?

Upgraded and adapted from the Moot, friend of blog "Jollyspaniard" wrote:
I'm not sure if middle aged to elderly Albertans opposed to a swerving from BAU are necessarily being irrational. They have plenty of water and may not suffer any negative consequences to Global Warming in their lifetime. And it's not clear how global illwill towards their views is really going to effect them. So their stance might be morally repugnant but I'm not sure I'd call it irrational. They don't care about the rest of the world anyways. Factor in that most of these people think the world is 10,000 years old and I wouldn't hold your breath into talking sense into them. Hopefully we can effect change without them.

First of all, surely it is a distortion of meaning to describe sociopathy as rational? (Whatever the natives of Anglo-American economics and political science departments have been trained to say to the contrary.)

But beyond that, I think it is actually delusive to imagine [one] that anyone is immune to the pandemics incubated in slums, [two] that anyone is insulated from the unrest of the precariat, [three] that anyone can count on winning indefinitely in a world of commerce without real rules, and -- you will likely think me naive in saying so -- [four] that anyone can be immersed in increasing networked awareness of the costs and consequences of one's exploitative and unsustainable practices without suffering devastating personal trauma.

Of course, I know and understand what my interlocutor meant to say here, but I do think it is important that we not sell short the ways in which moral propriety and good sense actually regularly align to the benefit of both.

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