Harvard psychologist and public intellectual Steven Pinker offers us his case for rationality and attempts to answer the question we often ask: “What’s the matter with people?” Pinker argues that, at some level, reason is inescapable—but that has hardly stopped people from trying to flee it. As long as people reject reason’s society-promoting tools (logic, philosophy, mathematics, statistics, and so on), we miss out on the ability to think and solve problems clearly, and we invite needless pain and chaos into our world.

Until recently, the San people (nomadic hunter-gatherers in Africa’s Kalahari Desert) have hunted and gathered in much the same manner as they have for 100 millennia. Removed as modern society is from that mode of operating, we might be tempted to underestimate this group as limited to killing animals and plucking low-hanging fruit, but these brilliant hunters have an exquisitely tuned set of critical thinking skills. Not only can they discern the kind of animal by its tracks, but they can guess age, sex, how tired the soon-to-be prey are, and how far away they probably are—all based on empirical clues like saliva consistency and how and where the hoof prints fall. This data allows them to discern the best course of action, whether to chase down the herd’s straggler, or pursue other leads. They work out complex probabilities and logical syllogisms in a highly intuitive manner. They are slow to trust, they allow previous experiences to guide them, they do not bend unthinkingly to authority, but allow for consensus to develop within the group before making decisions—whether the idea comes from a brash youth or an elder. The San also demonstrate a strong grasp of interdependent ecological systems. They will allow an animal or plant to live if they believe there is a chance it could be endangered. They understand that their continued existence is intimately connected to the fate of the creatures in their environs. No one survives in such an unforgiving environment without careful, calculated, critical thinking.

Homo sapiens are “wise hominids,” or so we can translate the Latin binomial. In many ways, the label’s well-deserved, between the intelligence of our hunter-gathering forebears and our medical, technological, social and political triumphs of the last few centuries. We have dramatically reduced poverty, starvation, and infant mortality; extended longevity; and staved off plagues. Even the recent global plague demonstrated our ability to bend nature to meet our needs: We quickly identified the virus’ origin, mapped its structure, and developed and distributed vaccines in relatively short order. In earlier eras, such a virus would have wreaked far more havoc.

Recent history shows what reason and empiricism have enabled us to accomplish, and ancient hunter-gatherer populations reveal how long standing the capacity for reason really is. But if we are a rational species, how do we make sense of the steady stream of fallacies and flawed thinking in today’s pedestrian conversations, in political debates, in the local casino, or on social media? How is it we can launch rockets and get sucked into conspiracy theories? Develop vaccines and fall for fake news?

We could conclude along with the skeptics and pessimists that humans are simply irrational, but that is facile and cynical—it ignores overwhelming evidence of rationality. Of course, rationality is not some innate ability that people either have or don’t, but a particular set of skills that can be cultivated. These skills are available to any member of the human race, and come to us from a number of sources: philosophy, logic, mathematics, and statistics. They help us understand the world and act in it. Far from a preference, it is a necessity, and it should be humanity’s central aspiration to become rational.

People can be coaxed and encouraged to a higher standard of thinking than the irrational, implicit template for which they settle. Beliefs might be understandable within a system of thought, but internal consistency of a belief system is not justifiable if it is destructive when acted on in the world. As long as those patterns of thought and behavior remain unidentified, outside the realm of awareness, they will continue to trick and inflict harm on individuals and societies.

Rationality is going through a tough time these days. It has not been the celebrated mode of approaching life. In popular imagination, rationality is virtually synonymous with “boring” and “uncool.” Music and film glorify the chaotic cocktail of impulse and emotion.

More recently, postmodernism and critical theory are now in the mix, reframing reason as a Western construct that is quaint at best and an evil tool of imperialism and oppression at worst. According to many critics, rationality popped up in the cultural and intellectual landscape of Western civilization, and needs to recede once again. It is commonly criticized as parochial and for its apparent failure to appreciate a variety of perspectives and ways of knowing across time and culture.

One definition of reason that captures the spirit of the word is “the ability of knowledge to attain goals.” After all, our beliefs should not exist for their own sake, but support of some end, whether we are trying to resolve questions of what is true or to determine the best course of action.

Whenever we participate in a discussion, we are engaging in attempts to persuade, dissuade, qualify, and rebut. By our involvement, we presume the existence of reason and our innate reliance upon it. Even if you hate reason and want to convince someone to hate it as much as you do, you want to make your arguments coherent and consistent. Those are ideals of rationality. You will implicitly affirm rationality in your efforts to reject it.

Arguing against rationality is kind of like saying there is no such thing as truth (is that true?) or that everything is subjective (isn’t that an objective statement?). Even the claim of a post-truth world is absurd because those claiming this presume their statement is actually true. Is their assertion the one blessed exception to the post-truth state of affairs?

Even critical race theory, bent as it is on deconstructing existing power structures (and their supposed guardians, objectivity and rationality), still begins with a premise they take to be factual. Critical race theory takes it for granted that relations between human beings are best understood as a power dynamic between oppressor and oppressed. If you don’t think facts and objectivity matter to groups crusading to dismantle reason and objectivity, try telling social justice theorists that white men are the true victims being oppressed in modern society. They would marshal evidence to the contrary in the hopes of persuading you that white men are, in fact, the oppressors.

Without reason, people can make their opinions the exception to the rule and insist that their perspective floats celestial-like above the demands of reason. The political implications of such a stance are troubling because a refusal to reason has often been a precursor to coercion and violence.

If you are completely convinced you are right, you will see no need to attempt persuasion. It is more expedient to drum up frenzied support for the cause than to drum up convincing reasons and engage in the longer, more methodical process of debate. You will try to get your way through means of might rather than right, through manipulation and intimidation rather than reason.

One of the common consequences of an unwillingness to submit your ideas to the rigors of thoughtful examination is alienation. When people refuse to have a levelheaded discussion, it often drives away those who had been undecided on a matter and might have considered a variety of perspectives. When people embrace beliefs not based on merit, but for their popularity or simply because they are anxious to avoid being made pariahs, society starts unraveling.

And of course, doubling down on axioms that you take to be a priori (fundamentally true, beyond dispute) encourages others to fight fire with fire, meeting blunt force of angry unreason with more unreason. If we neglect the tool kit reason furnishes (objectivity, statistics, logic, and so on), we are left with a clash of raw intuitions and no way to resolve differences without resorting to brute force.

Many people and religions have tried to trace morality to a divine source, to some celestial lawgiver. Plato’s Euthyphro argument dispatched that line of thought almost two and a half millennia ago. In one of his dialogues, using Socrates as a mouthpiece, he poses the question of whether something is moral because God decrees it or whether God decrees something because it is moral. If we say that something is moral because God decrees it, we commit ourselves to the unsettling prospect of affirming the God-ordained murder of children and genocide (as he has been said to do according to some ancient sacred texts). Are we willing to call those slaughters “good”?

On the other hand, maybe it is just the opposite: Perhaps God commands things because they are good. But if that is the case, then God is appealing to a source higher than himself to make his rules. It follows then that the source inspiring God’s decrees is higher, and God is not the being to which we are ultimately bending a knee. If we don’t see God as an ultimate source of authority, then God is hardly a God at all. At either horn of the dilemma, major problems accompany our attempts to ground morality in the divine.

What if we went straight to reason as the source of morality, instead of inventing a divine gatekeeper to broker a deal between reason and people? What if, instead of looking to the sky for how best to live, we began with people, and what people are like? The best we can do is to combine our self-interested bent with the fact that we are social creatures who have a need for impartiality as we interact. Bundling these three elements together provides a strong moral foundation to which we can hold ourselves.

Impartiality might seem chimeric, but history reveals a track record of a Golden Rule emerging in one form or another across civilizations, in major religions and in secular societies alike. The philosopher Immanuel Kant, for example, developed the categorical imperative, which encouraged people to develop a rule of life so pure and good that it could be universally applied. Another Enlightenment philosopher, Spinoza, proposed that those who are truly committed to reason will never wish something for themselves that they do not also wish for the rest of humanity.

Applying ethical codes in an impartial manner allows a culture to thrive. The person who says, “You can’t steal my child or take my things, but I can kidnap yours and steal your possessions whenever I wish” will not be taken seriously nor remain a trusted community member for long.

Sociability and self-interest are not rational per se, but human beings are embodied creatures reliant on some kind of community to come into existence, to remain existent, and to navigate life well. To survive, we need to have an aversion to pain and hunger. Together self-interest and sociability form a sine qua non for rational thought and action, and when thought and action are tethered to some manifestation of the Golden Rule (impartiality), we will have a realistic, well-grounded morality and thriving society.

Even after the developments in science and philosophy during the Enlightenment, superstition remains rampant in the United States. The majority of Americans still believe a God created the universe, and substantial minorities believe in haunted houses and ghosts. Equipped as we are with the most remarkable innovations in technology and ready access to information, recent Gallup polls revealed 42 percent of Americans believe in demon possession, 24 percent believe in reincarnation, and 16 percent believe in evil eye curses and enchantments. Poll results are disconcertingly consistent: Younger generations appear just as susceptible to irrational ideas as their parents and grandparents were. Millions devour fake news hook, line, and sinker. Conspiracy theories and superstition abound.

These persistent trends point to an “epistemic crisis,” where the language of justified true belief (the conventional criteria for knowledge) is supplanted by beliefs without any evidence or veracity at all.

It all begs the questions: “What is wrong with people? Why does irrationality persist and even flourish?”

Some simply (and glibly) observe the wide, tantalizing array of formal, informal, and statistical fallacies, always available to us and as tempting as ever. But if they have always been available to us, there is nothing remarkable about that. The existence of such fallacies gets us no closer to understanding why irrationality persists in an age like ours.

Others blame our persistent flight from reason on everyone’s favorite whipping boy: social media. But rumors have been circulating for as long as there have been people to circulate them. Social media is just a new vehicle for misinformation. When two social scientists tracked the recurrence of conspiracy theories between 1890 and 2010 (as measured in letters to editors of major newspapers over the century), they found that there was a fairly consistent stream of nonsense pouring in from the general public.

Another common explanation for what is wrong with people is that people favor the comfort of preferred beliefs over facing bitter truths. But this does nothing to explain why people find relief and stability in irrational beliefs that have the seeds of their own destruction sown into them. You can tell yourself that the hungry tiger in front of you is actually a mouse, but that irrational belief will not save you from a mauling. Running away might do the trick though.

So the stock explanations for what is wrong with people are unsatisfying. What is a more satisfying explanation?

The fact that people love to be right offers us a partial explanation. We tend to be less scrupulous when investigating evidence that apparently bolsters our beliefs. Social scientists call this phenomenon “myside bias.”

When test subjects were shown a video of a nondescript mob storming a nondescript building, both liberal and conservative reactions varied according to the video’s title.  If researchers titled the video “Protestors at an abortion clinic,” conservatives reported watching a peaceful exercise of constitutional rights, whereas liberals saw a violent and hateful travesty. But when that same video was described as protestors objecting to discrimination against gays at a military recruitment event, conservatives described the protests as violent and hateful where liberals saw a civil, peaceful protest. People were easily primed to root for the home team, and they took the bait. 

Another important piece to the puzzle of persistent irrationality comes to light when we distinguish between the worlds of realism and mythology. People who exist in the world of realism take their cues from objects, from the empirically observable. People in this realm prize objective belief, and their beliefs tend to be more precise. They interrogate claims to assess veracity. This is a reality mindset.

The other realm sees life behind the tangible world in front of them. They ponder the future, the ancient past, the cosmic, the metaphysical. They might enjoy the camaraderie these explorations bring, or feel inspired by the narratives, but their lives continue more or less the same. This is the zone of mythological thinking. These stories can be powerful and bring cohesion and even moral edification, but to ask if the stories are true or false invites mystifying retorts that the true-false question is the wrong kind of question to be asking.

As children of the Enlightenment, we should insist on asking questions of true and false in all domains. Everything we believe should fall in the testable, verifiable zone of realism. We must continue the Enlightenment project of pushing the mythological zone to the outer edges, and allowing the zone of realism to take over our thinking and institutions. From an evolutionary perspective, this is a tall order, because our brains are adapted to be highly receptive to mythological thinking. That is fine if we recognize such thinking is mythological, but when people begin to blur the line between realism and mythology, we are entering dangerous territory. What happens for example, when religious and nationalistic mythologies masquerade as realism? We get Crusades, Inquisitions, and witch-hunts; we get Trump beckoning us back to some nonexistent golden era in American history. We get conspiracy theories, terrorism, wars, and genocide. Misery grows when mythologies overstep their bounds and try to encroach on reality.

The evolutionarily conditioned yearning for mythologies is understandable, but it is far from justifiable. In the interest of promoting thriving societies, we must promote and master the tool kit that rationality provides us. By learning these tools, we can better police the frontier between mythology and realism, and continue to stave off the kind of thinking that evokes laments like, “What’s the matter with people?”

These insights are just an introduction. If you're ready to dive deeper, pick up a copy of Rationality here. And since we get a commission on every sale, your purchase will help keep this newsletter free.

Don't be like the MLB. While they're playing woke games instead of baseball, our friends at The Patriot Post speak the message of Liberty to all people. Conservative perspective on the most important issues is what's needed to fight the woke mob. Click here to join the Patriot's Post mission and download their free Patriot's Primer.