In a reflective mood these days

Posting has been rather light, but not because I was too busy.  I've been sick the last week.  I guess that has had some impact as well.  Nothing that I find seems worthy of writing about.

Just before I began writing this, I had what seemed to me to be a revelation.  But it isn't really.  I've seen it elsewhere.  The revelation was that people are irrational.  That may not seem remarkable to anybody but me, because I have been the type of person to believe in rationality.  But that means nothing if most people have no interest in that at all and won't ever pursue that as a way of being.  People could be rational if they chose, but they could also be morally upright, but generally aren't.  This isn't likely to win me much admiration for calling most people immoral as well as irrational, but being rational, or as I'd like to think of myself as being, that's the way it looks to me.

The Zimmerman case illustrates how a rational system could work in practice.  The correct verdict was given, but was vilified by the very people who would not act rationally at all.  A system of rational thought could work, but it only works when everybody is on board.  That is not always true.  At times, like the Kennedy assassination conspiracy mindset, a person like me can despair at the lack of rationality in our culture.  What can you do when so many people insist upon believing something false?

Bugliosi wrote in his book about the OJ Simpson trial that he believed that with a good enough job by the prosecution, he believed he could get a guilty verdict, or at least a hung jury.  But that is just a belief.  In my opinion, there may well be a case that could be made that there wasn't any way in hell that they were going to convict Simpson no matter what got said and done in that courtroom.  That mentioned case to be made is in the irrationality of human existence.  If people were primarily rational, a guilty verdict would have been assured.  But it was not assured.

That is what has changed.  It has changed me and the way I look at the world.  It doesn't leave me feeling assured, I tell you.