Testing Our Rationality

It is the goal of philosophy to attack the irrational and to accept the rational.  Philosophers like to do this in pristine environments, which allow for the best thinking possible, either alone or with colleagues who have the same intensity to answer the questions asked.

However, what if our very premise of how to do philosophy is irrational?  What if there is no such thing as a pristine, stress-free environment?  What if, in having others participate in our seeking of answers, we are fooling ourselves that our relationships will be stable enough to create a place to produce answers?

Albert Ellis came up with Ten Irrational Beliefs that many of us have about our lives and relationships.  Which of these do you agree are irrational beliefs?  Which of these beliefs do you have a hard time letting go of?  Which of these beliefs do you deny are irrational, but that they are simply necessary for a human life?

1. The idea that you must have love or approval from all the significant people in your life

2. The idea that you absolutely must be thoroughly competent, adequate, and achieving or the idea that you must be competent or talented in some important area.

3. The idea that other people absolutely must not act obnoxiously and unfairly, and that when they do, you should blame and damn them, and see them as bad, wicked, or rotten individuals.

4. The idea that you have to see things as being awful, terrible, and catastrophic when you are seriously frustrated or treated unfairly.

5. The idea that you must be miserable when you have pressures and difficult experiences; and that you have little ability to control, and cannot change, your disturbed feelings.

6. The idea that if something is deemed dangerous or fearsome, you must obsess about it and frantically try to escape from it before it happens.

7. The idea that you can easily avoid facing challenges and responsibilities and still lead a highly fulfilling existence.

8. The idea that your past remains all-important and because something once strongly influenced your life, it has to keep determining your feelings and behavior today.

9. The idea that people and things absolutely must be better than they are and that it is awful and horrible if you cannot change life’s grim facts to suit you.

10. The idea that you can achieve maximum happiness by inertia and inaction or by passively enjoying yourself.

One more question: How do you usually respond to such a circumstance as it is described?  Is your response rational or irrational?

The biggest issue here is the relationship between personal need and what we can actually demand from our environment.  Rationally, we cannot demand from our environment what the environment does not have.  But even the most rational of us do just that, and when our expectations our dashed we are angry and we might lash out.  Yet the issue is not a lack in our environment, but the lack within ourselves.  How can we rationally deal with that?