A significant portion of economic theory is built on the notion that human beings are all rational and will strive to maximise their utility. Of course, the actions that they take to maximise that utility need not necessarily be considered to be rational by anyone else beyond themselves. And the desire which is to be met also need not be rational in the first place.
It’s like chasing a girl. For some inexplicable reason you fall for someone. The desire is to win her heart. None of your guy friends can understand what you see in her. She isn’t the nicest, smartest or prettiest girl. But your desire is real. And you do whatever you can to win her heart. And like most girls can probably attest to, a fair number of guys are rather inept at chasing the opposite sex, doing stuff which actually decreases the chances of any relationship from happening. But in the mind of the guy, whatever he is doing is probably very well justified in the grand scheme of winning the girl’s heart. And no one can understand the guy’s actions.
When I get into a car, I’ll always wear a seatbelt. My dad is the one driving and I trust him that we won’t get into any accidents. I trust him to be a safe driver and from experiences I know he is a good driver. But we still use the seatbelts because shit does happen and there is never a shortage of drunk or bad drivers.
When I go out with my friends to club and we stay till quite late, we all try to make sure we at least plan our return trips so that the girls are sent home first. Yes, Singapore is safe. But all you need is one guy to do something once.
We can always trust ourselves to do the right thing (for ourselves at least and if we are seriously enlightened for everyone in general). But we can never trust what is in the minds of the people around us. Their concept of right, rational and a lot of other stuff are probably different and sometimes even downright crazy.
And so, on the first week of March, I’m going to dress up in green, and prepare for government chalet with free food, not needing to worry about my hair or what to wear.
Because honestly, you always need a seatbelt so that when the shit hits the fan, you got some form of protection.
ed | 25-Feb-07 at 10:52 am | Permalink
“We can always trust ourselves to do the right thing. ”
We can never trust ourselves to do the right thing because of the certainty of the fallibility of humanity. This ought to instigate consistent inquiry into what’s right.
Just a thought.
iantimothy | 25-Feb-07 at 1:42 pm | Permalink
Hello. Welcome to my blog and thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Yup. You’re right actually. We can’t also really trust ourselves all the time but at least we more or less know what is going on in our own mind and while it may not be always ‘right’ at least it would be trying to maximise our own utility whether it actually happens or not. Or maybe I hope that’s the case.
I guess when I say we can trust ourselves to do the right thing, I mean it in the sense that we can trust ourselves to always try to maximise our own utility. Whether what we do actually maximises our utility or the utility we attach to things, events and actions are actually ‘correct’ is another thing.