Gerrard Winstanley once wrote; "Let Reason rule in man and he dares not trespass against his fellow creature, but will do as he would be done unto..."
Gerrard Winstanley died in 1676, but the idea that Reason equates to Goodness comes to us in a long trail from the Ancient Greeks, through early Christianity, then radical Protestant Christianity, on through secular humanism and into modern Atheism, Anarchism, Liberalism and Marxism.
And if you think that Reason's journey looks kind of weird and contradictory, it's because it is. History is nothing if not ironical.
Anyway, it's from there that we've inherited the idea that Reason equals Niceness. From the time of the first philosophers, Reason was held to be a lofty principle, recognised by lofty people. And lofty people are nice people, and believe in nice things, like manners. Hence the term Reasonable.
But Reason has nothing to do with niceness, though it's understandable why its come to be understood this way. Reason, for all its qualifications and pontifications, is just intelligence. Really intelligent people, like philosophers, tend to be softies who don't want to be pushed around by the local brute. So it's no surprise that they should advance their own traits as being better for society and encourage everyone to do the same. It's also where we get nonsense ideas like 'the pen is mightier than the sword' - it's the kind of thing that intellectuals need to believe is true. It lets them feel superior rather than afraid.
To understand why Reason has no moral preference, let's look at one example I've taken from Ioan Grillo's book; El Narco. In this book, which is about drug cartels and the narcotics trade in Mexico today, Grillo interviews a young hitman and reveals a story that's become very familiar now. The hitman grew up in a poor district. His father was an honest man who worked hard to feed his family, but the hours he worked were long, the pay poor and whenever he was unemployed the family struggled to survive. Meanwhile, in the district, the drug gangsters recruited young men for the violent drug trade. Other young men who joined them soon appeared on the streets with lots of cash, nice clothes, a car, a string of girls wanting to make their acquaintance and a reputation of being someone to respect. Now the father didn't want his son to join the drug trade, even though the family were often hungry. He believed in being honest. Inevitably however the son succumbed and eventually became a motorcycle hitman. Compared to what his father did, it was easy work and paid far, far more.
Now lets examine this situation from the point of view of Reason. The father believed in being an upright and honest citizen, even though it meant he could not always provide. The hard manual labour probably meant an early death too. From the son's point of view, if the benefits of becoming a narco outweighed the costs, if in fact he looks at the facts and deduces that the chances of being caught for doing something illegal are low, while the chances of living a more comfortable life are high, is he not employing the higher faculties of Reason in doing so?
And if his father insists, against all the odds, on staying Good, then is his choice not, in fact, irrational?
If I am poor, and you have something nice that I want, and if I calculate that I can take it from you without fear of retribution or even discovery, then by taking it I am being rational.
This kind of thinking is characterised as low cunning, rather than high Reason, but in truth there is no difference at all.
Goodness, virtue, honour - these are nebulous things that can neither be touched nor proven. Like the existence of God in fact. This is why nearly all religions posit them.
If you employ Reason, and only Reason, you will eventually discard that which cannot be seen and respect only the material and the concrete. This is why the Marxists made a big deal about materialism and used their Reason to bash the religions who had brought them Reason in the first place. Liberalism also comes to a similar place with its concept of Utilitarianism, which essentially says that there are no real values anywhere, only advantages.
The idea then that the Rational is good while the Irrational is bad is nonsense.
Good is a nebulous principle. It cannot be measured, seen or felt. Pleasure can be felt, good cannot, though you may feel pleasure in doing good. But good exists only in so far as we make it up. It stands to reason then that, in order to live in the kind of communist grouping that Winstanley is in fact alluding to in the above quote, a certain irrational belief must be accepted among its members.
Good is irrational. Irrationalism is good. Or it can be in some circumstances. A inconvenient fact that was well understood by philosophers right up until recent times (and a lot of ink has been spilt trying to circumnavigate that particular conundrum), but which is ignored or simply not understood by mainstream thinkers (and I use the term loosely) today.
Ryszard Kapuscinski once wrote that, if men were not irrational, would history even exist? Well, if man allowed Reason to rule, then history would be a catalogue of intrigue, plotting, betrayal and calculations.
Which, oddly enough, is almost exactly how it looks like. Especially among the 'reasonable', higher, 'intelligent' classes.
