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To come up with a reason, even a non-real one, requires effort. |
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The main topic of the question is the relation between rationalization and evasion. An excellent overview of both concepts can be found in The Ayn Rand Lexicon, under the topics of "Rationalization" and "Evasion." Here is a sampling regarding rationalization (excerpted from PWNI, "Philosophical Detection"): Rationalization is a cover-up, a process of providing one's emotions with a false identity, of giving them spurious explanations and justifications -- in order to hide one's motives, not just from others, but primarily from oneself. That certainly sounds like evasion. Here is a Lexicon sampling regarding evasion (from Galt's Speech): [Evasion is] the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think -- not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment -- on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it.... Note that evasion is a motivated mental action; it involves exertion of effort -- effort to avoid facing specific thoughts, ideas, mental states, or one's true motives. It is different from passive mental drift. From the foregoing, I identify rationalization as a form of evasion. All rationalization is a form of evasion. Evasion has other forms besides rationalization, but rationalization is the most potent technique for maintaining an evasion (as the Lexicon topic of "Rationalization" explains). |
