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.
The price of rationalizing is the hampering, the distortion and, ultimately, the destruction of one’s cognitive faculty. Rationalization is a process not of perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one’s emotions.
Philosophical catch phrases are handy means of rationalization. They are quoted, repeated and perpetuated in order to justify feelings which men are unwilling to admit.
“Nobody can be certain of anything”
is a rationalization
for a feeling of envy and hatred
toward those who are certain.
“It may be true for you, but it’s not true for me”
is a rationalization
for one’s inability and unwillingness
to prove the validity of one’s contentions.
“Nobody is perfect in this world”
is a rationalization
for the desire to continue indulging
in one’s imperfections,
i.e., the desire to escape morality.
“Nobody can help anything he does”
is a rationalization
for the escape from moral responsibility.
“It may have been true yesterday,
but it’s not true today”
is a rationalization
for the desire to get away with contradictions.
“Logic has nothing to do with reality”
is a crude rationalization
for a desire to subordinate reality
to one’s whims.
“I can’t prove it,
but I feel that it’s true”
is more than a rationalization:
it is a description of the process of rationalizing.
Men do not accept a catch phrase by a process of thought,
they seize upon a catch phrase—any catch phrase—
because it fits their emotions.
Such men do not judge the truth of a statement
by its correspondence to reality—
they judge reality
by its correspondence to their feelings.
If, you find yourself, at times, stopped by the indignantly bewildered question:
“How could anyone arrive at such nonsense?”—
you will begin to understand it when you discover
that evil philosophies are systems of rationalization.
When a theory achieves nothing but
the opposite of its alleged goals,
yet its advocates remain undeterred,
you may be certain that
it is not a conviction
or an “ideal,”
but a rationalization.
from Ayn Rand - Philosophy : Who Needs It
