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Al Gore thinks he's a Vulcan?
Prof. Ann Althouse

What's with Al Gore and his book called "Assault on Reason"? David Brooks thinks he has "a bizarre view of human nature." (TimesSelect link.)

Gore seems to have come up with a theory that the upper, logical mind sits on top of, and should master, the primitive and more emotional mind below. He thinks this can be done through a technical process that minimizes information flow to the lower brain and maximizes information flow to the higher brain.

The reality, of course, is that there is no neat distinction between the “higher” and “lower” parts of the brain. There are no neat distinctions between the “rational” mind and the “visceral” body. The mind is a much more complex network of feedback loops than accounted for in Gore’s simplistic pseudoscience.

Without emotions like fear, the “logical” mind can’t reach conclusions. On the other hand, many of the most vicious, genocidal acts are committed by people who are emotionally numb, not passionately out of control.

So, ironically, it is Gore himself who is being irrational -- according to Brooks.

But wait. Does Gore actually believe in this unscientific view of the human mind? Is the point of this book to wake us up and make us see that we've been manipulated by the media?

The other way of looking at the problem Brooks points out is that Gore is being quite rational, he understands very well that emotion and reason are intertwined, and he is using talk about rationality to manipulate our emotions. I think the use of that scary word "assault" in the title gives it away.

Be very afraid. Evil people want to control you -- assault you! --with invisible forces that play upon parts of your body that are beyond your conscious thought. I will protect you with this magical substance I have called Reason. Come to me. I will save you.

Two comments:

1. Odd that AlGore should be such a champion or rationality, considering that he's making his name these days as the leader of the all-too-irrational cult of global warming.

2. I've read comments by some of the writers of the original Trek on the character of Spock (Yep, he's a fanboy!--Ed.), and the character came out the way he did in part to fulfil a particular dramatic function, and in part because the actor (Leonard Nimoy) acted in a deliberately alien fashion to set him apart from the rest of the ensemble. Spock was supposed to be symbolic of rationality, just as McCoy was supposed to be symbolic of emotion. Their function in storytelling was be the exposition of Captain Kirk's internal thought processes--the captain would ask both for advice, and their conversation with the captain would dramatize the captain's decision-making.*

One of the writers (I think it was David Gerrold) said that while the Vulcans were portrayed as thinking themselves superior to the rest of us, their hyper-rationality actually made them inferior. I think that's right. History has shown that rationality without compassion leads to eugenics and all sorts of other nastiness.

The upshot of it is that Spock wasn't intended as a model for the next step in human evolution, and shouldn't be held up as such. I don't know how someone as irrational as AlGore could lead us to that promised land even if it were somewhere we really wanted to go.

*-Because of this dramatic necessity, both Spock and McCoy were unbalanced personalities. McCoy was over-emotional to the same degree that Spock was under-emotional.
Posted by: Mike 2007-05-29
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=189533