The Masquerade

This question came to me, in the aftermath of a brief, disturbing, sort of hysterical, conversation; me being the straight man, to someone else's wildly-emotional, overwrought barrage of invective...are we rational creatures in a rational world, or irrational creatures in a rational world, or rational creatures in an irrational world, or, (and maybe this is closest to the mark) irrational creatures in an irrational world? And if we go with the theme of irrationality, doesn't it explain an awful lot of the madness gripping our planet?

It kind of leaves us at sea, unsure, unsettled, like reading one of those "post-modern" novels where the narrator turns out to be completely, profoundly "unreliable." Politicos and Economists have to grapple with "irrational actors," all the time, people who vote or consume against their own interests. Some of us strap on bombs in expectation of some higher reward, some of us lash out at those who show us love and sympathy, some of us go out of our way to hurt and sabotage ourselves.

Keith Johnstone once pointed out that "rationality is just another mask." It's a mask we are free to wear or take off at any time. We can "reason," the world, we can "feel" the world, we can create and destroy a world with a blink of an eye. What is beneath the mask: fear, hate, sorrow, pain? All the things that make us human. We must have compassion for the one who is mad, (they are a very much like us), even if that madness destroys everything in it's path.