ABSTRACT
Industrialized society has been described as a triumph of reason (the “Tin Woodman”) over emotion (the “Scarecrow”). Yet this has not engendered a high level of rationality in the general public (Barber, Jihad vs. Mac World; Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards). Also, commercial values have trumped meaning and social connections.
Subordinating emotion to reason can be traced to Enlightenment philosophers who distrusted emotion as part of our “animal nature.” From that viewpoint, it is easy to conclude that if somebody acts a certain way automatically, they really wish to act that way. This can lead to harmful stereotypes; for example, when poor people make decisions with bad long-term results, like using payday loans, they can be labeled as lazy and improvident. By contrast, psychological studies show that poverty inherently distorts the decision process (Shafir and Mullainathan, Scarcity).
In their quest for emotional satisfaction, people have often rebelled against the ascendency of reason. This “Scarecrow” rebellion has taken on many forms: artistic romanticism; technophobia; naive environmentalism; hippie counterculture; and tribalism. Two historical movements, the Romantic movement of the Nineteenth Century and the counterculture of the 1960s, are reviewed. The rebellion can become destructive when authoritarian leaders exploit the hunger for meaning. This suggests that the appeal of such leaders can best be combatted by redirecting their followers’ desire for meaning (e.g., Lerner, The Left Hand of God).
