Bulldozer00's Blog

A major defense mechanism that all human beings develop over time is the art of rationalization. A perpetrator (like me and you?) of “bad” behavior who doesn’t want to be held accountable for his/her behavior always uses the skill of rationalization to disconnect and distance him/herself from personal feelings of guilt and to convince others that the manifest behavior was “noble and just”. Street smart politicians, corpo managers, so-called leaders, and over-educated experts are extremely clever and highly skilled rationalizers. They’re at the top of Everest.

“Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They do not mean to do harm… They are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” – T. S. Eliot

Hitler is perhaps the ultimate example of a supremely skilled rationalizer. He not only convinced himself that the atrocities he committed against mankind were noble and just, this dude convinced an entire nation so effectively that “his” people deified him. Ominously, in many orgs around the globe, millions of little Hitlers operate unfettered. They perpetrate their “bad” behavior on their fellow human beings while (astonishingly) being rewarded for it. Blech!