Rational choices today can make rational choices tomorrow impossible.
Evidence
Rational decisions taken yesterday in the name of the defence of Jewish interests modified the context of action in such a way that rational decision-making has become that much more difficult today; and that rational choices were bound to turn downright impossible tomorrow. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 385
Categorization
- DEFINE: Bauman’s catch-22 mechanism of how a rational step toward survival closes off future rational options — the core of his tragedy-of-prisoners argument.
- XREF: Connects to Foucault’s disciplinary power and the idea that victims become instruments of their own governance; also links to the scaffolding on how bureaucratic rationality enables mass exclusion. — connects to: Formalism is treating as inexorable any choice that is not. — Frederick Schauer, Formalism, 34; Rationality itself can be weaponized against the rational agent — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 366; Being rational, informed, and in control is not always strategic — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 52 (+4 more)
Related
- Rationality itself can be weaponized against the rational agent (similarity 0.82)
- Rationality of the actor and of the action can diverge, making reason self-destructive. (similarity 0.81)
- Victims’ rational survival choices can become tools of their own destruction (similarity 0.80)
- Rational actors are helpless before irrational bureaucratic power. (similarity 0.79)
- Nazi rule inverted reason so that rationality demanded moral consent to crime (similarity 0.79)
- Rational self-interest alone suffices for evil to operate unchallenged. (similarity 0.78)
- The Holocaust combined long-festering social tensions with the rational instruments modernity created (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Rationality itself can be weaponized against the rational agent
#expands(0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 366 - Formalism is treating as inexorable any choice that is not.
#expands(0.82) — Frederick Schauer, Formalism, 34 - Optimal action under ideal assumptions can be useless under real conditions
#expands(0.80) — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 1033 - Being rational, informed, and in control is not always strategic
#qualifies(0.75) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 52