Rationality itself can be weaponized against the rational agent

Evidence

As rational beings, the Jews had to adjust their own conduct to the anticipated Nazi responses. As rational beings, they had to assume that there was a logical link between actions and reactions, and hence also such actions as were more reasonable and advisable than others. As rational beings, they had to be guided by the same behavioural principles as those promoted by their bureaucratic gaolers: efficiency, higher gain, less expense. Since the Nazis had the undivided and uncontested command of the rules and the stakes of the game, they could deploy that Jewish rationality as a resource in the pursuit of their own goals. They could arrange the rules and the stakes in such a fashion that each rational step would deepen the helplessness of their prospective victims and bring them an inch or two nearer to their ultimate destruction. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 366

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that instrumental rationality, the very medium of the victim’s survival thinking, becomes the machinery of their destruction — a dense, paradigm-shifting mechanism.
• XREF: Connects to Weberian zweckrationalität in the critical-theory toolkit and to how bureaucratic rationality enables exclusion (the reader’s stated module goal). — connects to: Subaltern forces resist rationalization intended to serve dominant interests.; Normalization of anti-Muslim ideas produces a morally self-justifying rationalism — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 457; Altruism can be weaponized purely to offend a third party (+10 more)
• DEFINE: Defines how ‘rational action’ functions as a manipulable resource when one party controls all rules and stakes.

Related

• Rationality of the actor and of the action can diverge, making reason self-destructive. (similarity 0.86)
• Nazi rule inverted reason so that rationality demanded moral consent to crime (similarity 0.83)
• Rational choices today can make rational choices tomorrow impossible. (similarity 0.82)
• Rationality of the ruled is always the weapon of the rulers (similarity 0.82)
• Rational actors are helpless before irrational bureaucratic power. (similarity 0.81)
• Victims’ rational survival choices can become tools of their own destruction (similarity 0.80)
• Rationality itself has become the most effective vehicle of mystification. (similarity 0.80)
• Rational self-interest alone suffices for evil to operate unchallenged. (similarity 0.80)
• The Holocaust succeeded partly through victims’ rational actions. (similarity 0.80)
• Nazi power operated by crafting a rational make-believe world for victims (similarity 0.80)
• Rationality emerges from taboo rules rather than rules arising from rational reflection (similarity 0.80)
• Victims’ rational conduct was engineered to serve their own destruction (similarity 0.79)
• Rational bureaucracy rendered murder morally neutral in perpetrators’ eyes. (similarity 0.79)
• Exploiting victim rationality was cheaper than controlling them through fear (similarity 0.79)
• Rationality and order produce inhumanity, not merely contain it (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Rationality of the actor and of the action can diverge, making reason self-destructive. #corroborates (0.90) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 423
• Normalization of anti-Muslim ideas produces a morally self-justifying rationalism #expands (0.85) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 457
• Altruism can be weaponized purely to offend a third party #epitomizes (0.85)
• Rationality and order produce inhumanity, not merely contain it #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 435
• Rationalized social relationships increase the efficiency of producing inhumanity #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 436