Rationalizations versus Sex

As Jeff Goldblum said in The Big Chill, “Rationalizations are more important than sex.” When his friend demurred, he asked, “Have you ever gone a week without rationalization?”

Any therapist will tell you that people protest too much, deny or repress unpleasant facts, project their flaws unto others, turn their discomfort into abstract intellectual problems, distract themselves with time-consuming activities, and rationalize away their motives.

In the late 1960s the psychologist Paul Ekman discovered that smiles, frowns, sneers, grimaces, and other facial expressions were displayed and understood worldwide, even among foraging people with no prior contact with the West … humans had been endowed with emotional expressions by the process of evolution … all races had recently diverged from a common ancestor.

Steven Pinker: The Blank Slate. Penguin Books, New York 2002