The Fool Returns To Folly

"As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly."
--Proverbs 26:11


There are few things as frustrating to a rationalist as finding someone who, despite repeated correction, refuses to conform his or her mindset to reason.  The issue will very likely surface eventually if you try to intellectually engage other people in general.  I've experienced it many times.

On some occasions I have refuted and corrected positions on moral ontology and epistemology, the reliability of logic, gender stereotypes, and legalism, to name a few specific examples, only to find the people I corrected later lapsing back into the exact same fallacies and unsound arguments.  They returned into error after I once brought them to direct verbal admission that they were in error to begin with.  I have even heard people tell me--rarely, thank God--that they know that what I am telling them is logical, consistent, and demonstrable, but they will not amend their views to fit the truths I have explained.  Have you ever encountered this obstacle?

Why are some people so adamant about remaining in ignorance, contradiction, or error?  How do we who love truth handle someone like this?  There is no hope for the irrational mind except the deliberate internal transformation of the person who has that mind.  Unless an irrational person will consciously decide to change his or her attitude, that person will remain trapped in the chains of folly, ignorance, and fallacies.  As much as I hate the answer, we cannot do anything for such people except continue presenting reason and praying for them.  Such people must find the will and the desire to change themselves, for no person can change the mind and heart of anyone except himself or herself.  When a fool returns to his or her folly, this is one of the only strategies that you truly can rely upon.  If continual reasoning and compassion does not affect the irrational mind of a fool, then one of the only other options is to simply abandon the fool to folly and hope and pray that the fool changes.  Those who will not admit that they are logically incorrect or who will not change after conceding that they hold irrational or contradictory beliefs cannot be reasoned with.

The travesty of an irrational mind is that only it can liberate itself from irrationality, yet it is not likely to either recognize or rectify this.  There is little to do but repeat attempts to guide such a mind and then simply leave it to its own folly.