Do you know what the “rationalization hamster” is?

If not, here’s a good summary:

“The rationalization hamster is a legendary creature dwelling deep in the minds of the self-delusional, and is particularly common among young liberal women. From birth, the rationalization hamster enters a symbiotic relation with its host, whereby whenever the host feels a craving to do something completely insane and malicious that will have horrible consequences for everyone in the long run, the rationalization hamster will jump on its wheel and run really, really fast, getting the magical hamster wheel to spin out a long sheet of paper full of neat rationalizations for the ultimately devastating action.”

-UrbanDictionary.com

Too bad you won’t read about the rationalization hamster in books.

He’s not taught about in schools.

Nor do parents warn about him.

Yet, he’s an insidious little creature that inhabits the minds of many people (particularly in America and European countries) and can be quite dangerous.

How so?

Take the recent Connecticut school murders:

26 people (mostly innocent children) were ruthlessly slaughtered for no reason at all by a psycho who barged in to this “gun free” zone school and shot these innocent people down in cold blood.

A truly evil act.

And yet, the solution from the rationalization hamsters?

“More gun control!”

“More gun laws!”

“The politicians should ‘do’ something about it!”

Ah yes, the rationalization hamsters runneth overtime saying more laws (or outright banning guns) will prevent this sort of evil from happening. Yet, none of the existing 10k gun laws (however many there are) stopped this psycho… cities where guns are banned or highly restricted often have incredibly high gun violence (Chicago, Washington DC, etc)… and the murderer did it in a supposedly gun-free zone (i.e. school) where guns are not even allowed.

That is how the rationalization hamster works.

He doesn’t stop and think.

He just hops on his wheel and runs ’round and ’round mindlessly citing silly cliche’s like:

“The 2nd amendment applies to muskets!”

“The murderer shouldn’t have had access to weapons!”

“Only the cops & military should have guns!” (Cuz, you know, historically, that’s worked out so well for the Jews, Russians, Armenians, Chinese, Guatemalans, Cambodians, and every other people who was slaughtered by their own governments after gun bans… and our Attorney General has outright said that killing American citizens is acceptable when *necessary*…)

So run little hamsters, run!

Go!

Go!!

Go!!!

No facts or common sense needed.

No context (historical or contemporary) necessary.

Just one *rationalization* after another…

Ironically, I was practicing shooting at the gun range on or about the time of Friday’s murders. And it was a thousand times safer in there, with weapons popping off around me (none of us licensed or carrying any silly “FOID” cards or whatever), than in any “gun free” school parents send their kids to each day.

But, the rationalization hamster doesn’t want to hear that.

Too much thinking.

Not enough rationalizing.

Oh, I know some people reading this are SEETHING angry. Maybe even preparing multi-page responses desperately trying to rationalize their rationalization hamsters’ irrationalizations on how wrong I am by quoting some nitwit on the newz or celebrity like Piers Morgan (who got publicly spanked on this topic on Twitter recently).

Hey, don’t let me stop ya.

If I can help poop that hamster out, I’m delighted.

For everyone else reading this?

There’s actually a marketing lesson here:

Depending on what market you sell to (weight loss and political fund raising, for example), you might have to appease some crazy rationalization hamsters in your ads, emails and pitches.

You can’t just use logic and reason.

You gotta feed those rationalization hamsters a pellet or two.

It’s all about knowing your market better than anyone else.

What their biases are.

What their prejudices are.

And, who they *blame* for their problems.

Deep stuff.

And well worth thinking about.

For the “how to’s” of email, check out:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle