Here's How It Is

      Everybody, everywhere, all of the time, is just muddling through.  Oh, we have our areas of competence -- surrounded by far larger areas about which we think we know more than we do -- but generally, we're all faking our way through.  Not wickedly; not as a cheat: we're looking at the other humans around us, and either doing as they do or deciding to not do so because we don't like that way, or don't like the people who do it.  Rationality scarcely enters into it, because on most subjects, we don't know enough for rational analysis. 

      Rationalizing, on the other hand, is something each and every one us can accomplish with grace and aplomb, as smoothly as a swan gliding over water, and we do it all day long.  If there's a great deal of splashing and thrashing about hidden under the surface, well, no one notices, perhaps not even the swan.

      If we meet aliens some day, that's exactly how they'll get through their lives, too.  Because no one can know everything.  Most things, we take on faith and manage by guess and by gosh.

      We're just careful to hide that truth from everyone.  Even ourselves.