If you were truly rational you would terrify yourself.

Most people who think of themselves as rational are not talking about truth, they're talking about stability what they mean by rational is I stay calm, I stay coherent, I can explain myself, this isn't rationality, this is emotional regulation with better vocabulary.
True rationality doesn't soothe you, it doesn't reassure you and it certainly doesn't make you feel wise, it destabilizes you. People imagine rationality as clarity and maturity as rising above emotions and bias, but what they're really describing is the ability to remain justified.
Rationality as most people practice it, is a defence against exposure. It let's you sound thoughtful while preserving innocence. It lets you stay reasonable without seeing to much of how your life actually works. True rationality doesn't do that, it doesn't leave you intact.
Here's the first thing real rationality removes, the belief that you're driven by intention, you know what you want, you don't know what you want, you experience your reasons as causes, they aren't. They're explanations you build after you act, so you can keep feeling like the author of yourself.
When rationality goes far enough that story collapses.
You see that your calm has function, your patience has benefit, your goodness has payoff, not because you're corrupt but because you're caused and that recognition is terrifying. Because once causation is followed far enough more certainty collapses. You begin to notice how neatly your virtues line up with your comfort, your patience keeps you in control, your generosity secures loyalty, your reasonableness prevents challenge, this doesn't make you bad, it makes you explainable and most people can't tolerate that.
This is why reason feels like threat, not because it's cruel but because it attacks identity, beliefs are easy to change, identity is not. You can swap frameworks, politics, philosophies without much disturbance. But when rationality starts showing you what you've been organized to be, everything shakes. Because now the question isn't is this true, it's who am I if this is true and that's where people turn away.
Watch what happens when rationality gets close, anger dressed up as ethics, withdrawal dressed up as self care, dismissal dressed up as compassion, these aren't arguments they're reflexes. People love reason as long as it's aimed outwards, at systems, at institutions, at other people but the moment it turns inward, the moment it dismantles moral innocence it's called cold, inhuman, dangerous. That's not hypocrisy that's survival, survival of identity. True rationality collapses moral identity, moral identity depends on partial sight, it depends on foregrounding intention and backgrounding consequence. It depends on telling a story where you're the reasonable one, the caring one, the one trying their best.
Rationality doesn't allow that story to stay untouched, it shows you how often morality functions as insulation, how often your ethics preserve belonging, how often your goodness stabilizes your position. Rationality doesn't accuse you, it just removes the fantasy that morally explains you.

Deborah Butler