[rogerv]

Planning is something we all do. People who never plan wind up reacting to circumstances rather than acting on circumstances in a way that promises reasonably good outcomes. This is, I think, the heart of the matter. What does it mean to be rational? It does not mean to lay out some inflexible plan in advance, and try to force everything into shape. It is more like flying a plane or driving a boat: you have a destination you are trying to reach, and adapt your course to flying or sailing conditions to stay on course; or you recognize that a particular destination is unrealistic and give up on it and look for an alternate destination. It's like a good business plan. You decide what direction a company should go, try to be realistic in estimating costs, sources of finance and revenue, likely customers, likely competitors,etc. You cannot know in advance how things will turn out. But you can monitor the execution of the plan to see if you are on target for your goals.

Rationality simply describes the character of the thinking involved in thinking about what we want to do, why we want to do it, what will likely result if we do it, what obstacles we may encounter, etc. It also involves come up with some indicators that will tell us if we are doing what we think we are doing (rather that something else), if we are drifting off course, if the situation has changed in important ways and we may need to rethink our goals, etc.

Just letting things happen is not a formula for success. It is a formula for letting short term considerations crowd out long term ones; it is a formula for letting personal interests weigh more heavily than the interests of the larger community; it is a formula for waste and reduplication of effort because of the lack of coordination between the efforts of different groups working on the same problem; and without a reality check, we may all assume we are doing one thing only to find out, to our grief, we have been doing something else entirely. Rationality may require we step back from what we are doing for a while, and make sure we are accurately describing our actions, make sure that our actions really are connected with our institutional goals, and that our institutional goals really are serving some interests outside our institution (that is, that preserving our institution has not become the primary goal of the institution).

[x]

Planning is something we all do.

Maybe, but nowadays we are more inclined to give general guidelines and let people achieve them on their own, rather than try to force or command results. Individual aims weigh more heavily with us that institutional goals. If you want to see another view of public life, take a look at Michael Oakeshott's Rationalism in Politics. Or at Friedrich Hayek.

Given his popularity with the democratic socialists of the 1940s and George Soros today, Popper is bound to have a bad reputation with conservatives. Jeremy Shearmur was a student of Popper's who wrote on Hayek as well. His view views on Hayek and Popper might interest you:

http://freedom.orlingrabbe.com/lfetimes/shearmur.htm

http://www.libertyhaven.com/theoreticalorphilosophicalissues/earlyclassicalliberalism/popper.html

I doubt that people can or should take things as far as the libertarian fringe advocates, but our current desire to put individual freedom ahead of collective goals is laudable and has much to recommend it. It's likely that we delude ourselves by ignoring the degree of planning, regulation, and control that goes into keeping our society running, but when we look at those whose main interest is in planning, controlling, and regulating public life, to the exclusion of other human activities, it's natural that people shun them.