When did we stop valuing Logic and Truth?
I am going to say something presumptive…
I dare to believe that if our greatest thinkers, scientists & logicians were still alive today — Hawking, Aristotle, Einstein, Tesla, Bastiat, Newton, Galileo, Darwin, Socrates, Seneca (both younger & older types) — would all be equally nonplussed on the condition of our wondrous world today.
How can we, with all of our great accomplishments, technologies, and capabilities, be so void of reason?
Where did we stray?
Are we truly in our current predicament due to a Fourth Turning?
Are we bound to a cyclicality of strength & weakness; bodily, philosophically, psychologically, economically, morally, spiritually?
Why is it that so many of us choose, every day, to not act in ways that would be best for our children’s futures? Let alone our own…
When we act in ways in this world that ignore logic, and by relation reality, we choose to then determine our choices based on how we fantasize the world to be. Rather than how it is.
If you fancy yourself the epitome of capability and achievement, you may be inclined to view your neighbor as lesser than yourself, or even less than human.
If you fancy yourself healthier than you are in practice, you may expedite health complications that could have otherwise been lessened, or avoided entirely.
If you fancy your company [or product] to be “better,” (whatever that may mean) than the competition… the market may glean an opposing, and economically painful, opinion.
If you assess your knowledge of a subject to be grander than the reality of your understanding, you may fail to see the scope of the concept, and miss key variables that would have improved your chances for success in the future.
We are all capable of these distortions.
This is the double-edged sword that is consciousness, free thought, and freedom of choice. This is the Forbidden Fruit of the Garden of Eden. Knowledge of Good & Evil also entails choice to accept reality, or deny it. Steve Jobs wasn’t the only human capable of a “reality distortion field.” We all possess the capability to deploy this great power.
This distortion of reality can become dangerous, the difficulty comes from if/when we choose to allow it. By allowing it, by letting ourselves perceive the world as we fancy rather than the reality we rapidly become capable of great or terrible things.
This power can allow us to visualize new perspectives that can allow us to gain greater understanding of why an apple falls from a tree rather than remain suspended in space.
It can allow us to consider whether we really are the center of our universe, or perhaps that we are not the center, and that we are revolving around a star, caught in a grand cyclical orbit along many others scattered amongst the cosmos.
Or it can allow us to discriminate, segregate, and desecrate the value of a man, woman or child based solely off the color of their skin or the creed by which they dedicate their Faith.
Some hundreds upon hundreds of millions of souls throughout history have had their lives uprooted, destroyed, (many have been removed from this world entirely), on such extreme distortions of reality. From the blood soaked lands of Jerusalem, to the first explorers that subjugated the Native Peoples of North America, to the kidnapping and forced relocation of Africans to be treated worse than cattle in far away lands, to the Witch Hunts of Salem, to the Second World War. With these types of atrocities continuing, still, to this day.
To ignore Logic, and its cousin Reason, is to invite evil into our hearts and into our homes.
Logic allows us to gain understanding of the rules by which our reality operates, bestowing upon us knowledge that can be utilized to produce an existence that we prefer to occupy.
Reason is the arena in which we determine how to go about producing the world that we dream. Reason allows us to determine what is Right — not what is correct, but what is moral, what ought to be, and what is good. Reality will handle telling us what is correct or incorrect.
Have you ever attempted an experiment? If you’re wrong in your hypothesis, reality will tell you in splendid and painful fashion (I speak of pain in the psychological/emotional sense here). It hurts because we all strive to be correct, as being correct gives us tools to better navigate the roads of life, and to be capable of benefiting. When we’re wrong, we feel no closer to possessing the capability to be better — do better.
By coming correct, each of our measuring sticks become more accurate, more capable of assisting us in our navigation of atoms, as well as our own thoughts.