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Finding balance entails much equating of efficiencies and min/max usage.Spending energy on something without tangible use is wasteful and unproductive. Our free time now produces "mental health" or must be justified.
But what about art and stories? A blockbuster movie seems a frivolous waste of resources, as does the amateur artist’s passionate pursuits.
Yet the creation is a story that sustains us, motivates us, circumvents quantification, and disassembles our rational pretenses.
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Through evolutionary nature humans have a trust default: we tend to trust rather than be skeptical. This has proven beneficial (even logical) for many reasons.
Consider game theory where “cooperation first” is the best tactic, but also we can double down into trusting others up front rather than forcing people to earn trust.
This means for a very small percentage of betrayals you will attract many more of the right kind of people to you: people who will care and support you because you gave strong trust first.
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Bad days happen. I’m talking off-your-meds shit-show days. When they do it’s amazing that someone can be there to share with and support you.
It doesn’t make any kind of rational sense, and that is profound.
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We need reason in order to have conversations. The shared ability to equate symbolic sounds with objects and concepts allows societies to build and thrive. Good faith in normative standards of discourse is known as "communicative rationality."
Yet, emotion is vital to focus: to be competitive (to feel threat or joy and pride) drives us to learn faster, and generate results.
To sever reason from emotion is to no longer have a reason to reason.
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Being rational is excellent. We intake and adapt to evidence to reach a goal.
Yet, "instrumental rationality" allows us to logically make a plan (following the process of rationality), but it does not mean our goal is rational.
Example: Terrorists/bombers use rationality to achieve an irrational goal.
(Jurgen Habermas)
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Everyone has a reason for their actions. (If not, we can create one for them.) "Reason" is synonymous with rationality, but to be "reasonable" is to conform or compromise, not to use logic. To "have a reason" is to justify a subjective position that seldom includes air-tight dialectics.
In short, we privilege reason but mainly use it to excuse our lack of it.
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Wisdom is where we stop thinking and begin applying the "form" of rationality.
Wisdom is the catchphrase, clever reversal, and cautious reminder that collapses into context-specific, contradictory back-pats and butt-kicks when examined.
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We often appeal to rationality, yet seldom take it far enough.
We partially problem solve, applying enough effort to get past the current predicament.Taking rationality further it begins to dissolve its own support, leading from solutions to existential dilemmas.
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Is there a point where we can act spontaneously -instantly- manifest our uniqueness without the ponderous weight of rationality?
This presumes a self that can function irrationally, which we do constantly, yet we still privilege reason as an ideal.
This pursuit manifests as a programmable man, front-loading your reason into habits that become instinctive.
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Attention is a flashlight we point to direct focus, often leaving us blind to the rest of our surroundings.
Awareness is an eternally vigilant, always present state of consciousness, often drowned out by the rationalizing mind attempting to achieve some purpose.
