| Drama, Poems, Essays |
REASON
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IntroductionFor never to be able to control passion shows a weak nature and ill-breeding; and always to moderate it is very hard, and to some impossible. Plutarch, in The Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, "Solon" Imagine this: You're sitting in the city's most fashionable and expensive new Japanese restaurant. You've been lucky to get a table. Your significant other, whom you've known, loved, and lived with in perfect bliss for several years, has invited you to sample this new and exciting place, and has made all the arrangements. You're feeling warm and comfortable and filled with love and gratitude. The maitre d'hotel and the servers have walked away after delivering the main course. You're thoroughly enjoying the ambience and have your mouth full of the most delicious teriyaki you've ever tasted. You're enjoying the hum of the restaurant, the glorious, sunny view out the window, and the soigné appearance of your fellow diners. Suddenly, you become aware that the conversation has taken an ominous turn: Christ! I'm being dumped!? Yes, gentle soul, you're being dumped. You've been led down the garden path to the slaughterhouse by a talented Judas goat. # # # Betrayal and rejection happen to a lot of us. In fact, they happen to nearly everybody. We've all been betrayed from time to time. Even if we're a famous film star, a titan of Wall Street, the head of the world's strongest and most wealthy corporation -- we've all been rejected, betrayed, or humiliated from time to time. Rejected. Betrayed. Humiliated. Contemplate those words. They mean, in effect, we've been dumped painfully on our sweet, pretty Armani- or Sears-covered asses in front of what seems like the whole world. And often -- which makes it the more unspeakable -- we've been rejected by the one or ones we love most. How could they do that! Dumped! Betrayed! Humiliated! When we're at our most helpless and vulnerable! When the relatives are coming to dinner or we don't even have money for the rent! When we have kids squalling in our arms! Dumped! Humiliated! Rejected! Abandoned! When we're committed -- when we've just paid the deposit we can't afford on the mortgage of the house we never goddamn wanted in the first place -- -- when we've just reluctantly left the old job and shipped the family to faraway Pittsburgh -- -- dumped -- in front of our aunts and uncles, our relatives -- our whole, oh, family and friends -- What will we ever tell them? Dumped! Fired! Out on the sidewalk after 38 years! And -- if the person dumping us is truly Machiavellian -- -- dumped in a public place where we can't even howl or protest. So -- as your mind tries to focus on the unbelievable -- as your brain strains to compute the incomprehensible -- as you sit there staring at the calm face of the man or woman you love rationally explaining how she has to grow as a person or how he needs his space and can't go through with the marriage just yet (he doesn't think he's ready for a committment). The tasty vichysoise and truffles are suddenly trivial. You don't care about the crumbs on your suddenly beet-red and burning face. -- Whatcha gonna do? Do you leap across the table and strangle the ungrateful sonovabitch with your belt? Do you pour wine and sushi over the lizard? Do you snatch an unused pouch of cyanide from your pocket and with a distraction and a deft pass poison her latte? Do you begin throwing everything heavy and breakable in sight at the disgusting traitor? Do you scream to the world what a lowlife, contemptible, deceiving shitface scum he/she is? How they've hurt you and humiliated you? Do you stamp out screaming and crying? What is the ethical way to get a terrible revenge? # # # --Or -- -- is there something else you should be doing? # # # We seem to have no choice but to face the facts: Human beings are emotional. We are filled with emotions we can sometimes do very little about. They come out at the most awkward times. They lead us to do stupid, harmful things. Yet . . . they enrich our lives. Some people disagree. Emotions, historically, have not had a good press. Ancient philosophers inveighed against them. They advocated a life of reason. The Stoics, for example. Most people would say that, while emotions are valuable and at the center of our lives, we have to learn to handle them -- even the most confusing, the most painful, the most powerful ones. If we can. A few people deny that they are emotional. These people are 1) liars or 2) fools. Everyone's emotional. That's just the way it is. I have been thinking about this subject for many years. I have been dumped by people I have loved. Often, I handled it badly. Too often I have little control over my emotions. I rage, I storm, I snipe. Most often, in recent years (either because I have learned to control my emotions or because my testosterone is declining) I have managed to avoid violence but have still snapped out stupidly. (And, by the way, in the matter or dumping I am not guiltless myself. Alas, I have dumped others.) What I am concerned about today is, How can we live with our emotions? What are emotions? And how do they intersect or complement Reason, which at least some of us, some of the best of us, seem to possess, and which certainly seems useful on many occasions? Just not, it sometimes seems, in the case above. # # # Most people are more sensible than I, or seem so. They give the appearance of being in control of their lives. I, on the other hand, often feel like a storm-tossed little boat in a tsunami on the Pacific Ocean. Most little boats can't cross the Pacific. They get swamped, sooner or later, by a storm. I've been there. I've done that. I've acted badly. The ocean of my emotion has often swamped and drowned my boat of Reason. I've often wished I could have done something different. Let's call it, The Right Thing. What is The Right Thing to do in a difficult emotional situation? The most difficult human situations seem to be the ones where we feel betrayed. How about doing this?
There may be times when you feel that you must stay. You must talk to the person and straighten them out immediately. The contract depends on it. The company depends on it. Your future happiness depends on it. Your family depends on it. Your whole life depends on it. I'm very sorry for you. Because by this point it's usually much too late. The other person has already made up his/her mind. Having made their mind up, it will be extremely difficult -- almost impossible -- to change their mind now. Their desire to be and to be thought decisive wouldn't permit it. For example, if a person you love and trust has taken you to paradise to dump you, they mean it. If your boss has taken you to a beautiful restaurant to fire you, she means it. No matter how good your cause, at this point you're probably smoked meat. No matter how incredible it seems that this could be happening, there isn't a shadow of a ghost of a chance they don't mean exactly what they've said. Oh yes, sure, they might be lying about the precise reason why they're firing or dumping you; they might not even consciously know the reason. But the fact is, you're 99% gone already. You're toast. I concede that there are a few people who can hold their temper in extreme situations. There are people who have vast calm reserves of inner power. When attacked, these people do not lose their temper. They rationally and dispassionately respond to charges without even becoming irritable. However, that isn't most of us most of the time. Does that sound like you? It sure doesn't sound like me . . . I learned to hold my temper by working in stores as a lowly clerk. People often snapped at me, but I learned to refrain from snapping back. However, I have to admit the process was imperfect. A customer's unfair charge rattled me, and prevented me from treating them thereafter with perfect courtesy. I was always afraid that my; irritation showed in my face or voice or manner. Probably it sometimes did. Working in stores was invaluable. # # # All of us have occasionally been dumped so suddenly that we've been unable to believe it's happened. We've been unable to react. We've been unable to accept it. We've acted stupidly as a result. Every single one of us has been blind from time to time. No exceptions. You're not only not alone, you're far from alone. You're in the crowd of idiots. It's really not so bad. After all, we all act like idiots from time to time. We've all sometimes been so blind, so unable to see what all our friends could see. That betrayal was coming. Our friends can often see what we cannot. That the relationship isn't working. That our Other is unhappy. That they're playing around. These are some of the things that can happen to arouse emotion to a feverish pitch. But there are others. Tragedy, for one. The sudden death of a child or loved one can drive us into horrible grief, suffering, and pain. Try to remain unemotional when that happens. I do not advocate trying to control your emotions in the event of loss unless there is a danger of your inflicting violence on someone. I do advocate trying to control your emotions so that you can remain silent if there is a danger that you will say something irrevocable and harmful. If there is such a danger, escape. Fast. # # # So much for emotion. What about Reason? I use a capital letter on Reason because of an accident of my history. When I was a teenager I studied the philosophy of Ayn Rand (1905-1982), the Russian-American philosopher-novelist. Rand tended to capitalize the word Reason. This was probably because she took it very seriously. She was a believer in, a tireless advocate and defender of, Reason. But actually Reason doesn't need a capital letter. What it needs is thorough understanding. I maintain that Rand didn't understand Reason, or, at least, that she didn't understand it well enough. Reason hasn't usually had understanding. It's been advocated. It's been defended. On the other hand, It's also been attacked as very limited. Its use in some fields has been attacked. For some uses, it has been considered inadequate or inappropriate. What is Reason, anyhow? # # # Reason is several things.
Reason is a human faculty of the mind, or, at least, one posited to exist. That is the supposed faculty that uses a well-defined method to establish truth. Part of this well-defined method has been thought to be formal logic (usually called just logic), first discovered and explored in the Western World by the Greek philosopher Aristotle of Stagira (384-322 B.C.E.). In a number of treatises collectively called the Organon (Greek, "instrument") Aristotle explained a good deal about logic (he called it "analytics;" it wasn't called logic until a few hundred years later) and did it so well that his work was studied intently until the 19th century. After that, philosophers came along who found new ways to symbolize Aristotle's arguments. They also found new problems that he had not considered, and ways to generalize and extend the reach of logic. Now Aristotle's work has some interest. It wouldn't hurt you to study it, or the work of Boole and the other 19th and 20th century logicians. But what I really want to get across is how I think reason and emotion go together, the roles each should play in a healthy consciousness. We all want to be successful, and getting our emotions in tune with our reason, and our reason active and useful is what we want to achieve. # # # In Ancient Greece the universe was thought to be beautifully ordered. Reason (Logos) was thought by some philosophers to be the principle structuring the cosmos. (Plato's Socrates says in the Phaedo that when he first heard of this idea it felt right to him, and he hurried to get the works of the philosopher Anaxagoras who had put forth the idea.) [To Be Continued and Revised] Home | About Grant | What's New | Links | Coming Soon | Send E-Mail Last modified: 6:19 PM 12/8/2001 |