Thoughts Against Logic

This post is going to be a little unusual to me in that it will in a way justify what I consider the sometimes insane things people will believe in order to follow a religion. However, I have come to the conclusion that much of what I believe is equally irrational and unjustifiable by any means but having a gut feeling about it, so I'm going to attack the concept of logic being a dominant factor in human lives.

People like to think of themselves as logical. At least many people do. Even emotion-based people have this belief that their emotions are based on logical principles. The ancient Greeks fell all over themselves in an orgy of praising logic. (Here, I'd like to advise everyone to read some ancient Greek philosophers and find all the ridiculous conclusions their logic led them to. Yes, they were brilliant, just for the act of thinking alone, but they were far from always correct.) We like to rely on science and mathematics for evidence that things in this world follow a logical path. We're wrong.

Two words. Quantum mechanics. Okay, maybe that's simply because we don't understand whatever lies behind quantum mechanics but the fact is, nothing we have learned up to this point conclusively shows that what happens on the quantum level is in any way logical. And since everything is made up of those particles and waves and waves that behave as particles and particles that behave as waves, then even though on the large scale, we come up with equations and theories that seem to justify belief in logic, on the smallest scale, logic has yet to show itself.

Two more words. Human relationships. The most logical person in the world will do illogical things when it comes to people they love. The most logical person in the world will either maintain a healthy emotional distance from his loved ones so that he or she can remain objective about said relationships and, in the end, lose those people for lack of intimacy or else realize that people need love and care and affection and, at least on a surface level, show this for the sake of maintaining the relationship, even though their logic is telling them contradictory things: "Logically, my loved ones need this type of relationship with me and I must maintain it in order to keep their love" is one thing and the other is "Logically, it is best to remain impartial and objective but I cannot do that if I follow my other logical imperative to treat them with as much subjective affection as I can." Human relationships cannot live on objective logic. They thrive on tangled motives, conflicting emotions, mutual needs and shared likes and dislikes, the occasional good, old-fashioned argument just to keep things spicy, anything but a Vulcan-like logic.

It has been said many times before that emotions are not logical. They can be formed into words that make them seem justifiable but they never behave in the pattern of a satellite orbiting a solar body.

Another thing that I have not seen as much said about as the emotional thing is that logic is socially, religiously, culturally, educationally conditioned. It may seem logical for someone in a crime family to continue that criminal behavior because it has been lucrative for his or her kin over a long period of time. However, it would be illogical for a pampered suburban teenager to become a drug dealer and risk ruining their life because they want the most expensive pair of sneakers in the school. Every faith has its theology, every school has its bias, every culture has its identity. Things SEEM logical in those contexts. But only in those contexts. If you take the theology and look at it from a perspective of a different religion, it may be aesthetically pleasing if one is not openly hostile to the other religion, but one's own religion will always seem more logical. The most reactionary and the most revolutionary members of a society stand at opposite poles of that society but they are both acting on principles which their specific culture has told them are logical and they don't even see their kinship in that.

On a personal level.... being a mystical nihilistic Freya worshiping theistic Satanist who likes Fraggle songs is completely illogical. But the idea of many selves that can all be different things makes sense to me based, partially on my sense of logic, but also on just a gut level intuition. Faith. Some kind of faith burns in the heart of every truly alive human being. I do not agree with all faiths. Some I actively want to wipe from the face of the planet. But the alternative to these faiths, all of them equally illogical, is a world of non-sentient computers. I think even sentient computers would develop some forms of illogical behavior. Data kept a holographic image of Tasha Yar to remind himself of her after her death. What's logical about that, android? Certainly his memory banks had preserved her image in his head well-enough. Okay, it's a fictional example. But I think we can all see how bringing sentience into the equation with machines would make them behave in ways that would defy traditional logic.

So go forth and be logical in your own completely prejudiced and wearing blinders way. We can't be anything but the creatures of highly conditional logic that we are. Do not expect my logic to agree with your logic or your logic to agree with Aristotle's or Thomas Aquinas's or any other smartypants you want to mention. I will follow my logic because it is my faith and my passion. Faith and passion don't need to be true to be real. Faith and passion merely make us more human.