New York Cowboy.org
nycowboy.org / fodder / theory

Humanistic Alternative to Irrationality rss

Considering the best way to look at the world.

May 16, 2005

Defining Instrumentalism: Defining the meaning of an important term in critiquing social policy.

Dialetic of Irrationality Revisted: A simple explanation of my Dialetic of Irrationality.

Human Reason v. Rationality: Thinking beyond the limits of rational scientific pursuit.

What is Dialectic?: Exploring the dialectic method of looking at conflicting forces.

Humanistic Alternative to Irrationality

I miss the point with my notion of irrationally. Irrationality is an idea that tries to question bureacracy and contemporary industrial society, and tries to somehow describe in words all phenomon that can not be scientifically or technologically quanitifed. It's too general and it downplays the notion of the human, for the notion of being uncontrolled and free. Maybe we should instead celebrate the human spirit and the freedom it brings, rather then it's inheritably uncontrollable nature.

Irrationality is not an invalid idea per se, it's just too general to be a philospohy to live by. We should embrace and celebrate the irrational and therefore unquanitifible, but also the human spirit. The domain of irrationality is contanstly shrinking as science increases our knowledge. Yet, what makes us human will never be taken over by science and technology. Science can not make decisions, it can only eduacate us on the likely consiquences of decisions. Science can not take the human out of the individual.

As such I propose instead of making the irrational versus the rational the center of the thought, I propose:

It does concern me that such an idea is so individual centered, and breaks the connection to the environment around us that is special for being wild and free and therefore irrational. When we celebrate being human, we ignore the rest of the world being natural and un-human. You might say being un-human is being truly human, if human is nothing more then a byproduct of our consumeristic society.

The important point is that whatever method we use for looking at the world, we must criticize bureaucracy and the dehumanizing nature of contemporary capitalism. We need to celebrate the freedom of the individual, the beauty of the nature, and how such a world is more healthy and natural then the pervasion of the modern city.

[Picture]