“Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.” In retrospect, it seems that this famous quote by Aristotle has been my guide in my close relationships. I’ve always been preoccupied by the truth, and more recently this truth has been restricted to what is obtained in the process of rational thought processes. Unfortunately several years was needed to realize how faulty this approach to life has been.
For several years I’ve been preoccupied by different forms of dogmatism. To this end, I tried to reject any mental apparatus which was not rationally justifiable as well as ideologies (of any kind). Everything should have passed my rigid “rationality test”, and if it failed to do so, I did not hesitate to reject it as harshly as I could. Now I think differently; I strongly believe we as human beings are not rational animals; our social interactions and decision makings are influenced by irrational feelings, dogmatic thoughts, and emotions more so than by rational thought processes. In fact, even our very intellectual life is defined within the context of our psychosocial and genetic background. This background plays a key role in the assumptions that shape our belief system and therefore for most people, any attack to those irrational beliefs is inevitably perceived as an attack to their personality. The irony is that the more irrational those beliefs are, the dearer they would be to the believer! So if you really wants to put your relationship at risk, you can easily do so by trying to find and challenge your friend’s irrational beliefs! This can happen even if the irrationality of those beliefs is certain and the challenge occurs in a respectful manner.
All that I have said so far are based on the assumption that there is only one way of rational thinking which is the way that you think! This assumption is almost always never met. Besides, the result of that rational thinking relies on the information which is available to the individual; in other words, even if our arguments are valid, they would not be sound if our premises are not true (if “all A’s are B”, and “all B’s are C”; then “all A’s are C’s”. This is a valid argument and we are thinking rationally but how do we know that all A’s are B, or all B’s are C ?).
The Aristotle quote is still my motto, but I am trying to use it purely for my academic and intellectual life.
See also this
درود!
عجب بحث ظریف و قشنگی را مطرح کرده ای و چقدر هم رسا و عالی نوشته ای… البته هنوز به لینک ها سرنزده ام تا ببینم چیست و چرا ورده ای… بعضی جاها را که می خواندم به رفتار خودم فکر می کردم و مقایسه ی ناخودآگاهی انجام دادم… بماند که نتیجه چه بود و چه شد… اما باید بگویم واقعن لذت بردم… موفق باشی و پایدار …
دادا…!جامع و مانع نوشتی دمت گرم …ولی نمیخواهی بگی که نظرت در مورد “اینکه اطرافیانش بد بودند” عوض شده؟
easily you can accept all your findings or can be confused about.but it caused me to deliberate on.i read this post several times but still i am asking myself about.
[...] not absolute; neither is irrationality. Second, as I mentioned in some of my previous posts (e.g. here), we are not rational animals. This simply means that our thoughts and behaviors are naturally [...]