Your reason isn’t reasonable.

Stuff that in your pipe and smoke it.

And smoke it and smoke it and smoke it, until you smoke rationality out of your head, until a love for the absurd fills your lungs, and until you breathe the fresh air of freedom.

Let me explain.

“I Don’t See Why”

When I look back over my adult life and wince at the unfortunate things I did, there’s a common theme: the inner dialogue that began and concluded with, “I don’t see why” or its negative shade, “I don’t see why not.” I didn’t see why, or see why not, so I did X, Y, or Z. And X, Y, or Z turned out awful for me or others.

Most of us carry the assumption that we can do whatever we want unless our reason tells us not to.

Unfortunately, this tends to be almost identical to the assumption that we can do whatever we want. As Pascal said, as Freud argued, as current studies about cognitive biases show: our minds aren’t nearly as reasonable as we think.

It’s one thing to spend long hours in study, contemplation, and dialogue with advisers and friends to form your conscience when it comes to a weighty matter. It’s another thing to do something merely because your reason doesn’t explain why you shouldn’t.

The former is a sign of wisdom. The latter is a sign that your mind suffers from Modernitis.

Definition

“Modernitis”: A mental disease, rarely diagnosed, marked by intuitive confidence in one’s ideas and the findings of science.

It’s rarely diagnosed for the same reason a rational fish wouldn’t know it’s wet. A mental disease that afflicts everyone becomes a sign of mental health.

Descartes was the main philosopher that spread Modernitis. There were other causes and other philosophers contributed, sure, but he was the main culprit.

He died in 1650, a celebrity and conqueror. His ideas had spread; his ideas had won. Modernitis became a sign of mental health.

The effects were seen everywhere.

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