In Effort to Explain my Aversion to Logic: A Philosophical Essay on My Nature of Contentment

In Effort to Explain my Aversion to Logic
A Philosophical Essay on My Nature of Contentment


Having a natural curiosity in life I have always loved to search in books and conversations for a higher understanding of truth. However, my greatest leaps and gains in understanding have traditionally come from the reflective moment afterwards, the inner consumption of ideas when the words flow past my mind, my intelligence, and into my emotions, conscious, soul, and spirit. I feel fairly confident, though not fully proficient, in my ability to rationalize ideas, but that has never been my hunger. I’m just not built for it.
Instead I process ideas, absorb them, mould them into a framework and texture of a world view that is a convalescence of my inner longings, world experiences, and a sort of blue print calling I believe is imbued in my nature, an affinity for certain types of creative explorations.

Growing up in a Christian household with a terminally ill brother taught me a few things about faith and hope, but it also taught me to fight the rational, to attack the ‘facts’ with the blind faith of throwing quarters in wishing wells and praying that one day my brother would walk and conquer a disease written in to his very genetic makeup. The rationality is that the attempts were futile, whimsical, a mere comfort to the soon to be broken hearted. And perhaps to guard myself from ever truly become the broken hearted that vein of thought would speak of, I still refuse to believe such notions.
I have always believed in faith healings in essence because all of my young life I hoped and prayed for one. My world view is anchored in that possibility – that something of the divine can save us from an all to rational world where disease means death and pain. And while the fact that my brother was not expected to life past his birth, or the first three years of his life, or the first eight, or ten, and he lived to be thirteen still ends in the consequence of death and pain; there are amazing moments of hope winning, love building my soul, and faith being my fortress. I’ll admit to losing a bit of my naive faith; I haven’t thrown a coin in a well since my brother’s passing… but it is something I will teach my children, and hopefully something I will have the full strength again to do one day soon.

In my journey for understanding throughout college I have again chased the truth in books, majoring in English Education (to teach high school) and Philosophy (completely for my own growth). I love philosophy with a passion because in a sense I know it is what saves me from the dark side of myself, it is my protection from calling life hard, heartless, or stark. I search for meaning because after my brother passed away there has been moments I have needed again to find it. So in a sense, I will admit that my search for philosophical truth has been the slumber party teddy bear type where I seek to reaffirm my importance and ability to make a difference in the human condition of the present age.
I read Nietzsche with gritted teeth, Hume with half my mind closed, and on the English end, I refuse to read Sylvia Plath at all. I protect myself; and from what I’m not sure, but I am the type of person that guards my emotions in both what comes in and what goes out. My favorite authors are Emerson, Kierkegaard (and yes I can finally admit that), John Stuart Mill, and Immanuel Kant. What do you notice in all those names? These writers tell me without a doubt that what I do matters; and I need that. Something in me still needs, and will always need, affirmation that my efforts, my will, my hearts longings, have a chance in the world to see fulfillment. Anybody or anything that would deny me the consequence of my ability to hope and dream I resist with a fervent opposition. In truth I think I would fight like a cornered cat if it came down to it. I wouldn’t play nice with my ideals, they are to precious… to precariously perched on an unstable world filled with individuals who choose not to affirm what I seek to fill as my meaning.
To be honest, from an outside view I don’t think many people would recognize how much of a need my teddy bear philosophy fills for me. Like I said, I do guard my emotions rather well, and having been through many stressful years as a child, I do believe many situations don’t unsettle my inner calm very easily. But it has never been a purely intellectual pursuit for me, not a simple matter of curiosity, or even a facilitator to a more acute mind. It has always been a need, a release, the zone of impact where I can fight the inner demons of doubt – which is where the paradox lies, because in order to be able to win against the demons of doubt, I have to allow for doubt to exist.
The most dangerous arena of philosophy is near the realm of positivism, where we seek conclusive proof, empirical evidence, the world that would have crushed my childhood hopes. In the myth of Pandora’s box, the item which is kept from releasing into the world is the knowledge of future events, certainty over what will come. Not having that certainty is what lets humanity hope, what preserves us and drives our free will. It is as if there is a realm of philosophy, of science, that still wants to open Pandora’s box and release the knowledge of future events, release all the empirical proofs that let us know how the world works, to confirm the hard times and suffering that life is without uncertainty and the ability to hope.
Know while I am not certain whether humanity is capable of knowing all there is to know and actually free that knowledge of future events from the mythical box, I do feel truth in the idea that somehow certain pursuits of knowledge, trying to unlock certain doors in the mysteries of the universe, might not be the best progression for the human condition. Sometimes it is best for us to ‘speak like and child and act like a child’ not because ignorance is bliss, but because certainty is binding. We are not the type of creatures meant to worship probability and empirical fact, we are meant to worship the unknown, the Unknowable.
There is a eastern proverb: you cannot see your reflection in running water, only still water. And this I apply to our society: sometimes we seek so much to gain ‘knowledge,’ running alongside the river so quickly, that we never reflect, never slow down to see the pooled water, to look inside ourselves, to seek to understand where the river would take us. Not all paths are meant to be traveled. Subconsciously I have been using this idea to guide my college studies for quite a few years. Interest and natural affinity of talent do always promise a good path. We must be careful where we go, what we learn, how we embrace ideas.
Faith is a pool collected at the edge of the river, set alongside a peaceful grove of trees away from the ring tones, IM nudges, and humming engines of progress. Faith is the escape, the retreat from the forward march of humanity saying “I know what is best – follow me.” Faith is by nature intuitive, and by definition hardly rational. And while reason does not contradict faith, it also does not reach the essence of faith.
Last semester I was enrolled in logic. I had already tutored introduction to philosophy and taken quite a few upper level philosophy courses and eventually had to take the 200 level logic class I had someone avoid until that point. The challenge of word puzzles and proofs was indeed inviting because it is a skill set I have naturally excelled at through all of schooling, but the essence of logic was unsettling. I remember after about the first two weeks of class attempting to argue with my professor if any proof could indeed be deductive, if any statement could be deductive because we only inductively trust our reason (which leads to a Descartes like scenario.) I was trying to untie the underlying foundation of logic from the beginning, fussing at the nature of knowledge and the ability to know anything at for certain, even if only by reason alone.
Again, I grew up in love with willful disbelief, suspension of the logical if you will; in faith and hope as my blanket and shield. Logic, while enjoyable, seemed to be a pursuit that aimed its bow at my armor, levels its sword against my shield. Logic and I battled many a day. I skipped the class a few times, a first since my gen eds. My intuition seemed to cry out in class, as if too much practice in logic would put my muse to sleep. I survived the class mentally, pragmatically got the A, and go on with my personal quest that I call a philosophy major.
And another thing while we are being honest – intuition is how I guide my life. I may seem like a very rational, calculating, introspective person, but that is because you have not seen my dreams, not read in the journals, not known how many times it is my heart that gives me the courage to dance where I would not rationally go. Do I consider my inclinations? Of course, I am not claiming to be a fool, but the tingle at the base of the brain, the pressure on the solar plexus, the metaphorical urging of a dream, the inkling to pray, the self chatter afterwards, these are my decision makers, and for a long time in my life I have trusted the ethereal, esoteric, and the metaphysical. And if I remain true to the blueprint given to me by the Nature, I will remain that way, and too be honest, I wish a little more of the rational world could pause from running along the stream and open up to their intuition too.