Death By Rationality

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those 

who really apply themselves in the right way to 

philosophy are directly and of their own accord 

preparing themselves for dying and death. If this 

is true, and they have actually been looking 

forward to death all their lives, it would of course 

be absurd to be troubled when the thing comes 

for which they have so long been preparing and 

looking forward.  

                                 - Socrates

I spend a good amount of time in deconstructing a general opinion or a specific opinion I read on the internet, into simpler forms and apply basic logic and rationality to judge which opinion is logically better. It's not a formal process. It all happens in the back of my mind when I'm idle.

Through this rational process I have been able to overcome many of my beliefs that I could never imagine of giving up. I used to be homophobic, but rationality pulled me out of there. I used to be non-vegetarian, but rationality made me a vegetarian. There are much bigger illogical beliefs I had, which I would not like to mention right now. Rationality helped me overcome all of them.

Rationality makes us all a better human being.

Only if humans being were all rational to the core, we would have so much less to worry about. No more racism, homophobia, war, genocide. 

But, such extreme rationality could drive human civilisation into extinction.

What is rationality?

It is the use of reason and logic to get to a result that will form your opinion or motivate your next step. This process helps us rationalise our decision.

But if we look for logic and reason behind everything, we'll get ourselves in a mess. 

Suppose you are an extreme rationalist, who seeks to rationalise each and every decision of his life. And avoid every irrational step.

Now, you come across a disabled person who fell from his wheel chair and is in pain. You can help him, but will you? A train of rational thoughts will decide what you do next. Which will be something like this :-

  + He is in pain, maybe I should help him.

  - But why should I waste my precious time doing this? While I can work during this time and earn money for myself.

  + Because he is in pain, and if it was me I would want to be helped too

  - Why, what is pain? Pain is just a feeling manifested by brain (designed by evolution) to help us survive and pass on our genes to the next generation.

It's all about genes, those "selfish genes"

I see no reason to get out of my way to help him, or keep him in pain. Therefore, I'll simply keep on moving.

Now, Let's try and rationalise human existence:-

Why should I continue to live for decades, only to die inevitably? Why should I not kill myself right now? This is a thought I often have (as a part of thought experiment), and I try to look for reasons to continue living.

These are some reasons I have to continue to live and their counterparts :-

-- If I live, I can help people, poor people, through  charity. I can feed hungry people. Educate children living below poverty.

But why should I? My rational mind does not account for sympathy, which is a tool, designed by evolution, to increase chances of our survival as a species so those genes can sit in our body and use us as their vehicle/machine to make more copies of themselves.

 -- I should live, to study what I love, which is science. And ultimately contribute to world's collective scientific knowledge. So that we can have better technology.

But why, again? Why should we excel in science and technology? What is the point? To live more comfortably? Just so we can focus on breeding and hence help our master "Genes" make more copies of themselves? All of this just to submit to our genes in their ultimate goal to produce more copies of themselves?

Its all about genes, always has been. They control us, they control everything we do. Here are some examples of them controlling us:-

-- Why do we not like to be in pain?

Because if we don't do anything about what's hurting us, it can cause death. Which will be disastrous for production of more genes.

 -- Why do we like sex?

Because it helps us create more copies of genes [ you might argue that protected sex does not contribute to this agenda of genes, so we are not controlled by genes here. Wrong. I'm talking about the drive to have sex, which is irrelevant to whether that results in pregnancy or not. And if you wait long enough, maybe a couple millions of years, genes will have found their way to stop us from using protection during sex and produce more progenies and hence more copies of genes.]

There are countless examples I can provide to show how the desire to do anything is ultimately in favour of genes, who actually made us desire it. The desire to live is also the work of our genes.

You might say I'm taking this towards nihilism. To be honest, I don't know. I haven't studied nihilism enough to be the judge of this. But what I'm sure about is that this is what extreme rationalism is. 

"Mitchell heisman", a Harvard student, has been a victim of this extreme rationalism. He shot himself and left behind a 1900 page suicide note, where he talks about nihilism and calls this an "experiment in nihilism".

To quote him :-

"If life is truly meaningless and there is no rational basis for choosing among fundamental alternatives, then all choices are equal and there is no fundamental ground for choosing life over death"

I don't intend to snatch away your will to live, neither do I have intentions to not live.

My only intention here is to bring light to this subject. I am not here to judge what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong. I'm here to state what "is".

The road of rationality leads us to the realisation that there is no meaning of life, there is no purpose of life. And we are better off without this realisation.