Rational Delusion

The Enlightenment disinterred and honed Greek rationality, separating it from spirit and humanity, whittling it beyond structural integrity to distill it into linear crystalline purity, a perfect preparation for the sterile monotony of technoindustrialism.

Torn asunder from context and acknowledgment of reality, enlightened truths still contain some connection to facts so long as you maintain low expectations of correlation with the world. Proportions are askew, details smeared, counterpoints excluded from consideration, and assumptive projections masked with disingenuous modesty and formal disclaimers of uncertainty attached as a catchall.

This approach creates an adult world consisting mostly of fantasy justifications. If someone thinks they want something, they work backwards to invent a vindicating story that others might find believable, establishing motives and ideals along the way. Children do the same thing, except with more imagination, honesty, and spirit, fully aware they are just playing with make believe.

It takes a special type of reverse alchemist at the height of their powers of incompetence to make the simple become complicated, to parch lush fertility into barrenness, and compel the innate into paralyzed dysfunction. Not progressive, in that no one has yet proposed anything better than or exceeding nature, nor conservative, as the public lacks interest in preserving quality, value, or capability. Every mistake enters through doors held open with untested shining promises that will never be.

It is for good reason we burn witches, sorcerers, unbelievers, and the unenlightened as wicked offenders threatening a singular doctrine of self-referential brilliance. Late civilizations in long decline, such as ours, lack a means to understand how our ancestors could honor irrepressible instinctive drives and tendencies, and instead cling to a sacrosanct gospel of redemption called rationality. As obedient hypocrites, belief in reason is based on unreason, and great faith is placed in the future despite acting against its potential -- suggesting either supremely deliberate passive aggressive sabotage married to denial, or healthy psychology too stupid to see the results of actions and how the future is made. The devotees of rationalism further pledge to deny that any other sensory mechanisms might be greater or even equal to true beliefs that one learns mechanically by rote and reference, never soul, interaction, experimentation, or blood.

Ancients took in the whole without filtration or pasteurization, embracing the irrational and provisioning for its primal force in harmony with the rational. Premise of the universe: everything has a home, yes? We must be human first and if some robotic tasks need be performed, or somehow our senses are unable to accurately grasp the rhythms of the world around us, we can make use of rationality, as with all tools fit for their purpose.

All praise to the ineffable irrational force that propels and stirs without end! May we never deny it, betray it, or dress it up as what it is not.