Strong Bricks
One of the most central ideas I subscribe to is that you have to comfortable with other people using your own logic and principles against you.
That is, the reasoning you use to make choices and develop judgements should be free for anyone else to use without your protest or condemnation.
This is why i'm not religious or have principles that are based on emotional reasoning.
A religious person asks us to respect something as true based on irrationality ("faith"), as does an emotional reasoner and hedonists ("happiness"). This allows them to dismiss reason and, in turn, reality. In that moment, they've lost all ability to make reasonable arguments and cast judgments because they've accepted illogical arguments as valid.
The ability to use judgement and reason is like a balloon...all it takes is one hole where you consider a single irrational argument valid and all that legitimacy leaks right out. If I did something terrible to a religious person and said,"the Gods told me to do it" they have no room to consider what I did wrong because to do so would undermine their own logic.
This isn't some abstract philosophical puzzle. In practice, it actually has consequences. When the mind has the ability to lean on easy answers through irrational arguments, it clutters the mind. As contradicting thoughts and choices become muddled, it creates confusion and difficulty to being objective. This leads to unhappiness, confusion, creative weaknesses and counter-productive behavior. Worst of all, it undermines a person's ability to develop and define, as a weak mind is more vulnerable to collective social influences and other forces that stunt and stagnate.
Unchecked irrationality is like a cancer of thought and gives the person wielding it permission to disconnect from reality and begin trains of thought that undermine the entire structure of the mind. One can no longer wield reason or moral force and becomes enfeebled...or must resort to brute force to achieve anything.
That is why I consider religious and formalized irrational philosophies dehumanizing and slavish. It reduces human being's best qualities...intelligence, creativity, ethics and power. I find the very concept of faith insulting to the species...that a sentient Man could be reduced to a monkey asking invisible cloud Gods for absolution for supposed thought crimes is the height of shame. And I don't think much differently of people that think life is centrally about chasing whatever it is that gives you the warm and fuzzy chemical afterglow of happiness. To me, that's just another monkey feverishly peeling open rotten bananas in a cage.
How you develop arguments and how you choose not to develop arguments has, in all likelihood, more influence on who you are than anything else you will ever do. It is the bricks by which the structure of your mind is built. Use strong bricks.
That is, the reasoning you use to make choices and develop judgements should be free for anyone else to use without your protest or condemnation.
This is why i'm not religious or have principles that are based on emotional reasoning.
A religious person asks us to respect something as true based on irrationality ("faith"), as does an emotional reasoner and hedonists ("happiness"). This allows them to dismiss reason and, in turn, reality. In that moment, they've lost all ability to make reasonable arguments and cast judgments because they've accepted illogical arguments as valid.
The ability to use judgement and reason is like a balloon...all it takes is one hole where you consider a single irrational argument valid and all that legitimacy leaks right out. If I did something terrible to a religious person and said,"the Gods told me to do it" they have no room to consider what I did wrong because to do so would undermine their own logic.
This isn't some abstract philosophical puzzle. In practice, it actually has consequences. When the mind has the ability to lean on easy answers through irrational arguments, it clutters the mind. As contradicting thoughts and choices become muddled, it creates confusion and difficulty to being objective. This leads to unhappiness, confusion, creative weaknesses and counter-productive behavior. Worst of all, it undermines a person's ability to develop and define, as a weak mind is more vulnerable to collective social influences and other forces that stunt and stagnate.
Unchecked irrationality is like a cancer of thought and gives the person wielding it permission to disconnect from reality and begin trains of thought that undermine the entire structure of the mind. One can no longer wield reason or moral force and becomes enfeebled...or must resort to brute force to achieve anything.
That is why I consider religious and formalized irrational philosophies dehumanizing and slavish. It reduces human being's best qualities...intelligence, creativity, ethics and power. I find the very concept of faith insulting to the species...that a sentient Man could be reduced to a monkey asking invisible cloud Gods for absolution for supposed thought crimes is the height of shame. And I don't think much differently of people that think life is centrally about chasing whatever it is that gives you the warm and fuzzy chemical afterglow of happiness. To me, that's just another monkey feverishly peeling open rotten bananas in a cage.
How you develop arguments and how you choose not to develop arguments has, in all likelihood, more influence on who you are than anything else you will ever do. It is the bricks by which the structure of your mind is built. Use strong bricks.