Earth: Where Rationality Has Become the Odd Capacity Out

As living beings we humans have various capacities. We have a sensible capacity, a capacity to take in physically information about our material surroundings. We have an emotional capacity, a capacity to ‘feel’. We have a psychological capacity, a capacity to need and want. We have a spiritual capacity, a capacity to know of, connect with, even directly experience reality that is transcendent with respect to our material existence on Earth. We have a capacity to form beliefs that are not ‘spiritual’: secular beliefs. We also have a rational capacity, a capacity to think.

Of all our capacities, our rational capacity is the most central to our lives as beings on Earth. We can think about our other capacities: the information they provide and the significance of that information — even its validity. We can think about the world around us. We can use our thought processes to use information to make things, things that enhance our material lives or provide emotive pleasure — or their opposites.

Yet, to me it seems that these days rationality is treated like a threatening, if not sinister, if not purely evil force. It is like for people our rational capacity is something ‘outside’ us, or at all events beyond our control, whereas our other capacities are comfortably accepted as simply being parts of what we are. That attitude seems to be permeating contemporary culture everywhere on Earth.

People actually fear our rational capacity. I wonder why that is.