This post brought to you by The Spark of Inspiration, now in Enlightenment, Revelation, Epiphany, and Raspberry.
No summary due to being shorter than average.
Recently, another student spoke about how Reason and Passion are balanced, and mentioned that Passion is like a measuring stick, while Reason provided a baseline. This immediately interested me, because I know from psychology of cases where people have been rendered emotionally inert, and lost all ability to assign value - they could still logically conclude results, and what would happen, but found themselves incapable of determining whether those results were good or bad.
I started to think about how these pairs matched up, and wrote them down in notes as...
Reason + Passion
Logic + Emotion
However, seeing them stacked up like that, and having just spoken about the measuring stick/baseline comparisons, I began to think about whether it would be possible to use different pairs, as long as you had A baseline and A way to measure outcomes. So, of course, that would look like...
Reason + Logic
Passion + Emotion
Oddly enough, they make perfect sense - both as pairs, and as to why they are rarely considered. Using your passion and emotion together is somewhat like the feeling of being 'part of the crowd' and acting along with a mob even in ways you wouldn't normally - because your check is now Passion instead of Logic, and in a large crowd, passions can run high, in unexpected directions. The other pair, Reason as a baseline with Logic as a measuring stick, is the ideal scientific method; use Reason to determine what makes sense, and Logic (along with experiments) to confirm that your baseline is accurate.
Quite interesting, in the end.
Comments: Please, comment! I'd love to know if you can think of any other combinations of thought in this vein, too...
Relevant Trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EmotionsVsStoicism Of course!
WARNING! TvTropes can be an addictive experience!
WARNING! The trope listed was not used in the creation of this post - if you read it expecting a continuation, you may be deservedly disappointed.
...No comments? Darn. I didn't want to be the first.
ReplyDeleteRebellion as a 'measuring stick,' reason as a check.
Basically, rebellion is an attempt to go against something, for whatever reason. If the only thing you know about something is that Hitler did it...well, there's probably a lower chance of you doing it (I think of this as the 'Hitler wore pants!' argument due to one amusing kilt-salesman).
Reason acts as a check in two ways, which is why I liked this combination. The first is what the outcomes are going to be, obviously. But another is thinking about why you are rebelling. Even going back to Hitler, no one was ever rebelling *against him*--there was a rebellion against *what he was doing*. If we were in an alternate timeline where he was a pretty nice guy, would we still want to hurt him? Some might, if they're using, say, emotion as a check. But if you use reason, then you know that it's not a person who's causing the rebellion. It is the actions.
The same basicthing can be applied, replacing rebellion with loyalty.
So, um. Yeah.