Rationality has it's issues when you think of it in terms of the confines of the system or society one is immersed within. If you want to survive optimally with others, it's 'rational' to not upset the apple cart and risk a diminishing return to your social position, status or well-being.
"The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it"
- George Orwell
Speaking up against what others accept is a risky business. People have been persecuted or even killed in the past for doing so. Socrates, Galileo and Giordano Bruno are some examples that always come to mind.
If we are 'rational' to adhere to the irrational system that produces detrimental results, we don't help ourselves or others in the long run. Disaster is on the horizon. Politicians sell us false promises, free things, play on our hopes and dreams, that we buy into in order for them to win elections and then they further produce a decay of irrationality into our way of life. Many of us participate in this backwards system.
"Just look at us. Everything is backwards. Everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information, and religion destroys spirituality."
- Michael Ellner
If you act against the insanity of an irrational system, you can be viewed as insane. To those who are blind to themselves or the true condition of society, the sane appear insane.
"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives... I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends... and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it."
- John Lennon, Interview BBC-TV (June 22, 1968)
Questioning the actual rationality and sanity of our way of life is required for us to better our progress as individuals and as a collective community/society.
"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Conforming to the group-think collectivism of false ways of living is counter-productive in the long-term, despite any short-term gains to our immediate survival and acceptance within the insane, irrational or sick society.
"It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society"
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
Comforting to sickness makes us sick. Conforming to insanity makes us insane. Conforming to irrationality makes us irrational.
If we refuse to see what we are doing, what we have become, then we can't change the condition we are in. We must face the dark mirror in order to bring about change for the better. Looking into the darkness of who we are allows us to let it go and reach for the light.
"Human sickness is so sever that few can bear to look at it... but those who do will become well."
Vernon Howard
Courage is required to stand up and go against the grain of social pressure to conform and fit in. To get things to change, we often have to be willing to sacrifice personal attachments, like comfort, convenience and our secure and sage positions of not being hassled.
"The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is apt to spread discontent among those who are."
- H.L. Mencken
Speaking the truth to falsity has revolutionary potential to make things change. If we don't speak up when we can see things others can't, who will? If we all depend on others to take the risk when we won't ourselves, why would anyone else take that risk?
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
- George Orwell
At some deep level at the core of our being, we all want truth. We yearn for truth.
To not speak about truth to counter the falsity, breaks us inside. It fractures and disintegrates us at some core level. No one else can see it, but do in our inner vision, if not then we can feel it at some level. If we silence ourselves we disempower ourselves and can become disillusioned with how we live our lives. The risk of feeling lonely, being isolated and separate, is one that must be understood.
The more we learn and understand about truth, and the conflict of a society to the reality of that truth, we become are conflicted ourselves. To live in the fantasy unreality we are creating, or to isolate and be lonely due to lack of resonance and coherence with truth.
Relationships based on common ground and common interests and common understanding is limited when ignorance persists. To live in society is required, but to a limited extent is possible. The truth conflicts with the deceptions we immerse ourselves in.
Being in truth while living in deceptions around us creates a loss of integrity, coherence, sanity, etc. We can't be our true self to others because of the conditioning to the attachment in the fantasy that persists. Isolation and detachment results.
The divergence or gap between relative degrees of understanding and perception of reality can be too great to promote an engagement in common truth and common living. We are often forced to comply with things we don't want to accept in order to get along and survive. Emergence in the deception to some degree follows as a result of interaction with those who can't see the truth and therefore a loss of integrity of self ensues.
"The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation; in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society - and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic."
- Eric Fromm, Swiss Psychologist (The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness)
There is a price to bear for speaking up on issues. But despite the disconnection externally we might encounter from others, we become more connected internally. We become more united within, integrated at the core of our being, harmonious and aligned with the values and principles we want to live by and see propagate into the world.
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
If you appreciate and value the content, please consider: Upvoting, Sharing or Reblogging below.
My goal is to share knowledge, truth and moral understanding in order to help change the world for the better. If you appreciate and value what I do, please consider supporting me as a Steem Witness by voting for me at the bottom of the Witness page; or just click on the upvote button if I am in the top 50.
