I'm Crazy, You're Crazy
by J. Donald Walters
 Go
out some time onto the playgrounds of your nearest school, and observe there the
children at play. Who among them make the best athletes? Those, invariably, who
are the most relaxed and natural in their movements. The ones who make the worst
athletes, by contrast, are those who seem not to be concentrated on their
movements as such, but on the static positions of their arms and legs, as if
they were pondering what to do with them.
Even when an expert athlete concentrates carefully on the positions of his
arms and legs in order to master some new technique, his effort is directed
toward assimilating those positions as soon as possible into his overall sense
of movement. Only after such assimilation can he function again at top
efficiency.
Reason often provides a helpful guide to action, but it can never be
successfully made the supreme or only guide.
An amusing example of the debilitating effect of too much reasoning is
related from the life of Immanuel Kant. Kant insisted that a person's actions
should always be guided by the calm deliberations of reason. Will Durant tells
us in his book, The Story of Philosophy "Twice he thought of offering his
hand to a lady; but he reflected so long that in one case the lady married a
bolder man, and in the other the lady removed from Konigsberg before the
philosopher could make up his mind." Kant never did marry.
The farther one gets away from pure science, the less the principles of pure
logic apply. In this respect, indeed, the only "pure" science is mathematics,
which deals purely with theory.
But in that case, and with even science's increasing skepticism of reason as
the final arbiter, what future is there for reason as the determiner of moral
and spiritual values? Must reason be abandoned altogether? This would be,
certainly, a very Aristotelian reaction: either we accept reason, or we reject
it completely! In fact, this very alternative underscores reason's incapacity to
provide us with the answer. How, indeed, could it be reasonably expected, by
following its own methodology, to find better alternatives to itself?
The fact is, Reason -- that "belle dame sans merci " -- hath us in
thrall, and even when we try to break out of our rational enclosure, we only
move in such a way that the trap pinches in another place.
We see an example of this predicament in the earnest effort that was made to
escape the imperatives of logic by Alfred Korzybski, founder of the school of
General Semantics. Korzybski pointed out many of the disadvantages of
Aristotelian logic. The cure he prescribed, however, was, if anything, worse
than the disease.
He pointed out, as we have done, that word-definitions are not identical to
the objects they describe. How then, he asked, is a person ever to say clearly
what he means? One may speak of his neighbor Jim, but to which Jim is he
referring? To Jim as he is nowadays? or to Jim as he was ten or twenty years
ago? For Jim at different stages of his life has been, in many respects, very
different persons. How then are we to speak of him meaningfully?
Korzybski claimed that it is really very simple. All that one needs to do is
write Jim's name thus: Jim19601980 to indicate to
which aspect of Jim's life one is referring. or Jim
Well, that seems simple enough. But -- hmmm, on second thought, here's
something else to consider: Jim may be different in the morning from in the
evening. Maybe, again, a distinction should be drawn between Jim in the morning
before breakfast, and Jim after breakfast. And what about the
weather? Cloudy days may affect him one way; sunny days, another. Is it Jim on a
weekend in June we are describing, and not Jim on a November weekday at the
office? And if so, was his wife in a good humor that day? Were his children
well-behaved? Sometimes, come to think of it, Jim may be more like his old 1960
self nowadays than he was, frequently, back when he was his old 1960 self.
I can just imagine the endless series of qualifications after Jim's name that
a general semanticist would feel himself obliged to use if he were really
conscientious about following Korzybski's principles. Far better, I should
think, to take a vow of perpetual silence!
The point is, we find here an approach that tries seriously to discover a
logical way out of the Aristotelian corral, and all that it does, while working
to ease the pressure on one side of the trap, is increase it on the other side.
The fault lies with the fact that every system of thought creates its own
conceptual enclosure. The concepts formed within a particular system can reach
to the periphery of that system, but cannot penetrate beyond it, simply
because they are a part of the system itself. As Sullivan put it, discussing
this dilemma as it relates to modern physics: "Why is it that the elements of
reality [physics] ignores never come in to disturb it? The reason is that all
the terms of physics are defined in terms of one another." (Italics ours.)
What, then, is the way out? Romanticists would say, "It's very easy. Simply
ignore reason, and get in touch with your feelings." The present need, however,
is not to ignore reason, but to learn to use it in new ways, so as not to be
limited by the "either/or" approach to reality that is our Grecian heritage.
Feeling, moreover, needs to be balanced by reason. When it is not, it loses the
capacity to be intuitive, and becomes mere emotionalism, clouding every issue
and clarifying nothing.
There is another possible way out of logic's enclosure: We can seek out some
new system of thought -- one, especially, that might be adaptable to the
special philosophical needs of our times, which is to say, to the new world-view
of modern science.
Historically, revolutions in thinking have often, and perhaps always,
occurred as a consequence of exposure to other systems of thought. This
happened, for example, in the West with the revolution of modern science.
Medieval rationalism had been a perfect system unto itself. There was no way
out of it -- not, at any rate, so long as the system itself was adhered to. The
Church was authorized to interpret divine revelation. And by whom was it
authorized? By Jesus Christ in the Bible, when he said to Peter, "Thou art
Peter, and on this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18) And how was one to know for certain that by
these words Jesus meant to confer such authorization on the Church? (After all,
he often used similarly concrete words symbolically.) Because the Church said
this was what he meant. And how did the Church know? Because theirs was the task
of interpreting divine revelation.
It was a perfect argument in a circle. The only avenue by which the human
spirit could escape to new vistas lay outside this ideational enclosure. And
this was the path science found, through its unprecedented method of testing its
hypotheses by experimentation.
Science too, however, was still caught in the greater web of Greek
rationalism. Our very discovery of the limitations of reason has only shown us
the need to break out of the system. It has not in itself led us outside the
system.
Much has been written, particularly since the time of John Stuart Mill, on
the supposedly un-Aristotelian method of scientific reasoning. Aristotle, we are
told, reasoned deductively: From general principles he deduced specific
conclusions. Science, by contrast, is said to reason inductively: From specific
facts it draws general principles. The difference, however, is not so great as
is claimed.
Scientific reasoning is not actually opposed to Aristotelian logic. It is
only the other side of the same coin. Both methods of reasoning are simply means
of reducing natural phenomena to rational categories. Both represent an attempt
to set reality in a firm mold of definitions.
The dividing line between the two systems is, moreover, anything but sharp
and clear. For it is doubtful whether general principles are ever conceived a
priori, without at least some prior reference to specific facts. It is not
possible to think in an ideational vacuum. Nor would facts by themselves seem
meaningful enough to merit scientific interest, had scientists not already some
preexisting hypothesis to which to relate them.
Nor has science been able to kill the spirit of dogmatism that is so inherent
in our rationalistic heritage.
Alexis Carrel, in Man, the Unknown, wrote that scientists, like people
in other fields, have a "natural tendency to reject the things that do not fit
into the frame of the scientific or philosophic beliefs of our time... . They
willingly believe that facts that cannot be explained by current theories do not
exist."
And Max Planck, the famous German physicist, wrote in his Scientific
Autobiography: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its
opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents
eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
A revolution in our thinking is the need of the hour. If ideational
revolutions require going outside the current systems, then let us see what
other systems are available. In them, we may at least find a hint of new
directions for ourselves.
In medieval times, the answer came from outside the Church. Today, perhaps it
will come from outside our own civilization, the entire structure of which is
framed in rationalism.
One advantage to living in the modern age is the contact that easy transport
and communication have given us with peoples all over the world. Somewhere, in
all this diversity, there may exist systems of thought that are different from
our own, yet sufficiently like our own to be compatible with it. For what we
want, essentially, is not to abandon that which is good in our own system, but
only to infuse our system with new insights. This is what happened, for example,
with the reawakened interest in Greek civilization that brought about the
Renaissance in Italy.
What we need today, in other words, is a New Renaissance.
Paramhansa Yogananda, the great Indian sage, won a Western critic to his side
when he said to him: "We are all of us a little bit crazy, but most of us don't
know it because we mix only with people with the same type of craziness as our
own. See, then, what an opportunity you and I have to learn from each other. It
is only when differently crazy people come together that they get a chance to
find out the errors in their own types of craziness!" Witty words, and wise!
Meanwhile, let us reflect whether our discovery that reason is, after all,
only a wooden idol is not cause for rejoicing rather than for despair.
Take a glance at the furrowed brows, the burdened gaze, the ironic smile of
people who wander all their lives in a desert of dry logic. They are thinking
about life; they are not living. Is that our image of the ideal man?
Is it what we ourselves wish to be like?
How many popular heroes of modern novel, stage, and television try to
demonstrate their superiority to the rest of us social pygmies by never
laughing, never grieving over the sorrows of others, never meeting others
sympathetically on their own level, nor ever rejoicing at the wonder and beauty
of life.
"Keep your eyes on the road," says our logical superman curtly, when his cab
driver ventures some harmless pleasantry. "You poor, foolish mortal!" his lofty
sneer seems to imply, when a woman or a child marvels at the riot of color in a
sunset. Our logical hero, too, is a wooden idol. His halo of superiority is
formed of an absence, and not of any fullness, of life.
But what does it mean, when one's wooden idols are destroyed? Need one's
faith be destroyed with them?
Leo Tolstoy wrote: "When a savage ceases to believe in his wooden god, this
does not mean that there is no God, but only that the true God is not made of
wood."
This
article was excerpted from:
 Out of the Labyrinth: For Those Who Want to Believe But Can't
by J. Donald
Walters.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Crystal Clarity Publishers. ©2001.
www.crystalclarity.com
Info/Order this book.
About the Author
J.
Donald Walters is widely considered one of the foremost living experts on
Eastern philosophy and spiritual practice. An American born in Rumania and
educated in England, Switzerland, and America, Walters studied at Haverford
College and Brown University. His books and music have sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide
and are translated into 24 languages. He has written more than 70 books and
composed over 400 pieces of music.
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