Being human in 2010 remains quite a challenge. No we’re not worried about saber-tooth cats or the Spanish Inquisition. But we do suffer from something much more deep-rooted and fundamental— an excess of rationality.
Most derive their rationality from their community of family and friendships. These tribes create the model for our rationality—the model for what is normal and what is weird for what actions we should take and what we should avoid. Others derive it from logical scientific or philosophical principles acquired at school. As the great psychologist Carl Jung points out the “conscious mind allows itself to be trained like a parrot.”
If our rationality is trained though might it be trained wrongly?
Jung and others— including mystics of all faith traditions throughout history— advocate unlocking our unconscious (that inner realm of the divine imagination) as the enlightened path toward understanding the world and our true place in it. “That doesn’t make sense. It’s absurd!” you may say with a dismissive growl. But you’re in fact quite right— it is absurd. And that’s precisely why it works.
In the words of Joseph Campbell and the Hindu yogis it’s “Follow your bliss.” For the Christians among us this idea can be found in the concept of faith. The biblical book of Proverbs states “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart lean not on thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he will direct thy paths.” It certainly didn’t escape the wisdom of Solomon that the heart— not the rational mind— is the vehicle of faith. The Christian existentialist Kierkegaard further elaborates that this interior “movement of faith must be made continually on the strength of the absurd.”
Such intuitive faith is not without its enemies however. Our advanced capitalistic society naturally tries to constrain this absurdity because it is indefinable— and at times unproductive in the material sense. The entire notion of having a “career” or “field” is a modern invention that is still foreign in many parts of the world and stifles creative and cultural revolutions.
Rationality is also the chief cause of dullness within the psyche of regularity and self-preservation to the point of stagnating colorlessness. Yet another adverse effect of capitalism corporations create clever models and statistical algorithms to ensure that unpredictability remains minimized and marginalized. Indeed the ideal consumer is he who is rationally understood whose entire “utility curve” of desires can be reduced to a simple numeric value.
I therefore encourage you— using all of my unquestionable influence (or lack thereof) as a graduating senior— to not squander this incarnation of your life to rationality. Though all this talk about reason might seem a bit abstract it has real-world implications. All your life you have been given other people’s methods for finding your way. Enough is enough: discover and embrace your interior conviction rather than the framework presented to you as a model from your tribe Pepperdine or the world.
Taking a page from Thoreau “Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine” of rationality and its ills: religious dogma with its rationalization of intolerance capital-driven economics with its rationalization of exploitation … and boredom.
Every morning when we wake up we re-enter our illusionary “Plato’s cave.” We gradually begin our transitions back to consciousness usually in a rather sluggish fashion. It starts with a shower then a sobering up with a few slaps of the face and realization of a greater awareness of one’s surroundings a succumbing to reality and finally a sigh of resignation as we remember our list of daily chores.
But what if it didn’t have to be that way? Throw your reason out the window and drift along in a waking dream at least for one day. Whether that means going to class or skipping it to paint on the beach shunning all responsibility or being a master of getting things done— follow your intuition follow your faith.
I dare you to embrace the absurd.
