About rationality
For whom has a hammer, everything is a nail.
I used rationality in all aspects of my life since as long as I can remember.
Rationality is a powerful defensive ally for a child growing up in an erratic brutal environment for both the mind and the body.
Rationality is also a powerful ally for a curious mind. It allows to sift the wheat from the chaff. It helped me a lot with getting a good command of the scientific approach, long before I made the apprenticeship of research.
Rationality helped me to figure out what inner happiness and what a normal loving relationship should be. I discovered the vocabulary for that in my 30s, but I had the fundamentals in place way earlier.
From personal experience, I found out that having loving level-headed parents does NOT guarantee that the children will know how to recognise and deal with abusers in their adult life, nor will it guarantee that as adults won't turn into abusers themselves.
Rationality and analytic skills were also highly prised assets in my line of work for over 20 years.
And so I applied rationality and analytical skills to my intuitions, to the point that I stopped using my raw intuitions for many years.
For whom has a hammer, everything is a nail... I had rationality and analytical skills, and it was working so well that I applied them to all aspects of my life until I decided to turn my life around.
I didn't throw rationality out of my life.
Let's say I am more rational(!!) about when and where to use it.
And I threw it away from certain aspects of my life. Definitely, irrevocably.
For example, I am rational about science, world economy, my spendings, my driving, what I eat, how I dress up given the weather and my activities.
For example, I have thrown away rationality when it comes to astrology, sentiments, and my dialog with the universe.
It feels like I should explain things a bit more here.
Science
As a scientist, my philosophical stance is post-positivist (Popper and Kuhn together).
I believe that an observation that doesn't fit in a given theory is the demonstration that the theory is incomplete and must be improved. Note that most Ph.D. and professional scientists have no clue about their philosophical stance regarding science, i.e. they have no clue about what they consider good and bad science and if they do they actually lack both the concepts and the vocabulary to make their case. Obviously, this has a negative impact on the quality of the funding and output of science. This is a terrible situation, and a terrible evolution of science over the last 50 years.
Today' science, specifically physics, tells us that our grasp of the total universe represents 5% of the whole energy and matter in the universe. Our model of the universe is based on what we can measure, it conforms to what we can measure, it provides some explanations to the rules of causality that we observe on the things we can measure. These are expected characteristics for a properly scientific model (despite the so called data-science hype).
It is a good model, but this model is far from good enough to be used as a valid argument to dismiss and cancel anything that doesn't belong to the 5% the model deals with.
Hear me well. I am not advocating for pseudo-science. Pseudo-science is easily recognisable in that it uses the rules of a model to explain things that are not covered by the model. It is like applying a math theorem when some conditions are not met, e.g. using Pythagoras on a triangle that doesn't have a straight angle. Gödel dealt with that long ago.
What I am saying is that the various parts of the model that are taught from primary school to university are our current gauges for rationality, while they merely represent 5% of what there is out there in the universe, in terms of matter and energy, and therefore in terms of forces and interactions in and between dark-energy, dark-matter, the 5%-energy we know, and the 5%-matter we know.
From there, the only logical rational conclusion is that it does leave a lot to discover and understand, and that observations that fall outside the 5%-model should not be considered as irrational. Rationality commands us to take these weird observations into account and try to expand our current theories of life and universe, as to make the theory fit everything we can sense in the universe, including our intuitions.World economy & my spendings
Most people say capitalism is bad.
What I answer is: don't mix up capitalism and neo-liberalism.\ Capitalism has always existed. It is the idea that one shares some of his/her assets with someone else, in order for this someone else to develop an activity that benefits the community. It can be money, equipment, know how… The idea is that at some point in time, usually years, this sharing will be rewarded. The reward may have many forms and doesn't always involve money.
Neo-liberalism is a form of capitalism where money is the only thing that is shared, and the reward is expected to be instantaneous. This is how we got to high speed trading, which obviously didn’t exist when Bob was providing two gold coins and a horse to his neighbour to buy some seeds and plough the land… In today's neo-liberalist world economy, money can be instantly withdrawn from a company traded on the stock exchange, and if enough actors do that at the same time the company can be wiped out instantly for ever. And with that, people lose their ability to feed themselves and their family.
With neoliberalism, the people who own 95% of Earth's economy account for less than 5% of the Earth's population. For this slice of the population, it is better to invest their money in financial products than in any manufacturing or employment endeavour. In 2023, in both Germany and France, it is 500 times better, because in both these countries the value of the financial products is 500 times the value of the products manufactured in both these countries. In 2008/2009, in the USA the value of the financial products was 900 times higher than the value of the manufactured products. At the same time UK had a ration close to 700 and France was in 3rd position by a marginal difference. Let's get a better perspective on these numbers: in 2000 in the entire Earth economy, the value of the financial products was only twice as much as the value of the manufactured products. I do recommend the reading of 23 things they didn't tell you about capitalism, and to check the figures on the official EU website.
I believe that all the people who grew up in the 70s and the 80s (and are today in age of being employed) can feel the shift that occurred over the last 25 years. Very few can explain why they feel like that. No politician speaks about it. Recently, roughly half of the American people voted for a guy whose pals are in the richest 5% club, and these guys don't give a damn about whether regular people can provide three decent meals a day to their kids. We see the same things happening in Europe. Unlike political pundits, I do not wonder why political parties who tell people they are against the system and on the side of the regular people rise. I do not wonder because this is the only message of hope that regular people can hear, despite the fact that these political parties are entirely driven by people in the top 5%.
Rationally, I made the decision to get out of a system that makes people less valuable than a number at the bottom of a bank statement.
My new and only home is a 20y old $3k van, a metal box on wheels that is 2.8m long, 1.8m wide, and 1.6m high, that contains a comfy single bed where I can rest, a shower box where I can keep a good body hygiene, and some storage for food, clothes, books, and the tools I use to improve or fix my home and to earn my living when opportunities come my way. Grand total: $7k. Running cost? $300/y for the insurance, $700/y for my health insurance, $12cts/km, and less than $5 for 2.5 meals a day when I am not workaway'ing.
I am surprised more people don't branch out.Astrology
A famous physicist asked about whether he believed in God responded: "Should there be a single person on Earth who believes in God, then God exists.". If my memory serves me well, the name was Niels Bohr.
I don't know whether his answer was driven more by humanist principles or by the post-positivist rationality I outlined above (if you want more, try the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Whatever the rationale, he didn't cancel what cannot be observed, measured, proven, despite his strong scientific stance and achievements.
When I took off with my van I stopped at two friends' place who are into astrology. The astrology she does for a living is not in the domain of divination. The astrology she does relates the theme of a person to the events that occur in this person's life. To me she said: "your theme contains two transits with two powerful planets, it reoccurs every 21 years, and it must feel overwhelming and overpowering". She didn't know much about my life before she created my theme. I am very critical of some of Steven Forrest's arguments developed in The Inner Sky. And yet, both the 21 years, and the overwhelming and overpowering feelings are correct. And she was also right on another account: my decisions are much better since I make the effort recognise my raw intuitions and to not apply rationality on them.
How rational is that?
Not rational within the school-taught model of Life, because it doesn't account for intuition and the sky above the head of a new born. And because that model doesn't account for those two things, I contend it is only rational to accept what happens to me without trying to calculate or explain anything.
I am grateful I am still able to live it, despite having bent myself for 55 years within a box that represents 5% of what's out there.
Here stops my argument.
I am reconnecting with myself on many levels, and again, I am grateful for that.