Spock is Wrong

We humans consider ourselves generally to be rationale beings and pride ourselves on the power of intellect. However from time to time we are reminded of how our logic is limited. Perhaps this has happened to you, you find yourself in a situation that does not make any sense and you wonder how you arrived there. So, you mentally retrace each of your steps and while each one seems to be logical it takes you right back to where you were, a place that you do not want to be.

Perhaps with map in hand you sat in your car, lost, and tried to figure where you are and how you got there. I would argue that our war in Iraq is another example, each decision point made sense, at the time, but now in hindsight, it doesn’t make sense at all. I consider this an example of taking logic to its illogical conclusion. I believe that if one follows the strict rules of rational thinking long enough it takes you to a weird place where those rules break down or become meaningless.

For example, answer this question, where is the end of up? We all know what up means. If you throw something in the air, it goes up and then comes back down. Simple. However, if you keep going up, you eventually transgress our relatively thin atmosphere and find yourself in space. In space there is no UP. Up is a relative point. It is wherever you want it to be. We have taken logic to its illogical conclusion where the question itself ceases to make sense. Moreover, it may be nearly impossible to define the exact point, that exact moment, when one passes into the zone of illogic!

Strict adherents to rational thought might start to panic at this point. Of course, they would have all sorts of rationalizations as to why I am wrong. But there is no reason why logic and illogic can’t live harmoniously. Chaos theory shows us that what appears to be chaos is often a larger and more complex pattern, a different type of sense, than we had previously imagined. Logic alone can’t explain the world, because it is as limited as we are. Therefore, I beseech you, question your logic! Embrace the nonsensical! “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.