![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
What logic really means
Monday, 23 May 2016 11:17 pm"I Understand The Idea, But Their Method Of Ascertaining Whether Someone Is Sane Is Just—Is Insane!"*
-:- -:- -:- -:-
I'm both very logical and very emotional; my logical mind is the reason I can successfully function when my emotions are trying to overwhelm me. And there's something I've been trying to put into words for some time, but I couldn't find a way into it. In his book, Every Day Is an Atheist Holiday!, Penn Jillette tells a story that finally gave me that starting point.
He talks about a rash he developed from spending too much time in the bathtub. His doctor tells him to stop taking baths. He tells the doctor he can't do that, he needs his baths, he finds them comforting. The doctor tells him again he has to stop taking baths.
If you asked most people, they'd say Jillette is being emotional and the doctor is being logical. And that's true. But it's also true that Jillette is being logical and the doctor is being illogical.
We're emotional creatures. We need things that make us feel safe and comfortable. We don't function well without those things. Jillette's thing was spending time in the bathtub. Doing the thing that makes you feel good and keeps you functioning is logical, no matter what the consequences. You have to survive in the moment before you can begin to think about your future. If you don't survive in the moment, there is no future.
So we're incredibly bad at giving up things that make us feel good. This is no secret. Doctors don't generally live under rocks, so they must know this, but their solution is always "Just stop doing that." But this is not a solution because we cannot do it. If you take away someone's security blanket, you need to help them find a replacement.
What is logical about telling someone to do something they can't do? What is logical about telling someone to do something you know they can't do? How does that make any sense at all?
Penn Jillette's solution was to cut his bath time down to something like two hours a day. (He literally used to spend the whole day in the tub, eating, reading, even having meetings there.) This seems to have cleared up his skin problem. Jillette came up with a real solution, one that fixed the problem he was having without creating other problems for him by depriving him of a needed comfort. That is logical.
This logic/illogic issue is something that's always bothered me about Bones. Brennan is supposed to be so logical, but there is nothing logical about denying reality—which is all you can call consistently refusing to accept that other people have different priorities. It doesn't matter if you find those priorities "illogical"; they still exist, and they aren't going away just because you don't agree with them. Pretending otherwise simply makes no sense.
I spend a lot of time trying to work around my own craziness, humoring it so I can function. I think of it as a winding road. Logic says the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but if the road is curvy, you don't go straight. Following the curvy road is more logical than driving straight through lawns and over sidewalks, down embankments and through guard rails.
*Adam Felber
-:- -:- -:- -:-
I'm both very logical and very emotional; my logical mind is the reason I can successfully function when my emotions are trying to overwhelm me. And there's something I've been trying to put into words for some time, but I couldn't find a way into it. In his book, Every Day Is an Atheist Holiday!, Penn Jillette tells a story that finally gave me that starting point.
He talks about a rash he developed from spending too much time in the bathtub. His doctor tells him to stop taking baths. He tells the doctor he can't do that, he needs his baths, he finds them comforting. The doctor tells him again he has to stop taking baths.
If you asked most people, they'd say Jillette is being emotional and the doctor is being logical. And that's true. But it's also true that Jillette is being logical and the doctor is being illogical.
We're emotional creatures. We need things that make us feel safe and comfortable. We don't function well without those things. Jillette's thing was spending time in the bathtub. Doing the thing that makes you feel good and keeps you functioning is logical, no matter what the consequences. You have to survive in the moment before you can begin to think about your future. If you don't survive in the moment, there is no future.
So we're incredibly bad at giving up things that make us feel good. This is no secret. Doctors don't generally live under rocks, so they must know this, but their solution is always "Just stop doing that." But this is not a solution because we cannot do it. If you take away someone's security blanket, you need to help them find a replacement.
What is logical about telling someone to do something they can't do? What is logical about telling someone to do something you know they can't do? How does that make any sense at all?
Penn Jillette's solution was to cut his bath time down to something like two hours a day. (He literally used to spend the whole day in the tub, eating, reading, even having meetings there.) This seems to have cleared up his skin problem. Jillette came up with a real solution, one that fixed the problem he was having without creating other problems for him by depriving him of a needed comfort. That is logical.
This logic/illogic issue is something that's always bothered me about Bones. Brennan is supposed to be so logical, but there is nothing logical about denying reality—which is all you can call consistently refusing to accept that other people have different priorities. It doesn't matter if you find those priorities "illogical"; they still exist, and they aren't going away just because you don't agree with them. Pretending otherwise simply makes no sense.
I spend a lot of time trying to work around my own craziness, humoring it so I can function. I think of it as a winding road. Logic says the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but if the road is curvy, you don't go straight. Following the curvy road is more logical than driving straight through lawns and over sidewalks, down embankments and through guard rails.
*Adam Felber