The Age of Unreason

A lot of us talk about the absurdity of our era, about people of these days being unreasonable, and probably about our society being anti-rational (in which the term rational is used in a general sense). Regardless of what our world looks like, it is apparent that people seem to be unable to reason. In a radical sense, this means human stops being homo sapiens. Betrand Russell said, in his essay The Ancestry of Fascism, that the revolt against reason begins with the revolt of reasoning. Russell has his own reasoning. I am not here to repeat how Hume destroyed causation which in turn destroyed the foundation of science. All I want to do is to describe these people being unreasonable, our society being anti-rational and our era being absurd. It is only a description and leaves rationale behind later. This description, without rationale, seems to some the equivalent of those unreasonable, anti-rational and absurd people I am attacking. No, not true. When something we sense is by reason accepted to be so, which is to say, we have no reason to refute what we see, then it is likely that it is true - or at least it is not absolutely wrong or illogical that it cannot exist. It exists. More importantly, I am a rational person, and I am reasonable. I live in a world that is far from absurd, albeit that I know of such a world which I attempt to avoid with all my efforts but regrettably - admittedly - with which I must interact.

Russell was right in pointing out that when the political ecology becomes more heterogeneous, it would be hard to attribute issues to reason, for the diversity in values makes it impossible to argue from a common assumption. If the value of judgement is not the same among each others, then it will not be possible that reasonableness takes place in the argument. Each party comes to his own conclusion from his own starting point. The gap is unbridgeable as a result. The only way is to subject the opposition to force; otherwise, both sides continue to argue and keep on arguing to the point when both lose their temper and at the end defer to force for resolution. We shall be glad to know that at this point in time, politics only just reach the point when both side are arguing. In many parts of the world, the so-called matured democracies come to the point of keeping on arguing. When economically the society can sustain such wasteful behaviour, the arguing continues. One day will come to a point where people cannot find their subsistence and by then they no longer believe argument per se is the effecutal means to acheive what they think to be an end of their own good. Then we jump to force and violence for a final and quick solution. This sounds less probably but possible.

Those immature democracies, pseudo-democracies, democratic totalitarian states and failed states (of different degrees) can come to the final point much easier. However, in the city where I regrettably reside, there is less of a concern to come to the violent resolution, for one particular reason I assure you of the safety - the intellectually castrated citizens are enormous in number. No other how these castrated dogs cannot act violently, as they lack the organ that secrets the hormone to make them violent. They are violent to the extent that they shout at each other in the subway train or yell to some anonymous parties on an internet forum. But when they are given a gun, they have their shit scared out of them and shake and break. Such useless, castrated animals, jumping and joking, hysterically grinning and shouting, fully occupy this place. They know, perhaps, by heart, that in a decade of two, they would turn inferior to the group of humans, whom they once abhored and derided but who have become their masters, and turn totally of no use to them. As a consequence their castration becomes a blessing, for they do not need to reproduce and no more castrated animals to come to this world. The reproduction rate of this city is the lowest in the world. The Age of Unreason tells us that when reason goes away, the barbarism comes to fill its vacuum, which seals the people's fate. The unfortunate thing is when we live in a world which is rational, reasonable and beautiful, we have to tolerate an anti-world that is spreading and no too soon devouring ours.