Please be reasonable!

a mutual confidence in reason becomes one of life's most important goals.disaster to all of us that is derived from an intellectual distrust of reason.

I think that one of the important duties we all have is to help others formulate a confidence in reason.




I picture myself as a member of a small group of riders trying desperately to turn the stampeding herd before that herd reaches the cliffs.

The herd is humanity. My fellow riders are the few who, like me, think they have been enlightened and wish to stop an impending catastrophe. The skeptical reader is, of course, correct that the riders may be idiots and that the herd is just seeking better pastures. The consoling thought for the riders is that if they, the riders, are wrong it is of little consequence because they are so few; while the herd, if wrong, will probably destroy them self.

The riders, like me, think that there is a fundamental issue, that if resolved, will reposition the herd into a more perceptive and reasonable mode and thus the herd will live happily ever after.

The fundamental issue that concerns the riders is that the herd makes very poor decisions. For this reason the riders think that if the herd became Critical Thinkers and self-learners matters would improve.

A rider from a past generation spoke about these matters in:

The Decline of Western Democracy
by Walter Lippmann

"The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes and chemical reactions. For, unless man is something more than that, he has no rights that anyone is bound to respect, and there are no limitations upon his conduct which he is bound to obey."