Instinct or Reason?

[studio150]

I'm with Spock on this one, logic everytime.

 

[BBassic]

Reason will prevail!

 

[AmexRuislip]

I value both, as they have their own place in the learning cycle of life!

 

[Bob'n'weave]

Reason is beautiful. Reason is what enabled us to become the clearly dominant species that we are today. However, reason isn't purely an upside; it has its disadvantages as well. The main problem that reason presents is that it forces us to find a delicate balance between it and instinct.

I prize reason over instinct. It is simply a more effective tool than instinct in the world that we inhabit. However, even though we human beings must constantly remain rational, we must acknowledge the existence of instinct and try our hardest to understand it. Why? Because instinct is ultimately what defines humanity and gives our actions weight.

A world governed purely by instinct would be disastrous, to say the least. One of the gifts of a rational mind is that it allows us to suppress instinct and build our society in a way to continue suppressing it. It is a male's biological imperative to mate with as many females as he can. However, if he did that, stable families would never form and children are denied a chance at living in an optimal environment for child-raising. As a society, we actively suppress a man's desire to assert himself as the alpha male and make his genes as relevant in the gene pool as possible by outlawing polygamy and elevating monogamy onto a pedestal.

On the other hand, we've made special cases for instinct. For example, we have a created a facet of the legal system in which it can flourish through the concept of "justice" and the presence of capital punishment. I believe that "justice" is a euphemism. "Justice" is a word that is meant to disguise our visceral need for revenge. One of the main reasons why people are punished is because they are punished for the sake of punishment. When we see these criminals, we know that they've done bad things, and we want to make them pay and see them suffer for what they've done. Well, one may argue that punishment can act as a method of rehabilitation to tailor criminals into the law-abiding, morally conscious citizens that they are supposed to be. While this is a valid argument and I do believe that some people genuinely believe it, I doubt anyone purely supports legal punishment because of this reason. I believe that people support legal punishment for some blend of these two reasons, the logical justification and our instinctive need for revenge and "balance."

The reason why I believe that most people punish for the sake of punishment is because of capital punishment, a form of punishment supported by the overwhelming majority of the American population. For capital punishment, the logical of punishment as a rehabilitation mechanism is shattered because well, people can't change for the better when they're dead. From a logical standpoint, capital punishment serves no benefit to society; it is merely a medium through which we achieve our visceral desires, which is, in this case, revenge. If you sentence a killer or a rapist to death, his death won't unkill or unrape his victims. All of the possible consequences are negative. Those close with the sentenced criminal will end up resenting those that put him to death. Capital punishment only leads to more hate. But why do we do it? Again, it's completely visceral. We want to see "justice" served. The Golden Rule mandates for good actions to be responded to with good actions and bad actions to be responded to with bad actions. We also empathize with the victims of the criminal and the people close with the victims. The satisfaction that we experience when we see criminals suffer is probably ten fold for those who were actually victims of the criminal. One of the reasons we put the most heinous criminals to death is because we want to grant their victims the solace and satisfaction they experience when they see the Golden Rule being satisfied. I know that if someone killed somebody close to me such as my brother or one of my parents, a part of me would be out for blood. And if I were to kill whoever did this, I know that I would feel better, despite knowing on some logical level hidden beneath several beneath several layers of rage that I've solved nothing and have only caused the world more suffering. This is why 72% of the United States, an overwhelming majority, supports the death penalty.

However, we cannot completely ignore the presence of instinct in our lives. Instinct has proven time and time again that it cannot be suppressed completely. A good example of the flawed nature of this method of thinking is abstinence only education. Abstinence only education is the result of blatant ignore and a foolish desire to suppress one of the defining aspects of our species. On a physical level, we are sexually mature before the end of our teens, which is why that by the teen years, kids are already constantly thinking of sex. Throw in our instinctive curiosity and it's obvious why abstinence only education fails. First of all, abstinence only education suppresses our main biological and evolutionary goal: To mate, reproduce, and keep our genes in the gene pool. Second of all, abstinence only education keeps children in the dark about themselves. Abstinence only education, like I mentioned in an earlier post, is a self perpetuating cycle of of ignorance. Because of the ignorance of the proponents of abstinence only education who bullshit their way into getting these programs passed by deeming sex some magical, spiritual act and dismissing our visceral desires as "sin"/"the devil", they force kids to also make decisions out of ignorance. As a result, we have a lot of confused teenagers and super high teen pregnancy rates in the states with the strictest attitudes towards sex.

Now let's imagine a world without our instinctive sides. This world would be terrible. Why? Because our emotions are visceral. I believe that the world should be governed purely by reason. However, the main factor of our moral and life decisions is emotion and pain. Logic is only a tool we use to understand our world and banish the darkness of ignorance to make sound decisions that provide us with the best possible outcome. The visceral biological side of us created through millions of years of evolution is what we are trying to satisfy with our logical abilities. This side of us is what religion tries to be: The "why". Why do we help our fellow man? To prevent suffering and spread happiness. Why do we live? To be happy. Emotion, pain, and suffering are ultimately what gives our actions meaning. However, unless humanity comes to understand that, we will continue living in a sea of ignorance and attributing the beauty of human life to false causes (God) instead of Mother Nature. And, as history has proved time and time again, this irrational evasion of truth disguised as an explanation always culminates in complete failure.

In the end, the most important thing is for us to balance out these two defining sides of our being because without the other, each side is doomed. Without logic, instinct runs rampant and leads to moral injustices such as torture, capital punishment, and genocide. Without instinct, logic has no reason to exist. It is up to logic to understand the "meaning" of our existence and restrain the beast within us. The reason why logic is necessary is because it exists. When human beings evolved a conscious sentience with capable of rational thought, we developed free will alongside this self-awareness, changing our goal in life. We are no longer slaves to our biological imperative of merely survival. We now are all individuals who want to live life to the fullest and most importantly, be happy. But with this free will, we developed a capacity for evil, an ability to break nature's laws and knowingly commit moral injustices. Since the very first act of evil, a chain reaction has started that has ravaged mankind for centuries because the survival mechanisms within us weren't programmed to handle it, mainly the Golden Rule while stipulates for us to respond to evil with more evil. Sentience is bittersweet. It's given us the tool to live life 10 times as well as primitive animals. However, it has also given us the tools to live 10 times as worse as primitive animals. It's up the logic to use these tools correctly. It's up to instinct to define what "correctly" is.





http://gear61sblog.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/conflict-between-reason-and-instinct.html

Or to put it simply, don't let your Monkey drive the car.