What’s the Reason?

The reason is the ability the human mind has to identify, analyze, question, and related concepts, which allows us to deduce new knowledge, induce a new idea, find new premises or discard old ones.

As a result of the previous process, we create new premises or propositions that lead us to judgments or conclusions that we take for ‘valid or invalid’, ‘correct or incorrect’. This shapes our way to understand the world and our behavior choices.

Michael Blumenstein used to say “it’s the process by which we try to simplify the complexity of the world around us to feel able to manage it.”

There Are Many Ways to Find the Reason

There’s a great variety of reason models that help us through this process.

Deductive or Inductive… What do you see? Everything and from there you go to more specific things, or the opposite. You see the details and induce what everything could be.

Rational or Lateral… You analyze ‘the parts’, their relation and generate conclusions, or maybe, you see from different perspectives and from there you analyze and generate new propositions.

Divergent or Convergent… Your analysis is mostly focused on identifying differences or similarities among the things you are analyzing.

Logic or Intuitive… Your analysis is made based on hard facts or based on sensations and perceptions.

And I could go on and on… each of these are the names we give to the different ways they are for this reasoning process, it is to say, this comprehension process of the world that surrounds us.

Is the Reason Right?

Until the previous paragraph, everything seems to be in the right order. We talk about the ways we understand the world, it’s complexity, simplify it and survive to it.

Including the fact of naming this forms so we can identify them and distinguish them.

Where does the pig ‘twists the tail’ as my grandma used to say? When after the reasoning process we take for ‘truth, unique, and universal’ our conclusion.

And even more, in order for me to prove my result is ‘better’ or ‘more correct’ than yours, I devalue your method to reach your conclusion. Then it’s ‘better’ a scientific method, than a myth based method. Or the bible is on top of science.

It’s not my intention to create a debate upon the previous information, I believe that they’re different ways of simplification, and each of us chooses the one that suits us better for our own survival even if I don’t agree.

And that’s what the focus of this reflection is. We’ve given so much weight to ‘reason’ and we have considered it our reference of behavior (whichever the method we have) that we end up fighting about our reason.

Reason or Construction?

It seems to me that in a world where there are as many people as reasoning models (beyond the groups we can make out of their similarities) in the frame of the social the interesting thing is how we get to this conclusions, and what we want to do with them. The main premise is: what do we want to build with others based or not on this premises.

Co-construction is not a model of ‘true reasons’ although some think it is. In it’s more basic process is the form to ‘support each other in order to survive’. In the cavern days, this was literal. Together it was easier to hunt a Mamut than doing it by ourselves, our survival chances increased. In this process, the most important thing wasn’t being right but accomplish the shared purpose.

Today is quite similar. Maybe what there’s outside is not a Mamut, but ourselves and the dangers of the society we’ve co-created with our knowledge. And the main premise is the same ‘make something that makes it easier, increases our chances and in some cases contributes to making our survival fuller’.

What joins us is not a reasoning model, what joins us is a purpose to build, achieve or secure. And sometimes the reasoning model gets in the way.

Learn to Distinguish

When you and I are able to distinguish then we can contribute in a different way because what’s important is the purpose we want to achieve, even form our reasoning differences.

And this logic applies to all circumstances. Allow me to share some examples with you:

  • You and I compete for a job and a winner has been announced. How can we build in this new scenario for this new purpose?
  • We’ve gotten our divorce, we’re not a couple, however, we are still parents. What’s the purpose we share and how we want to build it?
  • You and I have different political perspectives, the candidate of one of us wone. What’s the way for us to build the nation we want?

The challenge is looking at what we want to build together and not our differences. Learning to build on the difference is based on focusing on the common purpose that we all want to reach.

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