Soon it will be spring and you will finally tackle those overflowing closets and storage cabinets. Getting rid of old and obsolete things is essential to the process of finding and using things that are new and better.
Your mind needs the same attention. It is filled with the old and obsolete. It is also filled with things that are no longer true.
More importantly, developing a questioning mind helps you to identify dis- and misinformation before you commit it to memory. Preventing clutter is the key to the most effective mental spring cleaning.
Our world, our universe and the cosmos are rational. Everything in it is acting rationally (in accordance with its instincts, natural laws, orbits and thrust). The one non-rational actor is the human being, who often follows emotions rather than logic.
Your mind is full of emotional attachments to things that are not rational. Periodically questioning those emotional attachments is a necessary step to mental health.
A rational mind is the key to understanding the rational world. An emotional mind sees horrors and fears where none exists. An emotional mind is tied to beliefs that are not true or are no longer true.
I recommend doing a Sudoku puzzle every morning with your first cup of stimulant. Mathematics is 100% rational. There is only one solution to a Sudoku and it is a problem that can only be solved with reason. Putting your mind into rational gear with a solved Sudoku begins your day free of emotion.
Rational humans acting collaboratively are capable of creating a rational society. Emotional humans acting out conflicts will never be able to operate a society that values life, liberty and the pursuit of universal happiness.
In an emotional society, someone must always win and someone else must lose. Emotional societies create competing ideologies and leaders who are incapable of empathy. For you to be on the winning side means that your neighbor must lose.
The startling example of this recently occurred in Minnesota. The undesirables who entered our country illegally, then committed some crime, were defended by protests against federal law enforcement. Somehow, the right to protest became an expression of an ideology that defends criminality.
In response, federal law enforcement went too far, in my opinion, and two citizens were killed. Emotion ruled the streets.
Read the Declaration of Independence. It is the anthem of individuality. It doesn’t just declare our unwillingness to follow George III and the British Parliament, it denies all leadership and all ideology and proclaims our right to a government which derives “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Those powers must be rational and be exercised rationally. They must not create winners and losers, therefore they cannot be based upon an ideology that is not universally accepted by the governed. All of us must consent, not just the believers in the ideology that has won the election.
Individuality as defined in the Declaration of Independence is rational self-interest moderated by the demands of universal consent. The only way to get there is collaboration.
Some of you will object to universal consent. But all rational (unemotional) solutions to society’s problems can be universally determined through collaboration among rational human beings. There is a Sudoku solution.
Roger Van Zanen lives in Deltona.
