The Courtrooms of Reason

It is another sleepless night. We all know the feeling. The very first time I remember being sleepless was at the age of four-years-old. My sisters slept soundly in adjacent rooms, and I sat wide-eyed and wide awake, awaiting what would come next. It seemed such an odd feeling, going to sleep. Why would we sleep when there was so much to be done? I wanted so badly to draw pictures and play soccer and ride my bike. There was purpose in the day! Why should that cease with the night?

I stared at the dark ceiling with only the dim light of the night light casting its protective glow. Above me shadows waved back and forth with a pace similar to that of waving tree-tops in the wind. As I watched the shadows morph and move, they began to be characterized by evil. They began to hiss and tease and toy with me, and all I could think to do was pull my covers over my head and hope to fall asleep. To no avail… As I unclenched my eyelids I slowly pulled the covers under my nose. And there they were, as if waiting for my emergence. What would such evil beings gain from my torment in the night? What authority do they have over me? Were they to kill me, wouldn’t they have done it by now?

With that I leapt from my bed. I stood amongst them and raised my finger toward the ceiling. “Get out of my house!” I told them. “In the name of God, I cast you out!”

Who knows how long I stood and chanted. Who knows how many sleepless nights I spent casting shadows from my ceilings.

Many ticks the clock has ticked since that night. Many shadows have crawled along my ceilings, and my tents, and my trails. It is hard now to do anything but rationalize each and everything that I see or feel. Sadness can be weakness. Anger can be shortsightedness. Happiness can be ignorance. Shadows on the walls? They are only shadows. The truth is, the character of the shadows in the night will give way to the comfort of the inanimate objects I recognize in the light.

As I look back to the many interesting metaphysical occurrences in my life, I find great ease in the rationalization of such moments. I wonder now if the idea that ghosts and demons do not exist would have been enough to deter my fears and send me deep into sleep. I wonder if it would have mattered at all. If you believe something to be true, how true it can be! As soon as we rationalize our existence and minimalize our experiences to helpless subjectivity, fear of the unknown ceases to be. How could you fear the unknown if the unknown is known? If I know what is under my bed, my fear turns to preparation and action. It is the question of “if” that leaves me to seek the 'is'. If 'it' only 'is' and 'if' always 'isn't,' 'I' only 'am' and cannot 'become.' ‘If’ leaves me to discover. ‘Is’ leaves me only to observe.

But what also must be abandoned should we depart from the unknown? Curiosity? Excitement? If I watch a video of each future wilderness journey, the bubble of my angst and elation is popped with the needle of rationality. This leaves me to wonder, where is the place for rationality? Is it always necessary?

I ponder now what other anomalies I presently rationalize that I did not as a boy. There was a time when I believed in love, in truth, in happiness, in compassion. Not because I understood it, but instead because I felt it and never questioned whether or not it was real. As I saw roadkill I felt sad, as I saw a homeless person I felt compassion. As I saw my parents and my siblings I felt a deep love. These things can be rationalized as instinctual or psychological. I could rationalize to the point where love and compassion does not truly exist, it is merely a response to a herd instinct or genetic sexual preferences. But why would I? I would therefore deprive myself of the very existential pleasures that make me an excited, thoughtful, and curious human-being. Can I not entertain beliefs outside of my realm of understanding because of their irrationality?

Here is the hard truth that we avoid intellectualizing when we make claims that we are either ‘atheist’ or ‘agnostic’ or ‘religious’: There are only two options for our existence— a) If we do not believe in a creator, we cannot then believe in right or wrong because everything we see and know happened as a result of chance. Our decisions only carry consequences equal to the harm they cause to others, and harm to others can be ‘rationalized’ as okay providing the circumstance allows the action. The only ‘rational’ possibility for existence is that everything that has happened or will happen is a domino being tipped by the preceding domino, therefore all life, technology, feeling, or action is only a consequence of what lead up to its occurrence. B) If we do believe in a creator, our rationality must be tapered by our imaginations. If there is a creator and the creator is conscious, the creator must also have intentions, feelings, and actions. Therefore, everything we do or say is the most important thing we will ever do. That means our lives are not just lottery balls bouncing at random. That means that our choices are REAL choices and not just reactions to other reactions reacting to reactions.

A claim that there is no creative force of the Universe is a claim that there is no freedom of choice.  No right and wrong, happiness, sadness, or fear. In essence, that freedom is an illusion and we are all slave to chance. A belief in a creative force of the Universe is the claim that everything has purpose. It grants us responsibility. It grants us authority over our decisions. No means no and yes means yes. There is no such room for ‘it doesn’t matter.’

When I now think back to those shadows on the walls, I feel as though I once saw something that I now cannot see. I saw things through the eyes of more than just a functioning and stable member of a society. I relied on more than what I was taught or how I was taught to think. There was a purity in my naivety. To survive in our world, there is very little room for anything outside our realm of understanding until someone comes to understand it and tells us it is okay to believe it. But by our belief in only rationality and what is ‘known,’ we rob ourselves of so much. Our freedom to love, to be happy, to care. With only what is known and what is rationalized, we are only left with illusions of feelings and no feelings actually exist. If this is true, then so be it. But if you, like me, find no refuge in a world where nothing carries meaning, I believe it necessary to reconsider your stance on the metaphysical. If it is freedom and purpose you seek, it cannot be found in the courtrooms of reason.