Now Is The Time To Live

 

I've got values but I don't know how or why. ~The Who, The Seeker

Most of us, most of the time, are reasonable people. That's not to say we're always logical, but only that we usually have our reasons for the things we do, believe, and know. 

Occasionally, we run across adults who confess that they are behaving unreasonably, "I don't know why I did that." Even more rarely, an adult will admit, "I don't know how I know -- I just know." Psychologists tell us that much of our behavior is unreasonable in this way, meaning that we act, then later, if pressed, fill in a reason after the fact, usually one dressed up in logic because that's what's expected, even if it isn't entirely the truth. We do this all the time with our feelings. We often must search, sometimes with the help of a friend or therapist, for the reason we feel sad or irritable or anxious. Even knowledge can sometimes come to us without the framework of reasons: our best ideas often come to us in a flash that has nothing to do with reason, let alone logic. Einstein famously says his Theory of Relativity came to him in this way, then he went back and did the math to build a scaffold of reason to support his not-so-crazy idea. And, of course, some of our beliefs rest on faith, the reason we give to the things we know that simply cannot be supported by logic.

I once, in exasperation, asked a five-year-old why he persisted in harming other children. He was in anguish as he answered, "I don't know." This had happened after months of trying to support this boy in his genuine efforts to stop harming other children. It wasn't about emotional outbursts or losing control, at least not in the way we normally see it in young children whose ability to self-regulate are still developing. On the contrary, he generally presented as a charming, intelligent boy, one who said all the right things, who was usually surrounded by friends, and who behaved politely with adults. But at least once a day, usually when he felt the adults weren't looking, he would push someone to the ground, twist their arm, or otherwise hurt them. His mother once told me that she couldn't trust him alone with her newborn. 

His behavior confounded us, including his mother, who was a therapist, as well as the other professionals with whom the family and our school consulted. We were searching for the reasons behind his behavior, all of us, I think, desperately trying to avoid approaching the only reason we had left, which was that his boy was exhibiting traits often associated with a psychopath, an as yet untreatable condition that afflicts about one percent of humans, and is characterized, at least in part, as deriving pleasure from causing pain in others. I've lost track of this family. I hope he outgrew it, that he is not part of that one percent, but I will never forget him telling me, "I don't know." He normally expressed little remorse for his behavior, but this was a moment of genuine distress over not being able to attach a reason to his behavior. If only we could identify why he did the things he did, we thought, then we could help him. That moment of "I don't know" was so raw and genuine that it felt like truth, even if I was desperately trying to avoid the reason to which it seemed to lead.

This is an extreme example, of course. Usually, we are better at attaching reasons to behavior. As adults who work with young children, we often find ourselves in the position of playing detective when it comes to behavior. That's in part because young children, by and large, are still developing their language skills, but also because they haven't yet adopted the adult compulsion to backfill their behavior with reasons. They don't generally feel the need to explain or justify themselves, even as adults prod them for their reasons, ultimately "finding" them through our own conjectures. This child is hungry, we conclude, or that one is tired or overwhelmed or they need to poop. We might speculate about autism or ADHD or sensory integration issues. Those are guesses, perhaps educated guesses, even reasonable or logical guesses, but we are, of course, at some level always wrong because even if the child having their experience could put it to words that we would understand, it's quite likely there remains an unexpressed or unconscious motivation behind their behavior or knowledge that defies our attempts at labeling.

Whenever our reasons, as they often do, defy logic, we all struggle to put them into words because thinking is at least as much an emotional and physical process as an intellectual one. 

Think of those people you see interviewed about their political beliefs, especially if they diverge from your own. We hear them tossing word salads, seeking for something that sounds like logic, to sound reasonable, even as their real reasons clearly emerge from something other than logic.

Think of an athlete or musician who performs an amazing feats of physical dexterity, exhibiting a high degree of bodily intelligence, yet when they are asked to comment, to explain, to provide reasons, all we get are cliches and bromides about hard work and believing in yourself, reasons we must accept as stand-ins for something that can't be put into words. 

Western culture, at least since The Enlightenment, has sought to enshrine logic as the height of human intelligence. Indeed, we often use the word reason as a synonym as if logic, and only logic, can serve as reason. This is one of the central biases being programmed into so-called artificial intelligence (AI). Most non-western traditions, however, understand that logic serves as only one aspect of intelligence. Indeed, the very idea of ranking intelligence, or kinds of intelligence, displays an ignorance of the totality of human capability.

Our prejudice that human intelligence is superior to others is a dead end. Human intelligence orients to the world in its way. Amoeba intelligence in its way. Dog intelligence in its way. Intelligence is shaped by our sensory abilities, our emotions, our bodies, our environment, and by what it takes for a specific species to survive and procreate. Human intelligence in a dolphin body would be certain death. Logic, on the other hand, is a product of the same kind of hierarchical thinking that also gave us colonization, enslavement, and capitalism, all systems that rely upon competition, dominance, and submission. If we were really going to create an artificial intelligence, we better understand that if we rely on logic as a complete stand-in for intelligence, we will be building a monster that is incapable of behaving or knowing anything beyond the inevitability of its own superiority. It might not have the ability to take pleasure in the pain it causes us, but it won't care, which might be worse.

Logic is a useful, satisfying thing. When we understand that one plus one makes two, it gives us the sense that there is order, that there is, at least in this case, a defense against chaos. With logic on its pedestal, however, we assert that there are always reasons and if we can't find them, we must be either not intelligent enough or simply wrong. But intelligence, human or otherwise, is bigger than mere logic. It is capable of occupying space without reasons, where it is okay to not know why we know. Indeed, that is our natural state. When I watch young children at play, I see them exercising human intelligence at full-capacity. I see wide-open wonder, a direct connection to the world, unmitigated by the systems of knowing that we call education. I see people who don't know, who are, and who do. There will be plenty of time for reasons, later. Now is the time to live.

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