The demolition of reason (Why man is moving away from Reason)

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 The demolition of reason (Why man is moving away from Reason)

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• Man not rational: While the claim that man always makes rational decisions is proven false, it is not wrong to say that man can learn to reason. 
• What reason does: Reason helps people achieve consensus, find relevance and irrelevance, be coherent, separate right from wrong, good from bad, and so on. No human can be purely rational, but must avoid being purely irrational.
• Modern-day collapse of reason: Sadly, all around us and especially in electronic media, we see a collapse of reason. It has been replaced by evasion, obfuscation, deflection and enial. Facts are not respected anymore. Reason is only used to serve the masters, hence is cynical and instrumental.
• Impossible to converse: With unreasonable people, no debate is possible due to their resistance to logic and facts. It is akin to making a milkshake without the lid on.
• Avoiding accountability: Those who shirk from reason are those who do not want to fix accountability of present-day actions. Best way to do that is to recount the past mistakes of the opponent! "How can Congress talk of 2020 Delhi violence when it was involved in 1984 violence?" is an example.
• Nazi Germany: Can we really keep criticising today's Germans for what the Nazis did in 1930s and 40s? We cannot, and should not, because Germans have more than made up for those sins by publicly acknowledging their mistakes.
• Emergency in India: It is wrong to ask the Congress to shut up today because it imposed Emergency in 1975. No one can be bullied into silence in this manner, selectively.
• The violent slogan: The BJP leaders raised a dangerously provocative slogan recently, and a PIL went to the High Court. The defence argued that unless every such hate speech was examined, no action may be taken. That is ridiculous. The crimes of one man cannot be not punished till all other crimes are investigated!
• Comparisons with Pakistan: It is common logic now to claim that "for this crime, you would be shot dead in Pakistan". Is that country our idea of a standard? What about our own Constitutional principles?
• Summary : Reason should not be dumped at the altar of unreason and bigotry, as the outcomes can be dangerous for all.

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