Rationalism and Intuition

In school, we learned, honored, and reveared the rational thinkers of our age - scientists, mathmaticians, biologists, etc. Somehow, the "soft" subjects of art and music seemed inferior to flying to the moon or finding a cure for a disease. The rush we got from the age of reason was still upon us.

I and my peers quickly learned that the way to be "one up" on someone else was to know the facts approved by science. Logic always trumped intuition. We would hear over and over how another "old wives' tale" was disproven by some scientific research "they" had done. We never questioned what science said. If they were wrong, they would find their mistake and correct it quickly enough.

We were very much in competition, especially as boys, and striving to find what was important in our society so that we could be right and beat the other kid. If you were really cool, you could prove what you believed to be right. The worst shame was to be illogical. The ultimate was to be seen as intelligent - meaning rational intelligence, the ability to calculate, to deduce, to prove. If I had a fear, for example, of dogs, it would be very shameful, because there was no logical reason to be afraid of a tame dog. So my fear was shameful. We couldn't chalk it off to a psychological disorder like a phobia - we were laughed at.

So the idea that we had feelings that we had feelings that acted independently of logic and reason was foreign to our minds. To rediscover this today has taken a tremendous effort to overcome the prejudice instilled in me by the society in which I grew up.