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Let Logic Rule

December 9, 2021   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

The problem with us humans is we are not at all logical. Well, yes, sure I’m a Trekkie – but look at the future the series suggests, where things here on earth appear to have certainly been corrected economically, environmentally, perhaps even sociologically – that’s not absolutely a certainty. Money is no longer the same sort of issue it is these days.

Yet, can you see how the population is constantly at war and yakking on about peace – not necessarily with each other but now, with the imagined beings from other worlds, episode after episode, movie after movie about wars and battles as if absolutely nothing else could constitute a good and satisfying story.

Except for the Star Trek movie IV, where the crew of the destroyed Enterprise, travelling in a captured Klingon Bird of Prey go back in time to bring two Humpback Whales to the future in an effort to rescue Earth from being destroyed by a probe that has come to earth to check on the whales, long since hunted to extinction by man: this movie is not absolutely involved in warring.

The beloved Spock talks about logic all the time but he never says how illogical the constant fighting is; the series pretends humans are scientists, explorers and bearers of the flag of peace while other species – those darn Klingons – are the aggressors. 

Okay, “logic suggests” that almost everything we’re doing on this planet is not based on logic. There is no logic to hunting beings to extinction; there is no logic to polluting our own atmosphere so badly that we have nearly destroyed the only planet we have to live on and you can forget the joyous escape to another heaven: Mars is not a heaven – those planets are out there and they are inhabited but what would we, with our complete lack of logic, do if we could get there to that other planet? Would we appeal to be allowed to stay, to keep our nests clean and live our lives in peace and respect, to learn the common languages and to truly understand that it is not our right to overwhelm with our avarice, wastefulness and our tendency to wallow in filth…

Because this is the illogical way in which we live and every new space we discover right here in earth, we consume and ruin it. Look at the government and financial centres’ subsidies doled out in millions/billions of dollars/currency to continue to explore fragile waterways for oil and gas deposits, never slowing down to spend that unspeakable mountain of money on new options for energy.

There are ways of producing clean energy, opinions to the contrary – it can be done better than oil and gas. There is no longer the need to kill whales to produce anything they have been used for; there are sustainable ways to control the tsunami of plastic waste; we can actually produce energy by an incineration that does not in its turn excrete toxic fumes; there are methods of recycling every kind of garbage and churning it over into something else; reused, making pavement for roads… 

On our own personal level, we could begin to live logically. You see, the whole business of trying to make our many and varied societies exist in a sustainable and equitable way is too often viewed as weakness, kindness, based on charity, dealing with the abused, disenfranchised. Helping them can be regarded as sentimental, unrealistic. That is why helping people is so hard, why a cruel and, maybe a bit crazy Mayor (of Toronto) police forced homeless people out of their tents – forced them brutally into the streets, arresting the others who were defending those homeless – as if a park’s “beauty” was more important than people not freezing to death, avoiding the dire conditions of shelters, over crowded, insect and disease ridden.

As individuals, we can be logical. There are always stories about one person, one butterfly, making a difference to the whole world. On the ground level of our lives, we can see to it that, every day, we each improve the life of one other person. This is a matter of logic, let’s say just that: if it makes us feel good, that’s okay but put it to one side.

To think that a day is not finished until we have made someone laugh or offered a sincere compliment – see? That’s easy enough.

To understand the value of buying a stranger a coffee – like the shops that accept a payment for a coffee to someone else who will come into the shop. The shop staff are on their honour but we can trust them.

To contribute to the Food Bank and the other collectors of goods for those that can’t afford to buy them. To volunteer; to take your stuff to the thrift store; to “help that old lady cross the street.”

Kindness is not a sentimental, mushy attribute: it is a matter of logic: you are in the right place; you can afford it: just do it.

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