Red House Blue House – Chapter 1, Part 2

By Lee

Reason, cont.

Why does reason exist?

It is inborn, a gift, part of who we are. Reason reaches out from within. Reason is part of how we understand and how we conclude, how we perpetuate them both.

Reason is not logic.
We are not born with logic.

We create logic, each to his own. Logic is an individual’s tone, his rhetoric, his conduct. Logic is a product of the individual serving to preserve and enhance its bearer. Anomalies occur, but they are flukes of association that feign the appearance of intention. As such, logic says that it is the prescription to situation and environment and the key to solving. In doing so, it shows great blindness. Logic, while necessary for a time or season, is cold. Yet, this is what we strive for. Ourselves. Not others. Pulling in. Not reaching out. Not understanding. Not why. Because logic says that it already knows and that it doesn’t need to understand, or that it is understanding. And to us, this is comfort and absolute.

Logic acts as a distant observer, willfully detached and never qualified to enact the solutions it proposes. It claims the safety of distance and data as justification for lack of principle. The fact is that our logic, our self-imposed desire is the destructive wind that brings the house of red and blue crashing down around us.

Through logic we teach ourselves that in order to sell our ides we must believe in them to the point of deafness. When we realize that our own belief is never enough, we conclude that others must believe as well. And no matter the clarity of effectiveness, the innovation behind it, if others cannot see themselves in the idea beyond mere belief or have a hand in its future, they want no part of it.

Competency disappears as we stop searching for solution and begin searching for ways to make others believe. What was an honest pursuit becomes the task of pleasing others for pleasure’s sake.

Design, true and good design, cannot survive in environments so arrogantly poised. Evidence that it does not is all around us. What begins as ideas seeking relevant solution become input gathering and team building. This becomes consensus finding, akin to group decision simply for the benefit of forming groups. From their the stairway is clear. Design (solution) by committee where all are experts with invaluable input and even ground for personal agenda regardless of ability. This is one’s logic and the domain to which it leads. Away from the original intent. Away from solving.

The resting place is one of conformity to “brand” where brand is misunderstood and used as a mask to hide bad product and poor decision. When band fails, “image” takes over hoping to find solace in refutable research and the naivete of the consumer, (of which the consumer is just as much at fault for consuming what they know not to, again and again).

Are these broad strokes on a wide canvas? Certainly. They do not apply to all. Yet the majority should take note as the minority is rarely what we see from day to day. You see, the purpose is not to elevate the individual and negate the necessity of peers. It is to gain understanding as to why, to illustrate our unique abilities and to consider the dark crevices they have been forced into.

We are people. We are different from one another. But logic does not view existence in such light. Logic, at best, recognizes a capacity for humanity and at worst ignores it entirely. Logic states a concrete solution without regard only for itself, thereby making the rest nothing more that a write-off and a side note. Our individual logic would look at the house and say, “paint it red or blue and then you would have your solution”, implying that the house is in err and that it is the house that needs fixing.

We made the house. The fault is not with wood and brick or red and blue or with the weight of papers or the advent of new technology or anything else we would most enjoy assume responsibility.

It is with us.
We have mistaken logic for reason.

Posted on April 12th, 2010