David Peat

48 From Certainty to Uncertaintyon the world from atop a Ferris wheel. His is the view of the psychopath.People appear like ants, and insects are the sort of thing onecrushes with one’s shoe without giving them a moment’s thought. Whynot demonstrate one’s innate superiority by destroying such an insectin an act of gratuitous murder?The steps of reasoning are filled in, yet the conclusion is morallycorrupt because healthy human beings do not entertain such thoughts.We are aware of absurdity. We are cautious of where inflated ideas maytake us. We empathize with those around us and recognize another’sweakness and pain.When tied to grandiose schemes and global ideas, logic can easilysweep us away. But by arguing in this way I am not making an appealfor the abandonment of reason—that would be totally absurd. Thosewho formulated logic, from the time of the Greeks through theSchoolmen of the Middle Ages and on to the symbolic logic of today,have done great service to the power of human thought. On the otherhand, reasoning has to be tempered with compassion, kindness, andhumanity. An artist is in danger of losing sight of the whole picture ifshe does not stand back from the canvas to look at the wider perspective.Likewise we must constantly bracket our plans, our proposals,and our theories by asking what they mean within a broader context.How do we truly feel about them? Where are they leading us? Howwill others be treated by them?When Carl Jung classified the “rational” functions of the mind hedivided them into thinking and feeling. We often consider feeling tobe loose and nebulous, but for Jung it was one of the mind’s strictlyrational functions. Feeling, for Jung, is what assesses the inherent valueof things. Feeling looks at the world globally rather than analytically.If thought is not balanced by feeling, then it can become obsessive andone-tracked, giving no attention to the overall meaning of what one isdoing. Conversely, if feeling is not tempered by thought, then we arein danger of rushing into events with great enthusiasm and convictionwithout making proper plans or understanding possible pitfalls.If we take Gödel’s theorem as a metaphor, it is telling us that somethingmay always be left out of our grand schemes of logical thoughtand that inconsistencies can creep into the most logically rigorous of