Random Thoughts

[Sal]

I keep returning to the thought that a very good litmus test for bullshit arguments, ideology and other thoughts, your own or someone else's: If there's any emotional attachment to an idea, ideology, chocolate, (a)theism, whatever then it inescapably follows that the reasoning behind liking that idea, ideology, chocolate, (a)theism, whatever has also been compromised relatively to the amount of emotional attachment; they are positively related, compromised reasoning <-> emotional attachment.

So, if you think that chocolate is so fucking good that you'd kill someone who gave a tiny critique of chocolate, then you're so emotionally invested into chocolate that no reasoning with you about chocolate is possible. If, however, you're completely emotionally detached to your enjoyment of chocolate, you'd remain equally completely emotionally unaffected by someone else dumping a truckload of chocolate into a landfill, and instead of stomping your feet and getting your head red because of emotions blinding you, you can instead give reasons as to why a whole truckload of chocolate can be used better than to dump it in a landfill.

Replace 'chocolate' and the appropriate situation with idea, ideology, (a)theism, whatever and the same relative compromised reasoning & emotional attachment will manifest itself. Not necessarily that you can't enjoy chocolate and have emotions about it, just that there's a stop-gap of detachment for your emotions and your reasoning ability about chocolate. It is possible to do both, at different times. Mixing emotions and reason I think are fundamentally counterproductive, captured in the "slow to reason, quick to emotion." If, for any emotional attachment, your thoughts are good or bad, those thoughts are merely incidentally so because of emotional attachment, and to an equal degree being less reasonable about those thoughts because of it.