"All the while recognizing most of what we understand is wrong."
You have it backwards.
What is unknown we do not understand. What we understand is known. Most of what we rationally think we understand is right.
Reason has dotted the earth with majestic skyscrapers and amazing works. Reason has classified a million insect species. Reason has classified 250,000 plant species. Reason has discovered laws of chemistry, physics, and mathematics and used them to travel the earth, to travel the air, and to travel into space.
Reason shows us how action follows thought and how predictable effects follow actions. That is how we make a rocket ship and push a button and exact things happen.
The fact that applied reason (shaping, building, designing, constructing, etc.) is limited by the sensitivity and accuracy of our fingertips and other tools does not in any way diminish the wondrous precision that reason brings to human existence. The only thing that has kept you alive is your adherence to absolute facts attested to by your reason. You don't step in front of fast moving objects and you don't drop very far unless you are landing on sand, (soft) snow, or water.
Will and Ariel could tell you what a difference reason has made to human existence. And yes, I read them many years ago--both civilization and philosophy and they were treasured books.
IMO, your disquietude with reason is not based on any demonstrable premises. Rather, it is based on the void you feel BEYOND reason--the void of uncertainty and fear. So you go from the rational perspective of, "there is a place where I cannot know" to the irrational existential perspective of, I KNOW NOTHING and REASON is a mere "acting" as though things were "real".
But you DO KNOW things are real. You don't use a potato peeler for an alarm clock, and I doubt very much you've ever written a letter with your dick... (though, I do confess that I did..) |
