Short Essay: “No-Reason Rationality”

“No-reason rationality” is not the same as irrationality, which is insanity.

Why? No reason.

See?

Because there’s no reason. That’s the reason.

To elaborate, when something arbitrary or spontaneous occurs, one of two reactions by the mind may follow:

The first is to answer the question, “what reason did x occur?,” with the statement, “no reason.” This would be considered a rational response.

The second is to explain such an event with a deluge of imagined reasons. This would be considered an irrational response.

The upshot is that for one who adopts a philosophy of “no-reason rationality,” the world and its many spontaneous events may occur for “no reason,” and still appear within an adequately rational framework. Although this seems at first glance to reflect meaninglessness in one’s worldview, “because there’s no reason” instead reveals a singularly rational bearing on the nature of the world, and so takes on a meaningful quality.

By contrast, an irrational mind might fabricate ten-thousand reasons for an event’s spontaneous occurrence, and in this endless spiral of “reasons,” create a perception of the world unable to be apprehended within a “rational” framework. On the surface, these reasons could resemble rationality and appear very meaningful, but pursuing them would only lead further into ungraspable explanations and to the degradation of meaning in one’s worldview.

Why?

Because there’s no reason. Nor does rationality depend on there being one.

And this is how I wake up some mornings…