On being reasonable

Start of the weekend, and nearly 2 weeks since my last post.

The notion behind this blogging is that there is something worthwhile in putting together one's thoughts and writing them out . . . and then sharing them online. That last part is less necessary, and indeed since this blog has very few readers, almost a moot point.

In other words, to say it as broadly as possible, it's good to write. Or, to turn it around, writing things out is good for us.

I sense this, and have always sensed it, but I'm not sure I can get more precise than that. Except to say that in writing we can find out what we think about a subject. There is a kind of reasoning inherent in grammar, or a kind of pull toward reason. This is not to say that language cannot be unreasonable, unreasoning, but you're swimming against a current when you try to write without reasoning.

Also, this is not to suggest that all reasoning is good reasoning. One can reason from false premises. It happens all the time. Or reason falsely from true premises (the non-sequitur). One can even make statements without apparent premises. This gets complicated. Sometimes people just want to change the subject, so they say something that makes you wonder, "Where did that come from?"

I'm in danger of going off on a tangent. Reasoning is like a journey down a road with many forks and intersections, and so there is always the danger of veering off onto another road before you get to your intended destination. I know people whose every spoken sentence seems to include a tangent. Our president is one, and the fellow that seems set to be his opponent in the next election is another.

There, I brought up politics. Everybody's least favorite tangent. Since this is an election season, I'll no doubt be blogging about that frequently. I'll try not to simply repeat tropes found elsewhere. That's what Facebook is for! I'll try to make an argument, present the evidence, draw appropriate conclusions. You know, I'll try being reasonable.

Of course I haven't plumbed the depths of the many ways we can be unreasoanble. We can build our houses on sand instead of on solid ledge, and often do. I think Jesus was the most reasonable man who ever lived. He is always reasoning from solid premises, and he knows his premises better than anyone. Most of us begin our reasoning somewhere in the middle, unaware of our premises. But Jesus was always going back to first things, to foundational premises. "The kingdom of God is at hand," he says at the start of his ministry, and everything else he says is pretty much reasoning from that foundational statement.

Well, I was going to talk about a conversation I had recently with someone whom I thought was using extremely faulty reasoning. Now it doesn't seem necessary. I guess this writing things out does do us some good.