On Rationality

I have had a love-hate relationship with math. I didn’t care for it as a kid; I hated it for how it was imposed on me, but I loved its simplicity when I grew up. Every answer is either right or wrong. There is certainty, rationality, and beauty in math. Of course, this is only the math I had touched, and things become more complex and greyer the deeper one dives into the topic; even math is no exception to ambiguity and “we don’t know”—well, at least not yet. What I loved most was being able to put things into equations: clear systems of push and pull, cause and effect, outcomes, consequences, etc. This is not only true for math but also for any subject that involves scientific thinking and rationality. I am a creature raised on these belief systems, and I have integrated them well within myself. I like to think of myself as rational—not because that is how I am, but because I realise how irrational I can be. I understand that even my awareness of my irrationality only goes so far, but it is the process of trying to determine the rational, my loyalty to the value of rationality, that defines me as someone who is rational. Rationality is a kind of madness. To assume that my chosen path of epistemology is obviously superior, and to blatantly reject other paths simply because I do not understand them, is itself irrational. If I am being honest, I don’t really know how to exist outside the framework of rationality.

I think this is where I brush up against the limits of rationality. While I am a sucker for the elegance and charm of that which is rational, I can't help but notice that my beloved framework doesn’t explain everything. Turning my face the other way doesn’t work when these events occur from within. Profound experiences, feelings—I can deny them in other people. But in myself? Feelings, esoteric experiences, spirituality and mysticism confound me. I can’t prove them out of existence, but I can’t prove them into integration either.

Maybe everything really is just hormones and physiology. An appetite for ambiguity is helpful because complexities appear when one tries to determine the exact cause and effect. It is like tugging at a pair of tangled earphones; more effort is counterintuitive to sorting the situation. Or maybe it’s more like the weather: you can never truly model it because of entropy. These explanations are a few of the many I have come up with to try to make sense of it all. They assume that there is a problem, a situation to be ‘solved’, a system that can be modelled. I am a schizophrenic vulture circling over a carcass that exists only in my imagination. I believe I have yet again neatly placed myself in the confines of rationality. The efforts in meaning-making feel futile. Can I ever really know? Can teeth bite themselves? Can Taylor Swift experience herself in the Eras Tour?

Perhaps not…. Yet?

The Void

Where do I even start to try to describe this? It’s been happening for a long time. Okay. Ever since I joined IIT Madras, there has been this unshakeable feeling of deep sadness. This was the college of my dreams for a long time. I didn’t understand why I was feeling that way. I thought maybe it was boredom. I tried to fill in with novel experiences. No matter what I throw at the void- knowledge, self-discovery, attachment, new friends, paradigm shifts, feelings of accomplishment, coffee, nothing makes it go away fully. I think I am finally confronting it without trying to understand it. I am standing in front of it. I used different things- romance, attachment, anxiety, career, family ties, new ideas- all domains I could obsess over to try and feel something, some kind of achievement, some purpose, some framework I could dabble in. All of them feel like distractions from the void, and they were. I am not saying I didn’t make progress or that these efforts were not worthwhile; these endeavours were fruitful. I think I thought that somehow if I looked away long enough, it would disappear, the void. It doesn’t grow, it doesn’t itch, I say that it comes and goes, not because it actually leaves, but because I look away for a bit. I am describing it. I don’t know how much of it I can understand; I am not attempting to at the moment. God, I even threw in the guitar and the joy of artistic creation into this. Great distractions, not cures. I'm wondering if I have to live with this forever. Is it a problem? Is it unaddressed trauma? Some scar from a long-forgotten childhood? Or is this life? Just how things are? Is it characteristic of my age, my generation, the socio-political condition of the world?

No one is at peace. Everyone keeps moving from one goal to the next. Do they also sense the void? Are they also running away, like me? I think I understand why people lean on religion. I wonder what pushes people. I think it is desire for sure- a desire to prove yourself, to feel more secure, to contribute, to be loved and respected, to be a part, to not be forgotten, to be affirmed. I think I am losing focus and my train of thought now; the sands are shifting. I think I will go back to my room now. I am mildly tired. The void feels seen, and soothed, for a bit. Another distraction?