Thoughts upon finding a pebble.
Just after my shower this morning, my bare foot detected something small and tiny on the bathroom carpet. It was only a small pebble, but it was also an eye-opening revelation about the magnitude and scope of sense perception capabilities inherent in the human body -- one of my multi-million sensors, one neuron on the bottom of my foot, told me ... "Something was there."
And so it goes with the human mind, with the beyond-the-marvelous capabilities contained therein.
Capable of rational thought, using reason, using the mind, man can acquire knowledge, live well, marry and support a family, and man can create -- art, literature, music, inventions, architecture, etc.
But humans can avoid thought, and live blissfully -- for a while; smoking pot, for instance. And humans can avoid reality and live the "just do it" life -- for a while; until, for instance, the inheritance runs out.
But avoiding thought and reality means avoiding truth, truth being the recognition of reality using reason (I felt it, I looked at it, it was a pebble) and knowing truth, especially those automatic truths (IT'S A TRUCK!), is important to one's life.
But there's more to it than that. Avoiding thought and reality can happen in insidious ways and your very mind can be rendered inoperable -- even destroyed -- in the process. Who might want to do that?
The human mind can be molded, wounded, rendered inoperable even destroyed by teachers, preachers, or seekers of power. The young and the weak are especially vulnerable. And when the mind is effectively destroyed (irrationality is a symptom) there goes the potential to use the mind as God designed it to be used -- to think and reason.
"Why would anyone do that?" you ask.
Well, there's money in in, for one reason; but the better answer comes from Ayn Rand saying ... "If men are to be ruled, the enemy is reason."