Perhaps rather than speaking of reason, and unreason, we might more usefully speak of effective and ineffective reason, and logical reasoning and emotional reasoning.
When a human organism is in balance, it is possible to calmly think things through, and to readily change one’s mind when new data appears, or circumstances change.
When one is out of balance, however, as in conditions of living under tyranny, and being compelled to commit it, then logic is not logic at all.
A common example of insanity–the sort of insanity that could have been used to justify, say, Neil Cassady in his Dionysian revels–was the nuclear arms race. Through the 1950’s and 1960’s, Americans took seriously the Communist intent to take over the world, and took seriously the fact that both sides had atomic weapons.
Hopefully, it will never become clear what the effect of a nuclear war would be, but many not unreasonably supposed it would mean the end of our civilization, and thus even the thought of engaging in one was insane.
It would have been insane, but the point missed by many is that Communism is an insane doctrine, and so too are all the “lite” versions of it, the essential element in which is the rejection of individual moral agency.
When you are dealing with fundamentally irrational and violent people, violence has to be on the table as an option. This is, to my mind, a rational position. You are good, they are bad: this can happen, and relatively speaking has happened many times in history.
In actual historical fact, our nuclear arms buildup, at least to this point, WAS rational. It worked. We are neither Red nor Dead.
When people say, though: “who knows what is good and what is bad” this is a rejection of the possibility of coherent moral action, and thus Communism lite.
If I ask you “is the sky blue or grey”, do you not need to look out the window? Some days it is all blue, some all gray, many a mixture. Some days it is mostly blue, some mostly grey, but it is moving, it is changing. This does not mean we cannot make general statements about it.
All of us understand common sense morality: don’t do things to others you would not want done to you. Don’t lie, in general; don’t cheat, in general; empathize, offer kindness. Should you always offer kindness? of course not. Be nice all the time is a recipe for failure. It is the creed of the morally vacuous. So, too, is the demand for relentless and unreflective compassion. Should you feel compassion for those who want to hurt you? If you do, if you fail to take effective action to prevent or counter their violence, they will not just hurt you, but all the other people around you. Do they not deserve compassion as well? Do not the innocent deserve more compassion and mercy and regard than those whose lack of emotional wellness and development drives them into enacting violence in the outer world they cannot avoid in their inner world?
Everything begins with balance, but balance, in turn, sometimes cannot be brought about except by losing it, for some period of time.
This is obvious in Holotropic Breathwork, but even in my Kum Nye practice I have no way of predicting what will come up.
Charles Bukowski’s grave stone reads “Don’t Try”. This is apparently what he meant. Let it come. If you force it you kill it. And if you kill it, you have lost access to effective reason, of both the logical and the emotional varieties.