Reasonable vs. Logical People

 

When we describe people as "reasonable" or "logical," these are usually regarded as synonyms.  And in many contexts, this is probably true.  But in my experience, in certain contexts, logical people can be quite different from reasonable people - almost opposites.

By "reasonable," here, I mean something like what Aristotle called the "golden mean," which is perhaps comparable to Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, called the "middle path" - that is, remaining moderate and not going too far in either extreme.  "Moderation in all things," as the saying goes.  It means being open to hearing ideas or criticism from any source, without prejudicially rejecting them or automatically dogmatically adopting them, and always being ready to change your mind.  In short, it means holding onto one's own beliefs "at arm's length," as it were.  It means being nuanced in one's picture of the world and recognizing that reality is messy and that it's difficult to generalize, that there's an exception to almost every rule, and a little bit of truth in almost every worldview, no matter how foreign-seeming.  Therefore, reasonable people are biased in favor of normalcy, averageness, conformity, and tradition - if lots of other people believe something, or have believed something, it can't be altogether wrong.  Of course, that doesn't mean it's altogether right, either.  They will tend to try to be tolerant, forgiving, and empathetic.  As William Blake put it, "Everything possible to be believed is an Image of the Truth."

To be "logical," by contrast, is more rigid, more black and white.  A logical person, having established that an idea is true, will take that idea to all of its logical consequences without hesitation or remorse.  Rather than remaining moderate, they will take an idea to its extreme.  If this leads to negative outcomes, so be it.  Something is either true, or it's not, and truth must be accepted completely and everything must be brought into line with it, without exception.  Logical people tend to be cold, calculating, exacting, and relentless.  What are called "radical" people are usually simply logical people.

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