Five Years Of Rationalism

A person's subjective reaction towards reason does not determine if they have an obligation or need to universally submit to reason, but a positive personal/emotional disposition towards reason certainly helps aim someone towards it.  Moreover, a positive attitude towards reason and rationalism can reshape someone's priorities, lifestyle, and general psychology.  Such has been the case in my own life.

In the five years since I realized the need to forsake all philosophical assumptions and restructure whatever parts of my worldview could not be proven by reason, I have found reason to be a source of the deepest security, empowerment, and pleasure in my life.  A person might find a sense of security in other things first and foremost, but it is a shallow, unsound, and incomplete security that they have if they do not look to reason before other things for stability.

I am grateful for the stability the absolute certainty of reason has brought to my worldview and life.  Knowing that logic is infallibly certain has granted me peace I would have otherwise never had.  I am likewise grateful for the small handful of friends I have acquired, in person and online, who stand beside me as intellectual and spiritual equals, allies of the most needed kind.

If I did not have these things but still had the desire to understand truth, I would be lost in greater despair than anything I have experienced in my life since becoming a rationalist.  Beyond this, I would have never have experienced the deep joys of certainty, autonomy (and other aspects of intellectual originality which I have addressed or alluded to before), and the satisfaction that can only come when subjective preferences and objective reality meet together in harmony.

Again, one's subjective attitude towards reason does not change the intrinsic veracity, relevance, or usefulness of reason.  Whether I have an obligation to align myself with reason is not determined by my personal psychology.  However, having a favorable attitude towards reason inevitably proves to be beneficial on many fronts.  Those who reject rationalism reject more than reality.  They also turn away from whatever joys of rationalism they could have experienced.