A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.
Rabindranath Tagore
We live in an age where certain sections of the society and media are trying to take rationalism to insane heights. Everything is looked at as a complex puzzle – even things that are rather simple to begin with. Anything that the human logic is incapable of justifying or decoding is dismissed as irrational. It goes without saying that there is not much room for emotions such as love and hope in a world increasingly dominated by such ideas.
There is nothing wrong with being logical per se. In fact, our ability to think, reason and analyze things is what sets us apart from the other living beings that we share this planet with. That said, too much of anything is dangerous, and human reasoning is no exception to this caveat. Such approach often stems from the belief that all problems can be resolved through logic. However, history attests to the fact that no human triumph has been achieved with logic as the only weapon. In fact, the more rational we try to be in our decision-making, the more irrational our judgments tend to get. Ironic, isn’t it?
Far from what most people think, our emotions actually complement our rationality. They are more like the handle to the sharp razor of our logic – the knife is incomplete without either part. Go into the battle with just the handle, or your emotions, and defeat is certain. Drop the handle and rely solely on the razor, and you are bound to bleed yourself to death before your enemies can. Rabindranath Tagore was one of the greatest poets India has ever produced. The Bengali philosopher and social reformer, who in 1913 became the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize in Literature, was critical of an overly rational approach to life. He remarked: “A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”