Being Sane...

...Richard paused beside an old woman, fast asleep in a shop doorway. She was covered with a ripped old blanket, and her few possessions - two small junk-filled cardboard boxes and a dirty, once-white umbrella - were tied together with string beside her, and the string was tied around her wrist to keep anyone from stealing them while she slept. She wore a wool hat, of no particular color.
He pulled out his wallet, found a ten-pound note, and bent down to slide the folded note into the woman's hand. Her eyes opened, and she jerked awake. She blinked at the money with old eyes. "What's this?" she said, sleepily, displeased at having been woken.
"Keep it," said Richard.
She unfolded the money, then pushed it up her sleeve. "Whatchyouwant?" she asked Richard suspiciously.
"Nothing," said Richard. "I really don't want anything. Nothing at all." And then he realized how true that was; and how dreadful a thing it had become. "Have you ever got everything you ever wanted? And then realized it wasn't what you wanted at all?"
"Can't say that I have," she said, picking the sleep from the corner of her eyes.
"I thought I wanted this," said Richard. "I thought I wanted a nice, normal life. I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane. You know?"...

From NEVERWHERE by Neil Gaiman

Preason OR Has Science gone mad?

I know there is no such word as preason... But there is prison and there is reason... And by combining you can reach the status of some modern scientists. Let me explain my line of thinking!

I was reading the other day a respectable science book referring to vision and how art is perceived by the brain... The excerpt I am referring to goes more or less like this:

"But why do we need to see?"

The author after saying how some others might answer this question gives the following answer...

"We see in order to have the ability to acquire knowledge about the world".

And why do I feel offended by such an explanation? Why do I think reason is a prison when trying to expain the inexplicable?

The truth is I find it hard to believe that any human could possible have the answer of "why do we need to see". Maybe I would listen to somebody offering an explanation like that if he/she said that he had contact with more intelligent extra terrestrials or has been "channelling" entities from another plane of existence and that's what they told him... But how unfortunate it is to try to explain the mystery of our world by mere logic and reason. How god-like to offer explanations about things we know nothing about. How can we now the "reason" just by knowing the results? We can say that vision is guided by the brain or anything but how can this be in any way connected to "why" we see?

I could go on and on about this but the important thing is that "reason" is not a panacea. It doesn't hold the keys to every door. It holds the key however to the golden door of its own self-defeat.