Haiku — 0029: Reason

A minute about Raison d’etre

Today, I had a conversation along the lines of what I wrote in a previous article:

And I thought I’d write about this compulsive desire to reason.

Act unfolds in sight,

Instinct seeks the hidden tale,

Truth, myth, or just fear.

What is it with our desire to explain everything?

(See what I did there?)

Do we want to feel powerful, or perhaps, safe, in the knowledge that we can explain what is happening around us? Is that why we ascribe obscure reasons to things we do not know to explain — Be it “divine”, “unnatural” or “supernatural”?

Or, is it our curiosity that drives us? In which case, where does that come from? Does it stem from an evolutionary edge, that sets apart species with working brains? Then how do plants and microbes which technically do not have a brain, develop survival strategies?

Let me stop myself from going down this rabbit hole in a Haiku post. In short, I think I made my case for our desire, instinct even, to make sense of things around us.

And in doing that, we end up seeking their mechanisms, like a theorist would, or building a story to suit our observations, like a conspiracy theorist would. Or just running away from it, ala denier.

But, in the spirit of data science, let me end by saying that things are not always unidimensional, and the statistician’s favorite, “correlation is not causation”.

Having said that.

Explanations are not needed everywhere — Be it a permutation of neurochemical reactions, or a ‘soul’ in the driver’s seat, we don’t need reasons to do some of the smaller things in life, like repaying a kindness, finding little pleasures, feeling sad for something (but get on to solving it later) — Some mysteries do not need solving, some are perhaps better left unsolved.

And knowing why might lead to a rational fear or a rational truth.

Yesterday’s Haiku —

For the rest of my Haiku, please follow —