A Mason's Work

So I'm reluctant to continue the series here because the rhetoric conversation isn't done,

but we'll come back around to that I promise.

I want to talk briefly now about logic.

And so with the logic conversation, logic as a lens is really determined that the intent

here is to evaluate for an objective truth.

And we look at logic, we're trying to become aware of the sort of things that we're confronting

or dealing with in a way that we can follow a course of intellectual reasoning to develop

a sense for what is objectively true.

Now this is not going to apply in a lot of cases, right?

So a lot of the things that you're going to want to do in your everyday life have a strong

emotional component.

Emotions are a fundamental part of the human condition operating system, whatever.

So where emotions exist and are strong, there's no amount of the application of logic that's

going to solve for that.

Anybody that's been in sales for any of the time knows people buy emotionally first and

then rationalize intellectually on the back end.

This is a pretty typical process until you get to something like more complicated like

group sales, but even that, you know, the group emotional dynamic impacts that.

So when you're sitting here working with logic as a concept and evaluating the situations

in your everyday life where you might find a logical lens is helpful, it really, the

kind of the first litmus test is does logic apply in this situation.

And I know that's going to rub some of the engineers that listen to this the wrong way

because, because logic applies everywhere until it doesn't.

And so let's talk for a second about what, what doesn't apply when it doesn't apply.

It doesn't apply in situations where the experience is the outcome.

And so things like music or song or romance and things like that where you are trying

to assess and experience logic doesn't always kind of kick in there.

Now you can, there's going to be somebody, this is the internet, right?

There's going to be somebody who can find an example where logic applies to the creation

of a song.

And while yes, there might be, you know, functional decisions as to how that happens, the emotive

content really doesn't lend itself to a ton of logical conversation.

In, you know, at the end of the day, it's got a, it's got a result in a positive emotional

affect or negative or whatever.

So, but, but applying logic sort of to the specific challenges you might be facing is

oftentimes very, very difficult because you'll run into the places where your thinking isn't

logical and you will gloss right over it.

And so what makes sense in the case of really trying to apply logic to some of your self-development

activity is to externalize it.

You need to put it out in front of you on a, on a table so you can operate on it.

You need to write it down.

You need to use slips of paper.

Get it out of your head.

The subjective space is no, is not a great location.

The subjective interior space is not a great location for objective rational thinking.

By writing it down, by putting it out of you, by getting it out of your noggin, you're

going to find that you get the advantage of being able to operate it on it in space.

This is a big principle behind the Masonic symbols deck that I've cooked up on Mason's

work website.

But the, the, anybody can do this with, you know, with three by five cards.

Take some of these concepts that you're wrestling with, struggling with, take a problem that

you're struggling with, figure out what logical assumptions you're making about the, the

baseline of the current situation and what of those assumptions can be challenged to

help reinvent your current understanding of what's going on.

When you start to do this, you'll find there is just a ton of ways that you can use logic

to deconstruct a lot of your preconceived notions about the way the world works and then reassess

a new set of behaviors potentially that will help you move forward.

The deconstructive process that logic really facilitates does create some discomfort

as you go through it because the biases that you will have that inform that, that process

are going to be very, very difficult to shake.

So don't be surprised if you start applying logic and you start feeling and getting deep

in your emotions when you do that because it's a place where a lot of discovery can happen

and a lot of stuff that's happening sort of under the water will start to surface.

So with that, we'll come back to again, all of these.

The liberal arts are just a wonderful place to explore the symbolism of free masonry and

we'll see you next time.