Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the information provided by our senses to give us knowledge of reality. It is the means to accurately perceive and therefore operate within the world around us. Sanity is universally regarded as ‘being in touch with reality’, and rational (or reasonable) behaviour is the hallmark of all effective human interactions. So why is Reason constantly under attack from mainstream ideas? Why are mystical ideas so prevalent today? Welcome to the Matrix!

Why is Reason so vitally important?

Let’s begin this discussion by reminding ourselves why we should consider reason as our exclusive guide to knowledge and therefore action. Let’s look at why Reason should be elevated to its rightful place at the top of our list of values.

 1. Because reality is an objective absolute

What does objective mean? It means separate from and independent of any consciousness. It means that things are what they are irrespective of anyone’s thoughts, beliefs, wishes, whims, hopes, fears, claims or assertions.

Imagine you are driving to your place of work, you know that the route is what it is. You know that you must drive along a specific defined road and that you cannot head off on a whim to take an imagined short cut just because you desire or wish to evade the traffic in your path.

While crossing a busy street you know that without due care and attention in order to choose your timing, you risk being hit and injured. Those moving vehicles exist objectively independent of your consciousness and your intention. You cannot think them away or wish them away. But you do have the ability to perceive them, and to avoid them and safely cross the road to the extent that you correctly identify them and anticipate their speed and trajectory accurately – using the faculty of reason. Every day you move through reality upon the implicit assumption that reality is objective and consistent. You would soon be dead if you didn’t!

It is no accident that in prosecuting a crime in the Law Courts that the use of evidence to prove a case rests upon the axiom that “A is A”, or “things are what they are”; the gun is the gun, the finger prints are the finger prints, the evidence is what it is, and reality is an objective absolute. The concept of proof could not exist without implicit acceptance of the axiom A is A, and its corollary the law of identity.

Lastly, It is impossible to logically argue against reality being objective without contradicting one’s self and using objective means to make your point. To start with, the speaker would be assuming the listener is separate and independent from himself, not a creation of his/her imagination, and therefore objective. She would also have to use the objective method of language to communicate the argument. To argue agaist objective reality is as logically coherent as hanging from a safety rope over a deep canyon while arguing against its existence. If you make any point, you intend your statement to be what it is and to mean what it means and not the opposite. So you have implicitly accepted the law of identity, the corollary of the axiom A is A.

2. Because our subconscious minds work using reason

Conceptualisation, the uniquely human form of consciousness, functions using reason. The method is logic and the process is thinking. Our mental operating system, if you will, functions using Reason. It’s the way we figure things out – finding jobs, partners, choosing where to live etc. Because there are no contradictions in reality – things cannot be hot and cold at the same time, a surface cannot be rough and smooth at the same time, you cannot set off in two different directions at once, etc. – there must similarly be no contradictions in our thinking for it to correlate with reality, and therefore for us to identify reality correctly. If a contradiction appears in our thinking it is an...