That Whereby Men Live

I was about to write something stupid but thought against it. Metacognitive as I always am, I am aware now that my feelings might merely be a projection of a conscious reflection arising out of the superimposition of years of environmental conditioning, social structure and human evolution. In essence, I might just be constructing a reality that is made essentially out of nothing. But yet, these fictional realities sometimes overlap, sometimes coincide between two or more people, resulting in consensus. Consensus doesn’t necessitate correctness, it merely represents reinforcement arriving from mutual acceptance. The consented matter might be grounded in reality, or floating in delusion, yet for the consenting believers, that's all that matters. That is true, that is uncontested, that is given.  In a sense, by the very nature of human incompetence of arriving at an absolute, only the relative can be consented on. And so, every act of consented conviction must probably arise, to some extent, out of an irrational judgement of merit made by an other-than-cognitive process. And so long as the battle is not entirely fought on terms of syllogistic logic, there is always the possibility of longevity – through compromise and adjustment. Is that really bad though? Not until one finds out otherwise. And it can still be rationalised – we're all schizophrenics that way. And how long can it last, before reality takes over? Well, it lasts some people a lifetime, and that's as long as we can measure anyway. Psychology is a science but isn't physics, minds work roughly on rules but aren't computer programmes, hearts beat but aren't mechanical pistons. Not even close. We may never find out otherwise, maybe we don't want to either. Machines don't want, we do. We desire, emote, express, feel. Machines need fuel and commands. We need love.