The Importance of Reason

How significant is the role of logic in a person's life?

Given that life and the world around us is an extremely chaotic system with not so clearly identifiable dynamical equations, there is very little predictability when it comes to the consequences of our actions.  It should therefore be extremely difficult to come up with the most just, moral, and reasonable course of action, given a set of circumstances, that also has the highest probability of resulting in the desired end result. Should we just act blindfolded, sleepwalk,  and guess our way through life then?  Since the extent of thought and planning does not necessarily correlate very well with the end result, and in fact often delays us and fills us with doubt, shouldn't it be more efficient if we programmed ourselves to act according to some common set of guiding principles, and coached ourselves to accept some Dharmic law, that dispensed with the necessity of having to logically cogitate all the time?

Most acts of pedagogy and learning are exercises in training ourselves mentally and physically into some regimented pattern of actions that do not require intellectual deliberation of any great extent. Consider learning a sport or a language.  Through systematic and sustained repetition, like throwing a ball as fast and as accurately we can at something, or speaking regularly to a native speaker, we condition an already innate ability ( pre-existing muscles or cognitive nerve cells in the language areas of our brain), and try to get stronger and better at it.  The idea is relatively simple. The execution is not. Most of our social behavior is culturally learned up and have little basis in logic.  Economists try to frame social dynamics in a logical framework, but often fail spectacularly. Philosophical systems such as dialectical materialism hope that societies can also be analytically understood the way physical objects can, but we are far from achieving a convincing basis to this claim. What people want in life and what it should mean are open philosophical questions that no one has gotten around to solving yet. Thankfully! Happiness seems to be of paramount importance to most, and this happiness usually rests on physical and material well being, and hardly ever on reasonable action or complete understanding.

This does not mean we can afford to ignore reason. It is a huge surprise to me that we can actually write down equations to predict how a ball thrown up in the air would move, that we can associate quantifiable attributes to it, that we can then subject to a mathematical treatment, and predict the outcome again in terms of measurable quantities. Without logic and the associated skepticism, we would be the blindfolded and handcuffed people in the cave as described by Plato.

The answer seems to be somewhere in between.  A reasonable person is one whose actions are guided by reason, but who also adapts to the softer, more nebulous aspects of human existence. He also enjoys food, laughs with friends, does the dishes, runs the miles and performs the usual expectations in life without getting into too much unnecessary trouble. Otherwise there is a certain overwhelming absurdity and illogic in the circumstances of life that are likely to swallow him and force him into sterile and delusional insanity. Appropriate suspensions of reason are therefore required to uphold one's sense of reason. And who knows, maybe as civilization progresses, more and more aspects of it shall come to be guided by reason.