Motivation

Logic and Faith

Motivation is an important topic to discuss since very few people ever think about what
motivations are. In order to do this properly we first need to agree upon a definition as it may
5 differ from person to person as language will.
Motivation for the purpose of this discourse may be either intentional or unintentional.
For present purposes motivation is any reason, rational or otherwise, for doing whatever it is that
you are doing in thought and action. Motivation relates directly to action and inaction and is a
purely relative concept. Everyone is always motivated to do or not do multiple things all of the
10 time, however, it is our greatest motivation relative to all other motivations which determines
what we are doing at the present moment. At the moment I am writing because I would rather be
writing than doing anything else, otherwise it simply would not be happening. It is presently my
primary motivation and will continue to be so until I get thirsty, hungry, or when I simply decide
I would rather be doing something else or even nothing at all at which point my primary
15 motivation will have changed.
Motivation does not exist in the future or past. You cannot be motivated to do
something yesterday or tomorrow, you can only not be motivated enough to do something
now and instead be more motivated to do something else at the moment. Thoughts of
yesterday and tomorrow can influence your motivation as nearly everything does but
20Motivation is now.
Having a basic understanding of motivation by this definition, allow me to touch upon a
few of what I consider to be the most important motivational influences: Logic and Faith. These
may not be comprehensive or even practical guidelines to motivation but this just so happens to
fit nicely with the rest of this non-comprehensive and impractical book!
25 Let me begin with logic as it is the foundation of good rationale and justification. Logic
comes in many forms and manifestations such as inductive, deductive, and faulty among others.
It is the root tool for most deception in the world today by being used in inductive and other
faulty forms (taking things out of context etc.) and it is also the foundation of all empirical and
scientific knowledge. Like everything else in the universe, tangible and otherwise, it can be used
30however you please, to deceive or to seek truth, for good or for evil so to speak. As I have said
before and will say again, people and things are entirely incapable of being good or evil or of

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 being anything but what they already are. Logic is no exception. Like people and things, logic
can be used for any intended purpose and also like people and things if you don't pay attention to
its processes from beginning to end it can take you to strange, unexpected and unintended places
35in the ways of understanding and truth.
With logic everything is predictable, cause and effect, if/then, structured and patterned.
Everything in the world can be explained in varying degrees by logic chains and trees, numbers
and equations and it is the hope and goal of science to understand the universe in these terms by
essentially calculating the innumerable relations of causes and effects; While this is possible
40theoretically, science will inevitably have to admit that there are some ideas, concepts, and
behaviors which are not consistent and thus only scientifically explainable as scientifically
inexplicable much like the present Uncertainty and Exclusion principles of quantum physics. No
one can explain these phenomena but they can truly be observed and detected. Someday we may
be able to empirically explain these processes with other inexplicable processes and science will
45continue to chase its own tail in this manner for years to come. People, then, who are motivated
purely by logic, are predictable and act based upon their perceptions of wants and needs which
are determined by experience and the use of logic to rationalize and justify what their wants and
needs should be.
This brings us to rationalization and justification as influencing factors of our
50motivations. Rationalization is a means by which to come to a justification and is most useful
when it is not necessary. As soon as a rationalization becomes 'needed' to explain anything is
when you manipulate logic out of desperation to justify a belief, value, or idea that otherwise
doesn't make any sense. The more intelligent a person is, the more able they are to deceive
themselves and others with rationalizations by inventing magnificent and grandiose structures of
55logic and by neglecting some of the facts or by taking them out of context. I know this self-
deception from firsthand experience.
Some of the more common rationalizations include: 'It's for his/her own good,' which is
usually used to justify one's acting for their own benefit; 'It is for the good of mankind,' which is
generally used to justify political, financial, and business goals on a grand scale; and 'I know
60what is best for me,' which is a truly terrific way to rationalize any type of idiocy because it is
really true! We all know what is best for us even if we aren't doing what is best for us. Once we
have justified our behaviors to ourselves and, if we are masterful enough others, we can then

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 become motivated to carry them out. This is where I see most criminal behavior stemming from
along with 'unethical' laws and business practices.
65 Peer pressure is also a powerful form of rationalization which perpetuates itself as more
people fall victim to it. This is a part of why as groups get larger they also get more stupid. Many
massive bouts of idiocy can be linked with the seeking of 'expert' opinion which is essentially the
seeking of peer pressure. Professionals beware: if someone desperately wants your opinion, and
especially your speculation, you are likely doing someone else "a major disservice!
70 Now that we have shown a little of how logic, the foundation of science, can motivate
and affect us in manipulative ways hopefully you will find yourself less susceptible to the wiles
of logic as an individual. Let me now touch upon the motivational influences of the irrational
variety, Faith.
We do not always believe our own rationalizations; if we did we would be considered to
75have faith (in ourselves) and would never have bothered to rationalize our thoughts and
behaviors to begin with, we would simply believe whatever we imagine. Faith is irrational in the
scientific sense of the term. Neither it nor its influences are tangible or consistently observable
with any degree of certainty. It is not possible to share or express faith as it is; we can only use
abstract ideas and words in hopes that someone can relate and has experienced faith and its
80effects in a similar manner which we attempt to describe. Actually, this is exactly what I am
doing for you right now. It is like trying to explain saltiness to someone unable to taste salt
except in the case of faith it cannot even be identified as a taste or any other common sense and
so has zero point of reference.
Like faith, instinct and intuition are also irrational and yet in the case of at least instinct,
85science will not dispute its actual existence. As such I think it is fairly safe to claim that feeling
can refer to touch or emotion as well as a sixth sense of intuitional sorts and in this latter form is
entirely irrational. Humans can be fiercely motivated by this intangible and irrational sixth sense
in the forms of 'ideas,' or feelings, of honor, joy, pride, glory, humility, awe, hope, love and even
divine guidance. It is these irrational passions which drive us onward and give us conviction,
90perseverance, determination and inspiration. It is the irrational which inevitably drives all things,
even the rational, to progress. It has been through faith, feeling, and hunches that science has
been born and continued to thrive.
At some point the question arises: How does one differentiate between emotion and

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 feeling if they are indeed separate things as I have proposed? Because emotion and feeling are
95both irrational this is a tricky task to which I can only continue to speculate and since I am no
authority on any subject, nor am I particularly enlightened, I will take the liberty of a little
breathing room . . . but that doesn't mean I won't make a wild, scything attempt to shed some
light on the possibility. 
For this attempt to explain the difference between feeling and emotion let me turn to the
100emotion of anger. Everyone can remember how anger feels; physiological symptoms can be
attributed to anger. What about hope or love? Can these concepts be felt like an emotion? Are
there physiological symptoms attributable to these types of sensory feelings? Speaking from
personal experience, yes they can, however, the physiological symptoms seem to be the same for
all of the sensory feelings and the differentiation between them is purely intellectual and/or
105intuitive. We simply seem to 'know' when that wonderful feeling is hope or humility or even
when it is warning us and simply 'feels wrong' even when all physiological symptoms are
identical. My opinion is that, with the exception of instincts (hunger, sex, fight or flight), they are
all manifestations of the collective conscious communicating to and through us as they are not
merely feelings but thoughts and ideas in conjunction with feelings; it is simultaneous
110physiological and intellectual recognition of a feeling, or the 'whole' you, which experiences
feelings as opposed to common emotions.
That is all the time I am going to dedicate in attempting to explain what may be
inexplicable. Let us go now from logic or faith to logic and faith.
Logic and faith are prerequisites to humanity and are both very powerful motivators and
115forms of influence. They can both be quite beautiful things . . . and they can both be most
horrendous powers of deceit. Any instance in which logic is used to explain faith or to take the
place of faith is when logic becomes corrupted as a motivation and, likewise, whenever faith is
used to explain or take the place of logic it too becomes defiled. Neither faith nor logic can exist
independently of each other and hope to know Truth. Neither can logic nor faith ever be used to
120comprehend what the other is as they can only know what the other is not. They are codependent
concepts in the pursuit of Truth. Like two sides of a coin they can never directly know each other
because of the parallel dimension(s) in which they exist or perhaps which they are.
As you have likely noticed by now I am constantly harping on logic in the form of
science. Let me clarify my stance a bit; I believe that the sciences are a noble pursuit worthy of

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125mankind's efforts. My scorn for science is its arrogance, conceit and hypocrisy which are
reaching religiously zealous levels. It is because most science, while mocking religion, claims to
be 'the one true path' just as most religions do. To put it in another perspective, logic, which
cannot know faith and even scorns it, claims to have faith in itself.
In all honesty most faith is guilty of the same thing and the only reason I don't get all
130over faith more is because faith is at least consistent with believing in faith. While faith seems to
have dangerously more support in the world today I disagree with the way much of science
would ignorantly try to do away with faith entirely. No one seems to have the ability to address
both sides of anything fairly and with equal support. We are a foolishly black and white thinking
world. Yes, most of the world is foolishly and blindly reliant upon faith of one sort or another,
135but is it wise to do away with it entirely?
An example of how faith doesn't work is how it is used through the Roman Catholic
Church.While its individual members and leaders can be quite faithful people the entity of the
church itself has become such a dogmatic organization that there is no room for faith in its vast
constructs of logical structure of dogma which attempts to imitate and take the place of faith by
140having an 'answer' to everything by logical application of dogma; back to faith and logic though.
Faith seems to be a thing outside of time and far exceeding the immediate influence of
anything within the universe, it simply is. Faith without logic is responsible for cults and their
mass suicides, suicide bombers, riots and such types of things. Meanwhile logic, though also not
bound directly by time, is bound by its own recognition of time. As such, logic is a master of
145being bound by time and thus uses this slavery to time to propagate itself through time. Logic
without faith, for example, is responsible for the long suffering idiocies of the world such as
bureaucracy, tradition of the 'because it's been proven and proof is permanent' assortment, and all
forms of organizations and governments which resist change more and more throughout time.
Logic ensnares people to it which causes them to believe subtly, and throughout time that it is a
150folly to have faith or believe in intuition and that logic is never to be set aside. This is why I pick
on logic more than faith; faith alone left to its own devices will destroy itself; logic alone and left
to its own devices will destroy all but a lucky few.
There are a few simple things that can be kept in mind to help prevent the corruption of
both logic and faith. First, they cannot independently exist stably and any attempt to do so will
155result in chaos, rather quickly for faith and perhaps not for generations or even centuries in the

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 case of logic. Second, neither can exist with pride as pride will cause them to try and do away
with one another leading back to the first scenario. Third, they cannot exist to appease any
organization, only for Truth itself; to exist for such petty and imperfect reasons of politicking
defiles them utterly. And last, logic and faith cannot exist for one any individual and to think
160otherwise is a fundamental of greed and pride and results in a person thinking so highly of
himself to extremes of claiming Godliness, of being appointed by God, or of selling
enlightenment as if it were a whore.
These are only the most obvious of corruptions to our motives as they are clearly
widespread in today's world and this is obviously not comprehensive of possible flaws. The
165balance between rational and irrational motivations is constantly changing and this dynamic
unification requires regular attention to properly maintain on an individual level and even with
such devotion we will still make our own mistakes.
Maintaining this balance, however, is only a part of eliminating our self-deluding
rationalizations, social idiocies, and blind faith. Even with the rational and irrational in harmony
170they can still become corrupted through misinformation which can come in any number of guises
both rational and irrational. This is why education is vitally important, the ignorant are very
easily deceived; just look at the effectiveness of American advertising, it is not a multi-billion
dollar industry for no reason.
Ignorance empowers others and leaves us vulnerable to having our motivations easily
175manipulated by the world around us instead of taking control of ourselves for ourselves. Our
motivations are products of our beliefs and desires which are, in turn, products of what we have
learned and been taught. By allowing others to control our education, and not merely formal
education but experiential as well, or even by failing to take responsibility for our own education
do we allow others to influence our own beliefs and desires and therefore our motivations. Let us
180not forfeit our lives to the world around us by remaining ignorant primates but instead seek to
educate ourselves and keep control of our own accomplishments and lives. It is our responsibility
to educate not only ourselves but our peers if they will listen. You can never know which of our
colleagues might end up in a position of power in our lives and no one enjoys an idiotic boss,
politician, or lawmaker. Motivate Yourself!
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