“A mind all logic is like knife all blade, it makes the hand bleed that uses it.”

Word limit: 1000 words.

Source:https://poweofmind.blogspot.com

After reading this quote couple of times repeatedly, a moment of epiphany struck me when I could finally grasp its obfuscated essence. Well, I had to do an online research about technicalities of mind and its underlying components before I could scribble anything down as an 'essay' and present it for critical scrutiny. Our mind is the thing which is taken for granted from almost every human being ever existed. Even I had never thought about it till now, that our mind is, supposedly, assortment of cognitive faculties such as perception, consciousness, memory, imagination, judgment and language ( probably the best invention of human mind) and 'logic' is nothing but 'reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity '. These definitions made the task of essay-writing more challenging than I had expected. 

It is very peculiar of the author of this quote to be indifferent to the mind all 'good' logic and the mind all ' flawed or bad' logic and declaring both of them to be an 'all blade knife' when handled carelessly; technically, a handle-less knife we can say, wink emoji. Possible explanation behind it may be that, irrespective of sound or flawed logic, without emotional intelligence, humans are reduced to a mechanical form driven by whatever agendas they might have. I, later, came to know that, this is one of the pearls of wisdom from none other than one of the most revered Indian personality, Mr. Rabindranath Tagore. It was genius of him to turn an ageless adage into an aphoristic metaphor, reasserting that anything in excess may result in an undesirable outcome, which effortlessly applies in case of extremely logical mind too.

Power of our mind is unfathomable and logic is merely one of the system of its governance and its very nature has baffled us since primordial times. Exuberant amount of research has been done and is still ongoing in psychology, social psychology, neuroscience and all the related fields to understand the nature of it and to help reconstruct it in form of an Artificial Intelligence. Even though, concepts such as logical mind, rational mind or emotional minds are abstract and incommensurable, it is emphasized here that anything extreme is harmful for the concerned individual and its surrounding, drawing parallel with bleeding of the hand caused by 'all blade knife'. But why did the author focus on a mind all 'logic'? Why not mind all emotions or intuition? Well, even though science has been unable to define emotions concisely, they're considered to be resulting from complex mental activity, conscious and unconscious in nature. My theory is that logic or reason may take precedence in governing the functionality of our mind and emotions are the responses to it and intuition or 'gut feeling' is merely the logic which we are incapable of explaining to ourselves. For example, we may get angry with someone because of xyz reason, we might be attracted to someone because one or multiple of their characteristics, they can be either physical or personal traits Or like you are bound to be dreaded when a tiger gallops towards you during a jungle safari, as we sense that we are probably going to get hurt. Hence, I assume, importance of the logic in quintessentially human experiences was apparent to the author.

It wouldn't be bold to state that, when AIs and human mind are juxtaposed, we will find that emotions are what makes us more human than an AI, having impeccable logical prowess owing to its unbridled computational capacity. Hence it is safe to assume that AI has all logic mind and what this 'mind' may think about its master is brilliantly depicted in 2001: A spaceOdyssey, a Stanley Kubrick 1968 masterpiece (major spoilers ahead). In this movie, comprising of events imagined during several epochs of human history with mysterious presence of a monolith at its center, an 'all logic' conscious super computer, HAL 9000 is a spaceship controlling supercomputer, concludes that fellow human astronauts are needed to be exterminated in order to carry out its programmed directives. Which was clearly a threat incited from all logic mind of the supercomputer. When the protagonist tried to reason with HAL, to appeals its ethos and pathos, it simply couldn't process it as it lacked emotional faculty at par with humans. It is, simply, Kubrick's brilliance to imagine something in 1968 what might be lying ahead of us in contemporary times. I will have to and am planning to write about him separately someday.

Apart from this epic Sci-Fi film, our history has countless examples justifying veracity of this quote. In retrospect, minds of handful of alt-right logic adherent individuals -even though not exclusively product of 'all-logic' mind- resulted in rise of ideologies such as Fascism and Nazism and in turn in the horrors of 'Auschwitz' and similar countless other atrocities perpetrated against humanity. Hence the metaphor of bleeding hand caused by all blade knife and torment caused to humanity by the hands of 'love, empathy and compassion'-less minds is judicious. In a nutshell, Tagore not only tried to highlight the necessity of emotional intelligence indirectly but also cautioned against any extremism, in this case, a solely logic driven mind. Still, if necessary, we can tackle the damage caused by this all-blade knife by handling it carefully with a pinch.

-The.Lazy.Philosopher.