When we say, “Bruno is a dog.” we are expressing or stating a fact that Bruno is indeed a dog. We can call this a ‘factual’ use of language. Now let us suppose that Bruno has a German Shepard as his father and a Golden Retriever as his mother, we call him mixed breed. But here too we have not crossed our limits of Factual statement. But what when we call the same animal a ‘mongrel’? The matter gets more complicated. Factually the dog remained the same mixed breed, but we added an Emotion of disapproval for the dog. This happens when we call a Negro a ‘nigger’. The fact remains the same, but the idea gets twisted by the emotion attached.
Words come with emotions attached to them. This is fine as long as we are not in the domain of some objective argument. But rational thinking demands us not to be deceived by our emotional prejudice. So while we think rationally or debate on something of political, cultural, social, economical or psychological, then we surely need to get rid of the words with emotions. This is one reason why men can go on discussing such controversial questions in politics, religions or morals without getting much nearer to a rational solution of them.
I am not advocating against the usage of words here. Words are beautiful when we can form ideas and draw conclusions out of them. But the question is about the usage of them in rational, logical thinking.
The words 'firm', 'obstinate' and 'pigheaded' mean factually the same thing. But when we are in need of a rational argument we should be more careful in detaching or understanding the emotions attached to the word. He is firm should be interpreted as he is not influenced easily and that is a wonderful quality. The later part of this subjective division is crucial. That is the hidden pit. He is pigheaded should, in the same manner, interpreted as he is not easily influenced and that is a very bad quality. When we disintegrate words in to their factual and emotional meanings and represent them as factual statements, we have two advantages. One is that we get the factual essence and the other is that we get a factual interpretation of the speaker’s view point.
So far I haven’t looked in to the real practical problem of the need for rational thinking in reasoning. In times when we are at war, we are dominated by emotional attitudes of approval of our own forces and disapproval of those of our enemies. This is dangerous when it comes to an argument on the plausibility of the war. When we say heroism of our troops and foolhardiness of the enemy, we mean the same. We cheer when our soldier gets a medal of honour for bravery and we throw stones at the enemy soldier for being foolhardy. Both did the same thing by running through enemy shells to destroy a target, but this is how words twist our arguments. Thus when we are on a debate about the war, it will never come to a logical conclusion, as we are attaching our emotions to the words while we argue.
What I am saying here is, we should be using factual statements in controversial arguments just as we do in physics or maths. Science achieved what it is now when it learned to avoid emotions from arguments. Gold and silver are no longer the old alchemist’s noble metals. They are just metals now and thus we can learn more about them. Of course emotions add beauty, but this is not a poem we are talking about. We are talking about the future of our civilisation. We must learn sooner than later to see debating as a science and as in any science we must go for factual statements opposed to emotional ones. When the alchemist said noble metal, it only prevented him from seeing into the inside of the elementary chemistry. But when a politician says words like ‘liberty’, ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘reactionary’, ‘national integrity’, he is blinding the factual element and thus blocking the growth of our culture. This is far more dangerous than the alchemist’s case.
So let us learn to see emotions away from facts and think beyond the arguments to reach an answer for the long lasting questions humanity faces. I am sure we will get an opportunity to add emotions once we reach a final conclusion to the problem at hand. Removing the noble metal status for the sake of experimentation did not prevent gold and silver being noble in our lives. The virtues of gold and silver were identified by objective experimentation rather than a prejudice emotional attachment and thus helped us all enjoy them to the fullest noble extend.
Leave emotions out of our arguments. We will save them for a bright future moment. Then we will write ‘warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast’. Now let us confine ourselves to ‘red marks on Jane’s white chest’. This is of course poem, and words must not only be used as emotionally as possible here, they must convey the emotions as well.
