I’m often criticized for being insensitive to the feelings of others, but the ultimate point of employing reason is to serve our emotions. Reason is just a tool. Without emotions, it’s a pointless tool.
My belief is that sticking to reason is the best possible way for us to be fair to everyone’s feelings. I accept that our feelings will be hurt as long as we attempt to communicate with one another. It’s possible to delay the pain, but if it doesn’t make sense, if it must be communicated in order to make progress, or if it is unfair, the pain will come back sooner or later, in many cases more hurtful than before. So the only thing I am concerned about is whether those feelings are fair or not. I don’t think about how to avoid the feelings of hurt, because in the long run, I believe that the sum total of all the hurt that you cause to others in your life would be less if fairness, not avoidance, was your first priority.
In fact, I would like to ask these presumably more sensitive people, “Do you really think that the sum total of all the hurt you caused in your life is less than that of mine?” I’ve witnessed plenty of these presumably more sensitive people cause a lot of unnecessary pain. In fact, they make me want to do better by taking a different approach.
As brutal as our legal system may seem (which does not put feelings above facts or reason), the world before it was even more brutal. Reason works to ensure that we don’t have to suffer any more than our fair share.
