What exactly guides this obsession with rational, logical undertakings – or otherwise, lack thereof? Is it fear? If so, then, of what?
Going back to the dog example, let’s assume that one does not get a dog due to fear. Fear of what then? Fear of not having time for the dog; fear of responsibility; fear of loss; fear of not being able to care for the dog; fear of nothing or everything? We create our own fears. And only we can overcome them. But if you then built a system of defense mechanisms, which entail rationalizing everything. Given that the problem with rationalizing is that every conclusion is relation to the one who is doing the rationalizing, then one can rationalize anything into irrationality, which is – once again – relative. And as Sir Walter Scott and F. Scott Fitzgerald figured out long ago, one can hold inconsistent ideas at once; and what one can always have contradicting ideas in a lifetime. Rationality and Irrationality are as relative as persons are unique. So are our fears.
The only thing that is not relative is humanity. We are human, and all have fears and thoughts. But still the question remains: what happens when rationality inhibits your passions to the point that you do nothing you desire, are you still human then? “To desire and not to want” is a contradicting concept, which is likely to arise from overrationalizing, and which may originate from our fears, validated by our rationality.
It is all a self-perpetuating cycle.