Reason, Honesty, and Independence: Three Misunderstood Ideas
Most people’s use of these concepts is so imprecise that trying to use them in our lives is like trying to drink a mixture of water and acid.
Author’s note: This article is based on material from my book, Reason for Living: A Rational Approach to Living Your Best Life. If you’re interested in what you read on this blog, you can order the book on Amazon USA here. (For international links, click here.)
Our lives depend on us being able to tell apart what’s good for us from what isn’t. For example, water, perhaps the most vitally important substance for human life, looks much like hydrochloric acid, which is lethal to drink. On a concrete level, we all understand that we need to distinguish between the things that will harm us and those that will help us thrive.
But many of us don’t realize that the same principle applies to ideas. We need to be able to identify the ideas that are good for our lives and distinguish them from the ones that will, if accepted and acted on, destroy our lives. This includes specific ideas such as “I should go to the gym more often” or “I’m not going to bother cleaning my teeth today.” But, perhaps most importantly, it includes more general, abstract concepts such as justice, belief, fairness, hope, and love. If we are to thrive in life, we need to be able to precisely and accurately identify what such concepts refer to in reality and whether (or when) we should uphold and pursue them.
Often, most people’s use of these kinds of concepts is so imprecise, blending their true meanings with elements completely opposed to them, that trying to use them in our lives is like trying to drink a mixture of water and acid. Three notable examples of such vital but misused concepts are reason, honesty, and independence.
Reason
Reason is perhaps the most important concept to understand, because it is our means of obtaining knowledge. Getting reason right is essential to understanding all other concepts correctly.
But there are two common misunderstandings about reason that I run into frighteningly often: (1) that reason is emotionless calculation, and (2) that reason is an abstract process disconnected from everyday life.
The first is a problem that comes up whenever I speak about approaching emotional matters such as love, friendship, and one’s hobbies or passions rationally. People often take that to mean approaching those topics without regard for emotions—calculating what is advantageous on a purely material level. This could not be further from an accurate conception of reason. Reason is the process of looking at reality and then building an integrated, non-contradictory structure of ideas in your mind based on what you observe and experience. That includes your experience of emotions, your need for human connection, and so forth. Likewise, the structure of ideas you build does not deal purely with material things—it includes moral principles that are deeply important to you. A rational approach to life requires thinking about both the material and spiritual aspects of human existence. Similarly, a rational “calculation” of whether a particular relationship or life path is right for you involves its consequences for your deepest values and principles, not merely your material wellbeing or short-range enjoyment.
The second problem is more common among people who study philosophy, but it has also seeped into the wider culture. Modern philosophers often regard reason as forming a chain of deductions that needs to be internally consistent and logically follow from its starting premises, but does not need to align with our experience of the real world. This is the “reason” that led David Hume to deny the reality of the world we experience with our senses, and it’s the “pure reason” that Immanuel Kant rejected in his Critique of Pure Reason. This approach is what has given philosophy the public image problem it has today—people regard it as fruitless academic speculation disconnected from our everyday lives and values. It has also contributed to the idea that reason is only capable of answering academic or scientific questions and has nothing to say about how we should conduct ourselves. But the truth is that reason—understood correctly—is capable of answering any questions about reality because it is fundamentally based on reality.
Once we understand that reason is the process of looking at the real world and forming a non-contradictory body of ideas, principles, and values based on that experience of reality, then we can apply that knowledge in how we grasp other concepts—which should always be by looking at reality and asking what real thing we need that concept in order to refer to.
Honesty
When you were young, were you ever told that you should always tell the truth? Is this still what you take honesty to mean today?
Such a conception of honesty is impossible to live by. Everyday life is replete with situations in which we shouldn’t tell the truth. Imagine you’re at a party and a man asks you “How do I look?”—and you think the shirt he’s wearing looks awful. If you’re anything like me, you make a quick calculation that upholding your personal fashion standards is less important than letting this man enjoy his evening, and so you lie and say he looks fine. Or imagine someone you’re planning a surprise party for asks what you’re doing that day. Do you tell the truth and ruin the surprise out of a commitment to “honesty”?”
The real, logical idea that we need the word “honesty” in order to identify is: We should acknowledge and act in accordance with reality. That is what you’re doing in both of the above examples—being honest with yourself about the full context of the situation and acting accordingly. That’s not to say you can lie about anything if you think it’s personally advantageous to you. It simply means that you should take in the full context of the situation, including all the principles and values that you’ve determined are rational to uphold in your life, and decide how to proceed based on your awareness of that context and not evading any aspect of it.
Independence
Imagine that a man runs a bakery in a busy city. He depends on his customers for his income–there are plenty of competitors around if he lets them down. He depends on his staff, who can leave any time. He depends on the police to ensure his shop isn’t broken into. But he’s earning a living doing what he loves, and every evening he goes home and thinks about how he can grow his business.
Now imagine that another man has decided that he doesn’t want to rely on anyone. So he lives alone, hundreds of miles from the nearest city. He must build his own shelter, chop his own wood for fires, hunt or forage his own food, clean his own water, and so on. He barely has time or energy left over to think about his ideas, much less do anything to advance his values beyond merely surviving.
Which of these men is more independent?
It’s tempting to think of independence as consisting of the Robinson Crusoe lifestyle, like the second man. After all, it means “not dependent,” right? And the second man doesn’t depend on others for his survival like the first does?
But etymology is not the source of a concept’s meaning—reality is. And looking at reality, we can quickly observe a key fact about human beings—we all depend on each other in varying ways and to varying degrees. If independence means not depending on anyone—be it for knowledge, ideas, material goods, safety, or anything else—then there are no independent people on Earth. That concept doesn’t refer to anything in reality, so, in order to be useful, the word must mean something else.
So what real thing can the word “independence” refer to in this context?
The answer lies in a crucial fact about human beings: We are individuals who use our own minds to choose values and work out how to achieve them. We are not born with ideas—we depend on others for advanced knowledge, trade (material and spiritual), and inspiration. But we are born with the ability to evaluate ideas. Independence consists not in avoiding any dependence on others, but in making sure that all of our ideas are evaluated independently—that we accept or reject them based on our own firsthanded thinking—and that we then proceed to achieve them through our own effort. The man who decides to run a bakery, trading his effort with others for money that he can use in his free time to achieve all his other values, is far more independent than the man who sacrifices his ability to achieve his deeper values out of a desire to avoid relying on others.
If you’re interested in this conception of independence and how it can help you achieve a happy and successful life, I will be giving a detailed talk on it at LevelUp 2025 in Orlando, Florida, July 16–20, 2025. Register here to secure your spot today and get 20% off Registration with Code "RFLLU25."
Come see me in London in September!
I will be debating in support of the proposition “Selfishness Is The True Basis Of Morality” at the Agora Debating Club in London on Monday 22 September.
Secure your spot here.