Archive for June, 2007

Some thoughts on rationality and personality…and -ality

June 26, 2007

Although I have an active mind and frequently have interesting ideas, I don’t often commit them to writing because I’m a fairly moody and capricious guy. This confession nicely introduces this post’s topic, which is: the relationship between personality and rational/emotional orientations. You see, for all my deep thoughts (I think they’re deep, at least, but I have a very high opinion of myself), I have a more emotional orientation, such that cold, logical arguments in writing, particularly those directed at the unfeeling expanse of cyberspace, do not appeal to me as much as direct emotional communication with real people. My personality is such that I am inclined towards emotional and experiential knowledge and communication, and find writing and logic unnatural and potentially awkward. This is not to say that I think the logical orientation is less valid than mine, although most of the logically-inclined don’t seem to share the same goodwill for the emotional orientation :-( I’d love to be proven wrong though :-)

Also, what’s up with that “-ality”, eh? I interpret it as “characteristics/state of”, but I’m not sure. I ought to look up common suffix definitions some time. After all, English does follow some rules, doesn’t it?