Inconclusive thoughts. Blame it on....logic...or emotion..?

I really enjoyed reading the two previous blog posts, they provided me with thought provoking information to jump into this blog with. As far as binaries being both damaging and restrictive and I completely agree with those statements. The human race has always had this desire to create labels and separate ideas and concepts into groups and those groups, as we know, often tend to be extremely limiting. That always seems to translate negatively into the way we think about such topics because we usually approach the topic with that limited perspective but through critical thinking we are able to come to conclusions and realize "hmm.. A and B don’t necessarily have to be separate. Is it possible that A and B can be intertwined? Can we challenge and question these binaries?"

Ashton you said, “Is emotion being guided by logic or logic being guided by emotion? I think both binaries, to some extent, exist in everything we do; I just don't know how their relationship exists in different subjects, especially in rhetoric.” I totally agree. The concept of separating logic and emotion is hard for me to wrap my head around. While I totally understand how the two work independently and co-dependently, I have a hard time examining that relationship in terms of rhetoric . I believe that logic and emotion are just fundamentally intertwined and that to try and separate them (especially in terms of a concept as precarious as rhetoric)... it just isn't working for me! (Although the fact that it’s 3 a.m. and I just got off work might have something to do with it – but I have thought about this at, you know, normal times of the day and my discomfort with the topic seems to be the same.)  

“However, I'm struggling to see logic as completely socially constructed. I don't think that a person can be completely logical and not at all emotional or vice versa.” I concur!! I think it is just downright impossible for a person to be completely logical and void of emotion and vice versa. I think in every decision we make, no matter what that decision is, both our emotions and logic will factor into our decision. Even if the decision comes across completely 100% illogical to another individual, everyone has different standards of logic and common sense.  If five people (aged, 5, 23, 47, 62 and 83) are in a hypothetical situation and asked to do the most logical thing in that particular scenario, the outcomes will obviously be extremely different among the individuals. Their decision will be based off of their personal experiences that have shaped them thus far and in turn affect how they logically decipher a situation and the emotional approach that they take on the situation.

I guess what I’m getting at is, logic and emotions are completely contingent on the individual. While there seems to be a baseline for logic/emotions (i.e. if your dog dies, you are sad and you might even cry. That is an emotional response. Then you bury your dog, because that seems to be the next ‘logical’ step. You wouldn't just leave your beloved Fido dead in house right?!) But of course the guidelines vary from person to person. The way that individuals’ value, understand and prioritize logic and emotion when approaching a situation, such as rhetoric, is again (beating a dead horse here – I know) contingent on the user. But then that basically just leads me back into a huge circle of how do logic and emotion complement each other in rhetoric?