the terminology may look unfamiliar to you, or entirely new — especially given that different languages and cultures pack different sets of characteristics into the same concepts. to even out those possible gaps, i’ll try to describe the processes behind the words, and bring in examples of practical application.

mind

with mind, it’s not entirely straightforward at first glance — but tracing the word back to its origins, it comes down to memory. on a practical level, the mind handles everyday, relatively simple tasks where thinking isn’t required, let alone developed thinking. meaning that memory alone is sufficient at this level — it registers the consequences of events that have already happened, and when something similar comes up, it serves back what it managed to catch: solutions at that same level of consequences.

rationality

with rationality, things get considerably more interesting and deeper: it comes from the word reason. so, rationality is a relationship to reason. in practical terms, this means seeing and managing the reasons of actions — the very things that later reach the previously mentioned mind as consequences that have already unfolded.

specifics

the difference between mind and reason comes down to the depth of control: mind works with consequences, rationality works with reasons.

to illustrate, let me bring in an everyday situation. primitive as it is, it’s very telling.

a human comes home and drops their keys wherever, then grabs them every time they need to head out. why they need keys at all, why they drop them anywhere — that’s not really the point here: it just happens.

this is where the mind does its thing. coming home, it executes the task “put down the keys”; leaving — “take the keys”, which is of course preceded by “find the keys”. because of this straightforward way of dealing with keys, the mind is constantly forced to run into the search problem.

and what would rationality do? it would see that the optimal solution isn’t to search faster or train memory (though that’s not bad either) — but to eliminate the search altogether. to do that, you need to step outside the consequences — keys dropped somewhere — and move to the cause of the situation, to the level where it’s created. so, by understanding what reason leads to the search, you can change it at the root, and as a result never have to look for your keys at all — because they’re always in the same place.

practical application

“alright, but what should i do with this? why do i need to know reasons and work at their level?”

this applies to everything: how we react, how we choose, how we act, on what basis and for what purpose. every action has a reason why it appears and why it is like that.

take emotions, for example: many people will say emotions have no logic, that they’re the complete opposite of it — yet emotions follow the strictest, most ironclad logic, directly tied to survival. back in a wild environment, this tool was enormously useful, speeding up decision-making and the actions needed to save yourself. today, however, the environment has changed while the old methods remain — which is exactly why so many people can’t get a handle on their own emotionality.

if you map emotions onto the reason-and-consequence scheme mentioned earlier, they are the consequence — a reaction to incoming information. where else would they come from? understanding this, you can immediately see what level of depth the emotion management practices offered by various experts actually have — the ones you may well be using yourself.

“just breathe steadily and it’ll pass” — i find this quite funny. does it work? at a certain level, sure. does it prevent the emotion from showing up in a similar situation? no — you just have to breathe again.

a vicious cycle, but the solution is right under your nose.

rationality’s solution

there are two technically correct ways to solve the problem of uncontrolled emotions — and not just them. they are elegantly simple, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy to achieve.

first approach — meaning management

i’ll give you an example to make it clearer. a human lives in a country with a high level of urban crime and is walking down the street after dark. they spot another human nearby. fear kicks in immediately — a threat, after all. but then it turns out that human works for a delivery service, and the reaction stops right there. naturally, it takes time for the hormonal background to shift, but the reaction was effectively cut off.

what does this show us? “a threat, after all” — that is the hidden meaning the brain assigned to the incoming information — hence the phenomenal speed, since that’s precisely what it’s wired for. the moment additional details appeared, it reoriented just as quickly.

so the whole elusive secret of emotion management comes down to changing the meaning we assign — or rather, not we, but our brain — to what we’re inter-acting with. and this applies not only to the external, but to the internal as well: you recall something, catch a strong emotion — that means you need to find the meaning that’s creating that emotion (hello, survival — even if the memory isn’t directly connected to it) and swap it for a different one.

the ancient stoics already spoke about this — today it’s simply clear and available to anyone interested in improving their results. there’s a lot of engaging and creative work ahead! and now — on to the next approach.

second approach — inner restructuring

in a sense, this is already rationality in action.

constantly changing meaning is far more effective than all the other techniques in general circulation — but you still have to keep changing. so how do you step beyond even that?

if you restructure yourself from within in a certain way, these reactions will disappear altogether, or become so small in amplitude that removing them through meaning requires virtually no effort. there’s nothing supernatural here: we perform this kind of restructuring whenever we master a skill — that is, when we move from one quality to another, from inability to ability. only here the skill is considerably deeper and, by modern standards, unconventional.

and this isn’t a gym, where you walk in weak and come out supposedly strong. the insecurity is in the head — it hasn’t gone anywhere, only an illusion of strength has formed, behind which the same small and timid child is still hiding. i myself wasted many years on this circus, not only failing to get what i wanted but also picking up several physical injuries along the way. remember what we said about solutions at the level of reasons versus consequences?

that said, i won’t be covering the specific technologies that make this possible in this article — but their essence is simple: what’s needed are models of management that go beyond human attitudes and conceptions, development of all systems, improvement of their coordination. in other words — technical Unity.

instead of a conclusion

to meaningfully improve your results, you need to shift from interacting at the level of consequences to the level of reasons.

and taming your emotionality in particular, and your biology in general — this is a mandatory skill of rationality.