"I'm a sick man... I'm a spiteful man. I'm an unattractive man. I think there is something wrong with my liver. But I understand damn all about my illness and I can't say for sure which part of me is affected." Fyodor Dostoyevsky This opening line in Dostoyevsky's Notes From Underground foreshadows the discussion to follow that I see as the reflection and outline of the dilemma of the modern intellectual man. His sickness is his consciousness and its clash with reason and ideals. His problem is that he can never come to the finalization of a single idea in his life as he forms a kind of deconstructionism through his own thought. This is something that will arise in a intellectual mind and it leads to inaction. As he says the stupid or man of action will come up against a (metaphorical) wall or obstacle and he will see it as a end, it may even have profound or spiritual implications. The intellectual or man like the underground man see that wall as only a diversion that never allows for the wall to be a real obstacle and so the man never moves off in another direction, but faces other ideas to see the same diversion. The underground man will bash his head with reason against the wall, but it will not be enough. The point is that reason is not the high and lofty principle of the human being that science makes it out to be. Utopian ideals are foolish and in downright denial of the human beings nature. The man is not a man of reason, nor a political man, nor is he the man you(being anyone who tries to achieve this) want him to be. The man is what he wants to be through his will, and he will not always do what is good for him. What do the good folks of GC think in terms of this dilemma, have you come across it in your own life. Have you often reflected on things rather then acting? Kierkagaard says that we advertise our plans to engage with the world but never do only increasingly plan to engage, this is a example of how this might manifest in other respects.
In all fairness , I think man must know when to approach situations in his innate and natural mannerisms , and when to bring forth the usage of logical deduction and reasoning. Balance will solve all problems , except for the problem of having too much balance. When one begins to pedestal one skill above all else strange tendencies begin to arise.
I think I would agree with you to a degree, what you are saying is basically elaborating on a popular Aristotle quote "all things in moderation." This is a depiction of what happens to a man when he tries to fulfill the demand for reason as truth. When he is built from the test tubes and the conflicting promises of truth in the world. In a sense he is a picture of humanity. Although, I ask if you understand and recognize this tragic figure in some people around you? If you can see the disease of the conscious human who becomes crippled by his own reflective thought? This is part of humanities intellectual history. It is part of what we are. How it fits is complicated perhaps even to complicated for me to say. For all those who see darkness in human beings I think the character that is depicted in Notes from Underground is a brilliant expression of it and that its true darkness is developed through actually intellectual discussion and the crushing wait of it, and its lack of an end.