The truth is highly overrated.

Or as my favorite rapper ever put it :

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I just got back from therapy, and one of the things we discussed was my decision that a hardcore, total dedication to the literally, objectively true was self-destructive and that the human mind needs the capacity to “spin” information in a way that preserves the ego while maintaining sufficient relationship to the truth.

As expected, he struggled a little with the concept. It’s a slippery one. It comes very close to saying I have decided to believe lies, and that’s simply impossible.

The human mind cannot choose to believe that which it believes to be untrue. That’s a null set, an empty equation. a logical non-starter.

However, there is always more than one way to look at things, and that is wherein the wiggle room lies. What I have been doing is looking at things with a certain sort of objective truth being the sole criterion for validity.

That approach allows no room for mercy, forgiveness, or adjustment for ego protection. And that leaves the mind far too vulnerable and fragile.

Worse, that kind of brutal truth machine thinking is far too easily hijacked by the bad agents of my mind and used as evidence against me by my malicious inner prosecutor.

Thus, the “truth” is turned against me.

I used to be so proud of being “naked before the truth”, meaning that I did not try to protect myself from the truths of life, no matter how harsh or dark or damning.

But now,. I wonder what is so wrong about putting a fucking coat on.

Furthermore, the sort of “truth” derived from my brutal truth machine is only one sort of truth, and only true if things like the wider emotional picture and a robust view of people’s needs are ignored.

So it might be true, but it is far from the whole truth.

And what has my merciless,. pitiless,. fanatic pursuit of the truth ever gotten me anyway? Sure, I get a lot of insights from it, but those insights haven’t exactly improved my lot in life. It certainly hasn’t made me any happier.

So big deal. What use is seeing more clearly than others if it doesn’t make things better in your life?

Repeat after me : I’d rather be happy than right.
I’d rather be happy than right.
I’d rather be happy than right. .

That’s the lesson I need to pound into my head. There’s such a thing as a functional delusion – a belief that is not objectively true but nevertheless is a net gain for the person who believes it.

I think a lot of people’s higher-level beliefs are like that. Beliefs about how the world works, politics, transpersonal morality, and so forth. Their primary function is a psychological one, and as long as that belief does not impede or impair their ability to function on a day to day basis, it really doesn’t matter how “true” it is.

People believe what they need to believe.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

I have pursued the kind of truth I pursued driven by a blind faith that, when all is said and done, I am always better off knowing the truth.

But now I am questioning that faith. Surely it doesn’t have to be so final or unforgiving. Surely I am better off leaving room for certain adjustments.

Surely there is room in their for compassion and mercy towards oneself.

No wonder I have felt like I was forever walking over frozen tundra with the icy wind whipping through me. Via this fanatic pursuit of transpersonal truth,  I have denied myself all forms of shelter and protection from the elements. Not to mention cutting myself off from the warming rays of mercy and kindness.

Now I am asking myself : is believing something that isn’t one hundred percent true really that big a deal? Is adjusting belief to support my ego really such a crime? Is a little fudging of the facts really all that dangerous?

The answer may surprise you.

Suddenly, I see why some people mistrust anything that seems too coldly rational and brutally objective. On a very basic level, the “truth” can’t be trusted.It might hurt you at any second. It has no mercy or restraint. It doesn’t take anyone’s feelings into account.

It just nails down reality and takes away people’s ability to deny what they cannot handle or do not need to know.

That was, in a way, what I liked about it. The truth, however bitter, was something you could rely on because it did not change no matter how people felt about it. What it lacked in compassion it gained in solidity.

The truth had weight in a world that often felt paper thin to me due to my transcendental mindset that seeks inner truths at the expense of the outer realities of life.

But now, I think I took it too far. To the point of brutalizing myself unnecessarily. Like I said, my inner prosecutor used this powerful truth seeking mind of mine as a source of ammunition against me, and a chance to paint everything in the wosrt possible light.

So what I really need is a defense attorney. The prosecution has had the court to themselves for far too long. I need a sympathetic person willing to fight the prosecutor and hold him accountable for his lies and tricks and dishonesty.

And I am getting there. I have tapped into my vast rage reserves and hooked them up to my defense. The result is that when I catch the negative thoughts, I don’t just stop them and insert a more positive one.

I blast that negative thought so hard it shatters into a million pieces on impact with the wall and the pieces burst into flames.

Get the fuck OUT OF MY MIND,  you disease! If I could, I would scrape you out of my brain with a grapefruit spoon!

But I suppose I will give this therapy thing a chance first.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Well, it’s 10:45 pm and I have not blogged yet today. I was too damned sick to do it in the afternoon like I usually do, and I only have an hour and a quarter in which to do it now, so consider yourself warned :

This post might end up being shorter than usual.

I’m sure that leaves you all heartbroken.

I was sick this afternoon because of the pressure washing. My building is being pressure washed on all exterior surfaces this week, and that means we have to keep our windows closed so the water does not get it.

And seeing as the computer I am typing this on is directly in front of my bedroom window, I am taking this warning in earnest.

Having the windows closed, though, leads to a much, much hotter bedroom for me and that leads directly to the dehydration and heat sickness I always get when I am overheated for any length of time.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the summer.

I just wish it loved me back.

SO I was sick from the heat for pretty much the entire afternoon. Happened yesterday too, only not quite as severely.

It was all I could do just to play Skyrim very, very listlessly, and I only did that out of the sheer spiteful determination to have some kind of fun.

It was that or sleep all afternoon, siesta style,. but that would not solve anything in the long run, because heat stroke dreams are always extremely intense and realistic and nearly always unpleasant and scary in some way.

Like a religious experience mixed with a nightmare and directed by someone on acid.

Unfortunately, I was to incoherent and miserable to think of doing what I know would have bought me some time, which is to drink some ice water and in general stay hydrated via drinking plenty of fluids.

There should be some way of checking the fluid levels on yourself.

“Wow, no wonder I feel like crap, I’m a quart low on water, my bile is all our of whack, and my eyeballs are overdue for maintenance  and rotation!”.

Wouldn’t that be cool? It frustrates me that we can’t get a clear diagnostic picture of ourselves. We’d be so much healthier if we could see what was wrong and take steps to correct it. Vitamin deficiencies, electrolyte imbalances, trouble in the gut biome… image if we could see those on our smartphone screens as easily as we see the rest of our apps. Press a virtual button, and you’d get a list of proven ways to fix the issue.

Well, it would work for me, anyhow. I can do anything if I have the data for it. I am inherently soothes byh knowing more about things, especially scary things, even if the information is all bad news.

The more I know, the more I understand, and the more I understand,. the more I feel like I have power over my situation, and that lows my anxiety level.

It’s the unknowns that kill me. The uncertainties. For example, if a person agrees to meet me in a certain place at a certain time, and it’s past that time and they have yet to show up, it’s the uncertainty that bothers me and makes my anxiety level rise.

So I would much rather that this person contacted me and said they were running late than to just leave me hanging. I won’t be mad when they call. Things happen, Life has many ways to fuck up our plans.

But if you have left me in the void of uncertainty for a long time, expect me to be somewhat upset when you arrive. Probably not actually angry as long as you have a sufficient explanation. But in a highly agitated state.

Where was I? Oh right, detailed diagnostics for the human body.

I suppose we’re getting there. The cheap sensor revolution is bringing medical diagnostics to the average person every day. You can already get the entire  suite of sensors they used in old fashioned lie detectors on a single chip.

So while detailed and sophisticated diagnostics might not be available for consumers any time soon, we will at least be able to get base line readings like heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen levels, and so on.

Hypochondriacs will rejoice.

Come to think of it, in a sense my bout of hypochondria in my early twenties was about information and control as well. When a hypochondriac leaps to the conclusion that the little twinge in their neck means they have cancer, it seems like it’s an exercise in self-torture and nothing else.

But every human behaviour, no matter how self-destructive, solves some kind of problem or conflict.

In the case of the hypochondriac, what deciding it must be cancer does is turn the unknowns of nameless anxiety and dread general malaise into the known quantity of a concrete, physical disease that objectively and scientifically exists and which, at least in theory, can be solved.

I used to wish that my doctor would tell me that all my problem come from this one clear medical problem which can easily be fixed.

Wouldn’t that be nice? Then none of my problems would be my fault, and soon they would be gone without my having to learn to grow as a person or anything.

All my problems solved, and all I had to do was show up for the operation.

I realize that, in more ways than one, that is a very sick sort of dream. But that’s the sort of strange mind space I have always inhabited.

It’s a sad place, with much traditional gender role failure on my part. Men are not supposed to long for someone to take care of them because they are clearly not suuited for the job themselves.

Luckily, I’m a fag, so there’s more options for me. There’s no problem with my being somewhere between genders. I can be “womanly” in some ways and it doesn’t make me a failure as a man.

But it does leave me wondering who I really am.

All I can say is that I am whoever I happen to be at the moment.

And that will have to do.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.