Did therapy just now.
Covered a lot of ground, as is usual when it’s mostly just me talking. One patch we covered was my belief that a one hundred percent dedication to the absolute, provable, logical, demonstrable truth is toxic to the human soul.
It sounds noble enough, in an Enlightened way, but the truth is that we need the ability to lie to ourselves at least a little bit in order to be able to handle the harsh truths of life and maybe sand off their pointier bits for ease of digestion.
Now I am not talking about rampant delusion. That would not be helpful. No, all I am talking about is granting oneself permission to make minor adjustments to the facts or even just altering how you view them in order to make it easier for you to thrive.
I mean, why martyr yourself? Of what use is this Truth? True, it’s necessary to have accurate information about the world, but just how accurate does it have to be? And to how many significant digits?
Surely there is room for small inaccuracies in the service of the greater happiness of the person doing all this Truth-ing?
We cannot choose our own reality but we can and should choose how we see and approach the real world and life in general.
This is the sort of thing those yappy idiots who go on about having the right attitude are getting at. You can choose to always view things in the most positive light possible without it leading to succumbing to delusions of grandeur.
You can fudge the facts a little.
I think it’s also what makes atheism so blankly incomprehensible to the faithful. My God, why would you choose to see the world that way? Why are you making yourself unhappy like that? Wouldn’t you prefer there to be a God?
Objective truth is a positive but like all positives it can turn into a negative when pursued with excessive zeal.
For my whole life, I have been obsessed with finding the Truth. With cutting through all the bullshit both internal and external and peeling back the layers to reveal the really really real reality underneath it all.
And how does one do that? Through analysis, of course. Figuring things out. Making sure to cross-reference everything in order to make sure it all fits together. Pruning the tree of knowledge when necessary, or even lopping off entire branches if contrary evidence of sufficient weight is acquired.
That’s been my bag for as long as I can remember. And I would be lying if I said it didn’t make me feel like I was better that everyone else.
Oh, you weak-minded fools can wander around in your delusional haze but I am a Rugged Intellectual whose powerful, insightful mind can pierce the veil of illusion and reveal unto me the true nature of our reality! I am the one eyed man in the land of the blind! I am the only one who knows what’s REALLY going on. Only I truly SEE!
Big fucking deal.
Oh, there are many advantages to having that one eye. It allows you to make strategic moves that baffle others because they are made with a view of far more of the chess board than most people get. You can act based on far better information than most people have. You can, at times, seem almost magical due to this.
But none of that makes you happy.
Whereas those intellectual peasants out there? They’re happy. Which is why I keep asking this key question : would you rather be right than be happy?
Is the knowledge that you are more “right” than other people enough to keep you warm at night? Or might you be looking with envy at the warm and cozy fires of those delusional fools you feel so superior to?
I will always be a hardcore truth seeker. It’s a drive that goes straight through to my core and is therefore not open for editing.
But that doesn’t mean I have to bleed for it.
More after the break.
Not your lucky day
A very good bit of furry animation :
It is admittedly not super original, but a story like that is always satisfying even if it is a little bit obvious.
And it’s so well done! I’d love to see the storyboards because every shot is perfect.
And, of course, our protagonist is adorable. And she gets wooed by a handsome fox!
I just love everything about this short. 🙂
I’ve seen you naked
In fact, I’m naked right now! Ba dum tish.
Patient readers know that I had to learn the hard way that not everyone “sees” other people’s thoughts and intentions and whatnot like I do.
I suppose this metaphorical X-ray vision comes from a combination of two things : a highly insightful and analytical mind, and a great deal of empathy.
As a child I learned that this is not how most people see other people and that, in fact, what was “obvious” to me might be something the person doesn’t even know about themselves let alone know somebody else can see.
That still seems somewhat alien to me. I have trouble imagining what it would be like to have other people basically be unreadable black boxes to me.
I would certainly be a radically different person. Maybe I would have been better off. Maybe I wouldn’t have ended up being the Kid That Knew Too Much.
But it was being raped that started that, really.
That’s what ripped my innocence away and left me exposed to the world in all its horrors at far too young an age.
Innocence serves a purpose. It keeps up from learning things we can’t handle yet.
But my poor little mind was blown wide open at the age of 4 and so from the very start I always knew way more than was good for me.
No wonder I became so analytical. I was trying to make sense of the world. Still am.
And as a result, I knew everything about what a kid was supposed to be like. I couldn’t just innocently follow my instincts and have them guide me forward in my development without me even knowing that was happening.
So the development didn’t happen.
And I grew into the half-baked shell of a man you know today.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.