Patient readers know of what I speak when I talk about The Jagoff.

It’s the part of myself that convinces me to do stupid, lazy, shortsighted, immediate gratification leading to long term consequences type things by saying that it’s no big deal, no stress, just relax, surely you can put if off a little longer, and so forth and so on.

And that’s how I have traditionally seen it : as the devil on my shoulder that talks me into doing things that are not in my long term interest at all.

And of course, when things blow up in my face and I find that I have, once more, fucked up largely and not only hurt others but thoroughly humiliated myself,  he is nowhere to be seen and I am kicking myself – savagely – for listening to him yet again.

But after an interesting if mildly frustrating discussion with friends last night where I tried (and failed)  to convey to them the folly of the point of view that sees acting on impulse as the enemy (as opposed to acting on them poorly), it’s occurred to me that I have been far too hard on the Jagoff.

After all, he’s only trying to make me happy.

And if I am being honest, he’s been my greatest ally because he has been there in my darkest hours trying to keep me amused and distracted so that I don’t get too sad.

In that sense, he’s the wellspring of my comedic talents. He’s the voice that led me to my love of comedy and my desire to understand all there is about it. If I am, in any sense, a jester and a clown, it’s because that is what that part of me had done for me.

So he’s been the one looking out for me when nobody else would. Kind of the fun uncle whose job it was to keep me entertained that I never had.

Nobody gave a damn whether I was happy or not. How could they?

They had no idea how miserable I was as a kid.

And to be fair, neither did I. Like all kids, I did what I thought was expected of me. I went to school, got excellent marks, came home, retreated to my room, and spent my time with my beloved distractions of comics, books, and video games.

And, later on, porn.  Thanks, internet!

So it’s unfair to only associate the Jagoff with the bad results. That’s a clear cut case of selection bias. Most of the time, he’s been my only friend, and while his brand of comfort often leads me down the wrong path, he always means well.

He’s just not that good with the long term thinking.

And as for my own salvation, he might just lead me there if I let him. He’s more or less the voice of my id., inasmuch as the the id can have a voice, and while mindlessly doing what your emotions are telling you to do is obviously a bad idea, never doing what your impulses are telling you is almost as bad.

For one thing, they will get tired of being ignored and force you to listen to them one way or another. Like the man who doesn’t even remember stealing the loaf of bread when he was starving because his id simply took over and got things done.

Or all those people say their infidelity “just happened”, because their unmet need got so strong that it also took over.

This is why I think the only true path to inner peace and harmony with the universe is to satiate one’s desires.

It is only when a man has a full belly and empty balls that he can truly be patient, wise, and a good citizen.

I’m sure Plato said something like that at one point.

To the ego-dominated mind, acting on impulse can only lead to disaster. Again, this is selection bias at work. You don’t notice all the times when acting on impulse worked out just fine. Why? Because nothing unusual or noteworthy happened.

But when things go cattywampus, the ego-biased mind immediately blames it on letting the id decide something. We kick ourselves (savagely) and say things like “If I’d only thought about it for two fucking seconds.,… “.

But that’s not how life works. We can’t spend two seconds on every single decision we make. Life happens too fast for that. We have no choice but to make a lot of decisions quickly and in realtime and so to blame ourselves (and worse, our ids) for not thinking things through is absurd and unjustified.

Life is not a chess game, where there is always plenty of time to contemplate our next move. Decisions have to be made quickly, and only the fast circuit of the brain can do that. And the fast circuit is, as the name implies, very fast, but it’s not nearly as smart as the slow circuit of the brain.

So yeah. If you’d thought about it for two seconds, you would have made a better choice. No doubt about it.

But that was never going to happen. Ever.

It’s going to take me a long time to process this.

So all those mistakes you kick yourself over? You literally made the best decision you could at the time. Sure, in retrospect, the slow circuit of your brain can easily see what the right decision for the best outcome was, but it wasn’t there.

The quick circuit was. And it did what it could.

I’m not saying that there is no situation in which pausing for a few moments would be a bad idea. People make rash decisions unnecessarily all the time. The world could use more thoughtful pauses.

But by the same token, there are times when pausing to think things over would be a very bad idea.

The ideal solution, then, is to build a smarter fast circuit. And you do that by trusting it over and over again and evaluating the results.

Luckily, life forces you to do that anyway.

All you have to do is open your mind to the idea that sometimes, it’s right.

Then it will all fall into place.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.