Asked my Facebook pals a simple question :

“Is it possible for one’s point of view to be too objective?”

Should have added “for one’s own good”, because that is what I was getting at. As patient readers know, Ihave been ruminating on the idea that a capacity for self-delusion may well be necessary for a person’s psychological wellbeing and that my relentless drive towards the truth in all things, regardless of the damage to my ego or my comfort or really any human consideration, may do me far more harm than good.

It is a harsh and inhuman thing, this neverending drive towards objective truth.  It permits no fault, no weakness, and no forgiveness. It has no mercy and no tolerance and there is absolutely no chance that it will permit the slighest deviation from an arrow straight path torwards the truth for mere human consideration.

It’s my brutal truth machine, and to be honest, sometimes I am afraid of it. Because it hurts me. A lot. And yet, I know there’s nothing I can do about it because. at this point in my life, I cannot imagine how the system could be changed.

It’s impossible to consciously start fooling yourself. The emotional shock absorbers (that one presumably gets from proper socialization) need to be installed early, when one is young enough to incorporate them into one’s being subconsciously or it ain’t gonna happen. I’m afraid.

Perhaps that is one of the hidden functions of religion. I can certainly see how having a sort of escape hatch from reality which can be construed to be whatever you need at the moment could be enormously beneficial.

The constant, benevolent prescence of an omnipotent alpha male to act as your perfect father figure alone would do a lot to keep someone properly glued together.

But I don’t believe in magic,and I doubt I ever will. For me, reality is not nearly that plastic, and so I have no bolthole I can dive into when reality gets too rough.

I’m stuck with the truth, no matter what.

It amazes me to think that most people have a brain which holds their own happiness as the highest priority instead of the truth. They don’t know this, of course. If they did, it wouldn’t work. But somewhere in the deep layers of their psyches is a psychological subroutine that can actually adjust their person reality in order to keep them happy.

And sure, it’s easy to point out examples of where that is a bad thing. Trump’s narcissism makes a good (and disturbing) example. His reality-adjusting subroutine is active to the point of him being actively delusional. Whatever gratifies is ego is true, and whatever disagrees with it is false. Period.

But narcissistic personality disorder does not disprove the utility of this subroutine of mine any more than schizophrenia disproves the utlity of imagination.

My assertion of the existence of toxic objectivity is very interesting from a cultural point of view, because Western thinking is very much not down with the idea.

There can’t be such a thing as too much knowledge or too much truth in the Western point of view. In a sense, we are all supposed to be constantly seeking the truth. The Western model imagines each citizen as a rugged truth-seeking invidual, and what truth we find is viewed as an individual rather than a group effort.

Things are quite different in the East.

I was talking about the subject in therapy yesterday, and I could tell my therapist was struggling with the concept and with the urge to object. Toxic objectivity is a concept that goes against the very foundations of Western thought, and this is doubly true for those of us in the intellectual class.

Truth is what all us brainy types are supposed to be seeking, one way or another. It is our sole univeral good. More truth is always better because it makes us “better informed” and gives us a more “realistic” view of reality.

And how can that be wrong?

After all, the person who sees that their house is on fire and calls 911 is clearly at an advantage over the person who ignores it or pretends it isn’t happening, right?

So this notion of toxic objectivity is counterintuitive, to put it mildly.

And it is hard to talk about because the mechanism is hidden so well. Nobody wants to admit, even to themselves, that they are not perceiving reality correctly or their self-esteem is based on what amounts to cheating in one’s own favour. That sort of thing could cripple a person’s self-worth or even cause a total psychological breakdown.

That;s why I try to be very careful about when and how I ‘truth’ people. Were I less aware of the consequences of my actions or less willing to take responsibility for them, I would recklessly attack “delusion” wherever I saw it, smugly sure that I was making the world a better place by reducing its bullshit quotient.

But I am neither that self-righteous or that ignorant of the realities of people’s inner lives. The truth (ha) is that people only need so much truth in their lives.

Sure, they need to know if their house is on fire, but they don’t necessari;ly need to know that their combover isn’t fooling anyone, let alone that Jesus isn’t real.

Back to the mechanism being so well hidden. It’s so well hidden that even I, with my Hannibal Lecter level perceptions. didn’t consciously realize it was there until recently.

All my life, I have known people believe things which are demonstrably untrue and that everyone can see is a lie. And this upset and intrigued me because it was so different from how I thought.

But it has taken me thirty years of observation and analysis to figure out why these people had these belief which, to me at least, were obviously false.

It’s not that they chose to fool themselves. That’s logically impossible.

It’s that they need to do it. And the trickster in their head does the rest.

And because they can. and I can’t, they are healthy people who have made a life for themselves. and I am just some big fat depressed slug who plays Skyrim.

I’m broken as fuck, y’all.

And some days it really gets me down.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.