I am regularly reminded why I studiously try to avoid engaging with the broader shitshow known as humanity. It’s actually one of the ”interests” Mrs. Denmarkguy and I share, and accounts for why we regularly reaffirm our vows to remain misanthropic hermits.
She was recently away for a long weekend, having been asked to be part of a friend’s daughter’s 21st birthday celebration, and after her return, we got on the subject that dangerous activity called THINKING for yourself.
So many people seem to resemble trained conditioned puppets who do little more than regurgitate something ”they read somewhere” as truth. OR they blindly seize upon the exact opposite of popular opinion and champion themselves as revolutionaries and alternative thinkers.
In the latest iteration of our afternoon coffeetalks, we ended up talking about consciousness and people’s thoughts and beliefs about a variety of things mostly spiritual... and where those come from. And then we moved onto the sad fact that almost nobody bothers to do any ”vetting” of the information they come across and adopt as their "reality."
Pot... Kettle... Black... etc.
Now, I should add that I am sometimes guilty of that, myself... something comes across my desk, and there simply isn’t time enough in my existence to do more than a couple of cursory online searches to source information before giving it a ”yay” or ”nay.” This is particularly true of that cesspool known as Farcebook, where I still do spend a small amount of time... for business reasons.
I suppose we could bury ourselves in the rabbit hole of ”how accurate and absolute do we need to be?” and if we lean towards absolutism in that area, chances are that no thinking individual would ever say anything at any time. We'd all be mired down in verifying available evidence... and to what end?
But I am digressing a little bit.
Two things Mrs. Denmarkguy brought back from her weekend ”retreat” were that (A) an extraordinary number of people just seem to be so pervasively and reactively ANGRY about the smallest and stupidest things (B) most people can’t actually tell you (or are AFRAID to, lest it reveals them as bigots, racists, sociopaths, phobics, selfish twats or something else) why many of their most closely held ideas and beliefs are actually a good thing and how they add value, to pretty much any aspect of existence.
"I see that you fervently believe this thing of which you speak. I accept and honor that you fervent believe it, but please explain to me how it is a GOOD or VALUABLE or USEFUL philosophy? How does it make existence a better experience?"
And if that person actually has an answer, how do they know it's universally true?
Made me pause for a moment, as I remembered how even my exceptionally intelligent and very outspoken friend H. couldn’t actually explain to me WHY his notion of euthanizing all humans with an IQ below 130 had value beyond the fact that (in his words) ”stupid people annoy me,” and that it would be "for their own good."
”Great H, but who's going to clean your apartment and deliver your to-go meals when those people are all gone? Besides, who's going to bury/cremate 98% of the population to prevent the surviving world of supergeniuses from having to live in a festering shithole of rotting corpses?”
Silence... followed by ”I think you’re missing my point...”
What derailed H. wasn't my actual question so much as the fact that I wasn't "automatically outraged and reacting" to his rather extreme proposal. A bit like the "I never expected to actually have to DEFEND my thesis!" college student.
Ideologues rarely transact much on the street-level functionality level of life. Many superficially brilliant approaches to life cannot actually live outside the intellectual bubbles that exist inside think tanks and the ivy covered walls of must old academia.
But getting back to the main event… the knowing of why something is a good thing, or has value, or whatever metric you want to assign.
It often seems like — when pressured for an opinion — people keep themselves sequestered in ”toxic” or ”reactionary” or "hyper-defensive" places without really thinking about why something is ”good/positive/valuable/worthwhile” for reasons beside it allowing them to experience ”reality” through their own carefully constructed echo chambers.
It’s similar to the way a large chunk of the scientific community fails itself by going in search of evidence to prove a hypothesis, not to test a hypothesis. There’s a bias towards finding only the evidence that proves something right, not merely to uncover INFORMATION.
But I digress again.
One of the things I’ve learned from Mrs. Denmarkguy — which I used to disagree with — is that everyone has an ”agenda,” whether they are aware of it, or not; whether they admit it, or not. We tend to eye ”agendas” with suspicion and a negative bias... but ”having an agenda” really means little more than ”I have reasons for doing what I am doing.”
The dissonance arises because typically these reasons are purely personal but people jump to the assumption that they "must be" global/universal.
But back to knowing why something is good. As surfaced during the weekend outside, so many people at the event subscribed to the ”It’s GOOD because Guru Bornaghain recommends it!” line of reasoning and viewpoint forming.
Yes, but what do YOU think about it?
Silence ensues. We take so many cues for our reality from external opinions, rather than our own.
We do this with health, politics, economics, religion, economics, raising children and lord knows how many other things.
Only on rare occasions to people manage to make the leap to the realization that "I'd really like the world to be like THIS, but I recognize that that's not how the world actually WORKS."
And then the subsequent insight that "Just because it seems right to ME doesn't mean it's right for YOU."
And then to finally answer the question in the title of the post: "It's GOOD because it make MY life better, and it's entirely possible it only makes MY life better!"
We tend to be a very selfish species, even if we are conditioned to be in denial about that.
Anyway, I'm now going to crawl back into my somewhat misanthropic hole!
Thanks for reading, and have a great rest of your week!
How about YOU? Do you know where your life philosophy and beliefs come from? Do you know — deep inside — why you think they are "right" or "good?" Do they REALLY apply to anyone aside from yourself? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20211104 23:54 PDT
0392/1633
My strongest belief is on perspective and how powerful and important that is. It's very difficult to know how anyone will react until you are in a situation. It's very difficult/ impossible to walk in someone's shoes and the implication for me is not to judge people or have too extreme views. There is no such thing as absolute right or wrong.
I think where this conditioning came from is from studying physics, particularly astrophysics which helped me realise how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. The universe is a big place and we are just a pale blue dot.
Which, in turn, annoys the heck out of me, because it makes for bad decisions for civilization 😞
I think my beliefs are mostly based on the idea that people are stupid, moronic and selfish and our poor earth, nature and animals have to be defended against that. I am also very sure people will eventually kill themselves up until the point of (near) extinction and I know we'll take a lot of nature's beauty with us. I have no kids, so I don't have to work towards solving climate change, although I still love nature and animals, so I will sooner make a decision pro-nature instead of against it.
Still, I know my decisions always keep me and my loved ones in mind aswell. Above others if need be, as long as I do no harm. I think 'civilization' is pretty far down my list of considerations, because humanity has brought all of their problems on themselves.
Here, take a reblog while my VP is still recovering :-)
'Thinking for oneself'... hmmm, all the more important now with all that's happening around us...
whether it is with sufficient weightage for the general good of the civilisation/world or just for own selfish self!