Fears and non-fears

Afraid of making a mistake, I avoid doing something, while wondering if it's a mistake to avoid doing it. 

Although I'm worried that doing it may not be a mistake, still I avoid doing it, because what if others think doing it would be a mistake?

And though it would be a useful fear to have, I don't wonder if others would think avoiding it is the mistake.

I wonder why I don't wonder this. 

My Ego

He hurts my ego, and my instinct is to ascribe some moral flaw to him for hurting me. But since I know it's my ego that is hurt, I tell myself I should not react in defense of my ego. This makes me feel better, since I get to tell myself, "Look how noble you are, allowing him to say what hurts you because you don't want to defend your ego." Being aware of this self-deception though, disarms my defense, and I am left again with my offended ego. I am now very conscious of my ego, and my self-deception as a defense mechanism; I am also aware that these are subtle incidents in one's soul that others may not notice in themselves. This last bit is also a defense mechanism in which I am telling myself not how noble I am, but how everyone else must be just as bad, (although I'm also praising myself for noticing).

Edited: 14-09-2022

How



We're hurt by what others say and don't mean, and what they mean and don't say, and what we imagine them to mean, and madly enough, what we imagine them saying and meaning because it makes sense that they would, or that they could, the possibility exists and that is enough to hurt. 

Posted on Instagram. 

A New Nose

Her wedding was coming up and she wanted a new nose. Her old nose was fine, but oh the photos she could post of her honeymoon with her new nose! So she took her old nose to the doctor and asked for a replacement. Her new nose brought her headaches at first, then swelling, then bleeding eventually, finally landing her in the emergency unit in the hospital, and the courts soon after. Her fiancé had left her new nose, she told the courts, and though it wasn't clear why, her job also quit on her new nose. She sometimes dreamed of her old nose laughing at her, mocking her new nose.

[Edited on 04-10-2022]

The Cat

The cat ran out. The man ran after the cat. The man who ran after the cat passed a boy walking his dog who said the dog had scared the cat that ran away. The man who ran beat the boy walking his dog who said the dog had scared the cat that ran away; this upset the dog that scared the cat and pushed the dog to run away. The dog returned, but would not eat nor drink, and slept all day. The court fined the man who beat the boy who walked his dog that ran away and then returned: 5,000 for beating the boy, 40,000 for the dog that ran away and then returned, and 1,000 in legal fees; the court wasn’t told what happened to the cat that ran away. 

(Short story in six sentences. I posted this on Instagram. It was inspired by this article.)

This Blog

My idea for this blog is for it to be like a notebook. This is where I’ll post drafts, notes, thoughts, incomplete writings, and writing exercises like short stories in six sentences and so on. This way there is less pressure to only post what is good. If I post something, it doesn’t have to be the final version, and I can keep editing it as I see fit. I’ll add in the dates every time I edit. 

I suppose I’ll find out more about what I’ll do with it, if anything at all, as I go along. 

Excerpt from The Culture of Narcissism

"Our society is narcissistic, then, in a double sense. People with narcissistic personalities, although not necessarily more numerous than before, play a conspicuous part in contemporary life, often rising to positions of eminence. Thriving on the adulation of the masses, these celebrities set the tone of public life and of private life as well, since the machinery of celebrity recognizes no boundaries between the public and the private realm. The beautiful people—to use this revealing expression to include not merely wealthy globetrotters but all those who bask, however briefly, in the full glare of the cameras—live out the fantasy of narcissistic success, which consists of nothing more substantial than a wish to be vastly admired, not for one’s accomplishments but simply for oneself, uncritically and without reservation."

- Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (1979)

Orwell's Animal Farm as a call to reading

Ever since I read George Orwell's Animal Farm, I've been handing it out to just about anyone I know who hasn't read it. Aside from its content, which is why I started recommending it to others, it’s also quite short and easily read, appealing qualities for non-readers or readers not used to fiction. 

In terms of content, while there are various takeaways one could get from the book, I believe one of them should be an urgent encouragement to read and constantly educate oneself. 

Let us review the events just enough to prove this point and not to spoil it on those who haven’t read it yet. In the beginning of the book, after the animals revolt, they take it on themselves to learn how to read. Some of them learn well and others find they cannot, no matter how hard they struggle. Those who master reading end up becoming the ruling class, whereas the various lesser abilities to read by the other animals determine how much they could be fooled and controlled. The other animals do not reach the level of the pigs, who are the only animals to master reading and writing in Animal Farm.

So those who can read fool those who cannot read. It is as if the author is warning us of the dangers of not learning by ourselves, as we end up being taken advantage of by those who know more. We often put our trust in those we think know more, and their interests may often come before ours. Think of religious clerics and secular intellectuals in our times who try to persuade people to blindly follow their causes, not always to the people’s benefit, but for some advantage that this intellectual class will benefit from.

Different media channels, each with their own agenda, present us with their own version of current events, how can one determine the truth, if that is at all possible? Orwell himself writes in his excellent essay, Notes on Nationalism: “Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or for failing to form an opinion. The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs.”

The reading required here is not reading as leisure or as a hobby, it is a necessity if one does not want to be manipulated into an undesirable situation. Orwell writes in another essay: “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” What Orwell is writing of here specifically is seeing beyond our biases. Unlike propaganda and disinformation in general, these are internal problems that make us refuse to acknowledge unmistakable facts, or forget contradictory opinions we often hold. We may forget our own moral codes and laws simply by reversing a situation, by changing the sides involved in a conflict. For example, should we see a certain group of people we disapprove of for religious or political opinions being oppressed we find ourselves justifying it to the greatest extent, perhaps shifting all blame on the victims themselves, and should the situation be reversed we find ourselves appalled by the oppression and the justification that uses the same words we have used before. Try this as a thought experiment: replace the sides in any controversial event to see if your opinion of it stays the same.

Orwell recommends keeping a diary of one's opinions to keep track of these changes, reversals, and contradictions. I suppose in this day and age, many of us already record our opinions on the Internet, whether on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media websites. 

Returning to Orwell’s Animal Farm, I’ve started asking readers to imagine if they had to be a character in the book, who would they choose? Then I would ask them which character they thought came closest to representing them in reality.

The obvious answer is that no one would wish to be a character in Animal Farm, and the only way out of that is through constant and rigorous self-education. If you haven’t read it, don’t take my word for it, go read it for yourself.

From Percy Shelley's Prometheus Unbound

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; 

To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;

To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates

From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;


- Percy Shelley

Pain has an element of blank; 

It cannot recollect 

When it began, or if there was 

A time when it was not. 

It has no future but itself, 

Its infinite realms contain 

Its past, enlightened to perceive 

New periods of pain.

- Emily Dickinson 

The Life of the Reader

I'm reading a reading, since every written work is a reading of some event or some idea, an imposed understanding of it which I then impose my own understanding on. If the author is not different in each instance of writing as is Foucault's argument, then at least the reader is most likely different in every reading instance. I am a different person with more experiences and probably a different set of ideas in mind as I read this book that I read previously, and I will be different if I read it again after some time.

The Trouble With Conspiracies

To make my point I'd like to start with an absurd example, and then move on to lesser idiotic ones.

Let's say someone named AbdulRahman, (choosing my own name so as not to offend anyone else), had a phobia of people named Ahmed. AbdulRahman is "Ahmedo-phobic". He absolutely mistrusts anyone named Ahmed, he is automatically suspicious when dealing with Ahmeds and believes them to be "bad" people. Now, AbdulRahman works in a company, and this company is looking for a new employee. AbdulRahman is part of a panel that interviews candidates for the job, one of whom is of course named Ahmed. As soon as he sees the name his guard is naturally up, and he is now looking for signs to discredit Ahmed. He will not readily admit to others that his reason for not trusting Ahmed is based purely on his name, because that's just insane. So he looks for other reasons to back his decision not to hire Ahmed. The company doesn't hire Ahmed in the end, because of AbdulRahman's manipulations. 

A few months later, AbdulRahman chances on an articles that talks about an incident regarding fraud, and the fraudster mentioned in the article is that very Ahmed that wasn't hired recently. AbdulRahman feels blessed, and more convinced about his phobia. He was right not to trust Ahmed.

But of course, he wasn't. Just in case you need me to make it clear, the reasoning behind not hiring Ahmed, behind not trusting Ahmed, was completely flawed. Stupid is too small a word for it.

Moving on to the less (but still) stupid and more realistic examples. Say AbdulRahman was a racist who didn't like black people. He rejected Ahmed because of his skin color and not because of his name, and later on felt more convinced about his racist belief when he discovered that Ahmed was indeed a thief. 

Of course, Ahmed being a thief is neither the result of his name nor his skin color. The reasoning is still erroneous, as most rational people would agree.

What is the problem here? AbdulRahman's racism or insane phobia is protecting him in this example from being conned. Yes, but that is merely by chance. His reasoning is completely flawed, it is not based at all on facts and logic, not based on the sayings and experiences of the person in front of him. It is based on entirely irrelevant traits.

This also works with ideological positions, and ideological "predispositions", as people of one ideology might be inclined not to trust people of an opposing ideology and judge based on that rather than a person's own merits. If AbdulRahman were a socialist with a disdain for capitalists, and Ahmed wasn't hired because of that, when Ahmed turns out to be a thief his views on economics are irrelevant. Conservatives and liberals, Sunnis and Shiites, the examples goes on. If you come up with a conspiracy theory based on your ideology, and you construct the facts based on a view you are ideologically predisposed to see, if the conspiracy turns out by chance accurate, it doesn't make your reasoning correct. 

If you're judging by ideology rather than by facts and logic, you're still like the AbdulRahman who hates all Ahmeds.

Excerpt from Brecht

Even anger against injustice
Makes the voice grow harsh. Alas, we
Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness
Could not ourselves be kind.


- Brecht

The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock. T.S. Eliot. Read by Anthony Hopkins

First they came...

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.


- Martin Niemöller