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Reality works upon us: we see or hear something, choose to believe it when it reconfirms a pattern in reality, and upon that belief we re-engage with reality creating a feedback loop.
Media slips into this feedback loop, distorting the uptake and recognition of patterns to produce a deviated counterfactual. This manipulation -and our awareness of it- should have trended into zero-trust long-ago.
And yet, despite this logic, faith in trust persists.
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We get caught up in extremes, arguing hyperbolic hypotheticals and slandering the middle road.
There is a fear of being labeled “lukewarm” or “hypocrite” for not going all the way: we seek purity in all positions and all ideologies.
The unfortunate irony of purity is isolation (manufacturing your own loneliness). Maintaining your position precludes change; this insight (purity is an isolating, alienating sickness) is required to embrace commonality, rationality, respect, or diversity.
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It’s often the case that there is no universally accepted best solution, so we must create our own path. What’s more interesting is the hidden motivations we produce and nurture that go against common sense, but that we dare not reveal.
Of course, we usually follow the norm when it comes to things like physics or social constructs, but when it comes to personal matters such as family, business, or sex, we often encounter conflicting desires.
However, when we find someone who shares our fantastical desires, it makes us feel alive, which is beyond common sense.
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To be a "rational actor," you must have awareness of the risks.
Most people move through the world on unconscious bias, making calculations beneath a rational threshold.
The Peltzman Effect shows the safer we make things, such as demanding seatbelts and airbags, the riskier our behavior becomes. We have a "risk budget" we subconsciously calculate and increase our risky behavior to the corresponding risk to life and limb.
In short, we are irrational actors who actively thwart the technology and policies aimed at saving us: safety-proofing doesn’t save us; we fight against it.
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According to Freud, the fear of castration (a lack) leads to a multiplication of representative genitalia: scared boys have lots of big toys (phallic stand-ins).
Mark Fisher says if we apply this logic to modernism, the multitude of object fetishes proves our disavowal of an underlying fear: modernism does not exist. We have lost it and must indulge in manufactured commodities to avoid losing faith entirely.
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Religion is false, not empirical rationality, however, it produces a different degree of outcome than the lies of self motivated, desire fulfillment.
The difference is that those who practice religion diligently (in good faith towards liberal humanist values) develop a discipline that produces virtues of honesty and compassion.
By this rationale it is not the path that you follow: even hedonism, practiced with self reflexive consideration can produce wisdom.
The commonality is to discipline your excess to achieve understanding.
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How you make a good decision must come from a process that acknowledges the realities of the world.
Since the world is not perfectly predictable, our models of reality (our truth and beliefs) must incorporate a version of unsureness (unknowing, confusion).
The more absolute a belief, the further from the truth it will guide you.
However, the inverse is not viable either: pure doubt does not lead to truth. It is the belief in truth (or fact) that allows us to judge and dismiss falsity, to understand the discord of a contradiction.
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Charlie Munger offers some great advice: you don’t have to be brilliant or clever or intelligent to get ahead long-term, just try not to mess up.
Don’t swing for the fence and miss, get base hits every day.
In this case, ego-driven badassery is bombastic stupidity, which guarantees failure.
Be nice, be basic: stupidity comes from overdoing it.
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The original liberal progressive future insisted that any traits of circumstance, race, or geography would cease to meaningfully matter: your biology and ethnicity would be interesting or compelling, but essentially “meaningless.”
Your character and humanity would matter to such a degree that traits you could not control would not control you.
Yet, seen structurally, and then post-structurally, the environment determines your/our reactions, and “proper character” is proliferated by the powerful, and others’ reaction to you shapes you. Thus your character is made by appearances and normalcy: externally, not internally, despite your vaunted subjective, phenomenal truth.
The initial argument of liberalism releases abstract logic to counter uncontrollable factors, which was circled back into dependence on uncontrollable factors (the luck of birth traits and location) as primary motivating signifiers; that is, labels rehung after a brief dream of freedom.
Dumb dependence is easier to signify, so freedom consumes itself and yet still calls itself liberal.
