Can I post some dating profile self-delusions under this topic?
“Real women have curves” (love me: love my hypertension and diabetes)
“I value trust and commitment” (I’ve dumped a dozen guys this year, and I’ll keep doing it until I find the right jellyfish)
“I’m a successful man who’d be a good match for a woman who takes care of herself” (I make too much money to settle for a fat chick)
“I put my faith in The Lord first” (I’m bringing my Bible to all our arguments)
The only moral abortion is my abortion- sums it up perfectly.
Once again, I must note that almost NOBODY here is posting “myths” that THEY believe in.
Why not? Are we to believe that SDMB regulars are strong, logical, rational and well-grounded? That it’s only those OTHER clowns out there who need comforting lies to get through the day?
I always tell myself: “Everything is going to turn out okay.” While in reality, I really have no fucking clue.
If you believe in it, you wouldn’t think it was a myth, would you?
l frequently tell myself that I’m nice enough, smart enough, and strong enough to do what I need to do. If I didn’t believe these things, I’d probably be stuck in bed, completely immobilized by self-doubt.
Whether or not this is an untruth, I don’t know. But I’ve decided being a little delusional in this regard is better than being a useless wimp.
We can tell ourselves the myth while simultaneously fearing that deep down it’s not true. You don’t know what the people who post do or don’t believe.
But you might believe that you do.
Roll your eyes at me?
Except the plain truth is that poverty and suffering doesn’t turn people into complete bastards. Therefore, the notion that all it takes is a disaster or upheaval, and we’d all tear each other apart is not supported by the facts.
People in poor countries treat each other decently and take care of their neighbors and families. People in disasters don’t push each other off the cliff, they help each other. Even in mobs where people get trampled it’s not that people are panicking and obliviously crushing each other underfoot, it’s that people in the back are trying to get out of danger and don’t know that we way ahead is blocked.
It isn’t civilization that makes us nice to our neighbors and friends and family and fellow citizens, it’s human nature.
I’ll capitulate after reading BrainGlutton’s link.
But you trying to make my post an attack on poor people was beyond stupid.
When I first learned about Freudian ego defenses I saw several delusions I engaged in daily. I still do.
Part of the problem is that people (you and I included) lack introspection. If I knew what I believed wasn’t true I wouldn’t believe it like it was true.
i may lie to those I love but I am deep down an honest person.
Not as much a myth as deliberate cognitive dissonance.
I actually believe that most people are good. I also believe that good people in bad circumstances can and do sometimes act poorly. I believe that desperate people will act in desperation even though they are essentially good people. I also believe that there are some bad, nasty people who act bad and nasty whenever they can get away with it.
So, basically I go thru life with rose colored glasses on. I expect people to be good, but accept that some are not.
Crime doesn’t pay
I don’t think you were attacking poor people. I was showing that since, as you knew, poor people and people who live outside of state-level authority aren’t complete bastards, the idea that we’d be complete bastards if we lost our wealth or state-level authority broke down is not supportable.
Yes, humans are bastards. But it isn’t poverty that makes us bastards. We just are.
Most of the “moral values” or core ethical concepts or abstract constructs we strive towards or pay lip service to are essentially made up. Honour. Justice or Retribution. Freedom. Fairness. Ultimately none of it a) exists and b) matters. But we pretend they do, because… because otherwise, what’s the point ?
Or even more fundamental stuff, like money or private property. There is nothing whatsoever that makes my wallet MY wallet. Nothing quantifiable or observable, outside of the consensually admitted fact that it’s in my pocket ; I ran through the (mutually agreed) hoops that socially tagged it as mine in perpetuity (and could even prove it if *anybody *kept their proofs of purchase :)) ; and if you want to take it away from me not only will I punch you in the face but most everybody who is not you will agree with my decision to punch you in the face and opine it to be justified. Cuz yer a no-good thieving basterd, you.
But that’s just bullshit, when it comes right down to it, innit ? It’s collective make-believe. “Let’s Pretend this stuff is mine, ok ? Then I’ll pretend *that *shit is yours”.
Then you get to the really existential ones : I’d add “Life is worth living” to the pile. Which is a roundabout way of saying that it is better to have been born and experience life than it is to never have, because the human condition is fundamentally enjoyable and worth re-producing.
Yeah, no, not really it’s not, when you math it all down. There’s cool bits in the average human’s life, lots even if they’re lucky. But a lot more of it will always be dreadfully boring, when it’s not plain dreadful. All of it alone. And then you die, also always alone. Cheers !
But, again, we gotta believe it or re-assure each other that this is all worth going through, otherwise what’s the point ?
Good points but I disagree with the first point. Retribution, fairness, honor, etc. are moral impulses built in us as social animals to keep the social organism functioning and increase our value to it. I don’t think those are made up, those are built into our psyche.
(bolding mine)
Right, exactly. We *feel *them to be real/necessary and *want *to enforce them ; both collectively and individually (and, for my money, we actually *teach *each other that - it’s not built in. 4-year-olds are my cite :p).
But since it’s observably true that a completely un-just and unfair society works perfectly fine (see: Saudi Arabia. Or, well, any country where some people are born to riches and some are emphatically not, when it comes right down to it), then we cannot but agree that it doesn’t ultimately matter overly much. We just get on with getting on. You get used to it.
And from a less anthropocentric angle, well, dolphin pods don’t seem to exhibit much honour when they’re dogpiling a shark 15-on-one ; and ants who don’t ever get to rail a juicy female don’t stop to complain that it’s unfair. Their societies and packs also work fine, arguably better than ours in the case of ants (who are the *real *owners of planet Earth - the mice are just as deluded as us :)). Elsewhere a planetoid is shackled by gravity to a star that’s about to go supernova, and every living thing on it is going to be vaporized, for no reason. Just bad luck and cold-hearted physics. Sucks to be them.
So there’s no Justice intrinsic to the Universe. *We *try to inject some into it and correct that (to us) fundamental problem. Which is kind of insane, when you think about it.
And also, probably, unjust in practice ! Consider : that guy earlier who tried to take my wallet - he gets to spend the next X months locked up for his trouble.
But nobody will ever get punished for the various circumstances and impulses that coalesced into his decision to try and jack my shit - his estranged (or thieving) dad, the possible peer pressure and those who wittingly or unwittingly applied it, the guy who brewed the beer that led him to the notion that it was going to be a good idea to jack my wallet, the brain chemistry that prevented him from either feeling empathy for wallet-less me or controlling his own selfish impulses… nope. We’d rather think it’s all on that there thievin’ bastard. Simpler that way.
By creating a social paradigm where a proven thief gets punished in one way or another for his punctual act of thievery, we convince ourselves that we’ve thrown our social apparatus back on track and made it more intrinsically just (and thus presumably more functional, or just intrinsically better Because), but it’s really more symbolic than anything. Or at the very least, what “justice” we’ve decided to apply is very narrowly focused and arbitrary. The rest, well, we have to invent God to deal with. Too complicated, too big.
Plus I’d like my frakking wallet back.
And sure, it all has a very practical aspect, namely : that thief won’t be thievin’ for a while. Which, if we posit that private property is valuable as a social construct, is a net positive to the group (and obviously we mostly do… but isn’t it because that’s the set of made-up rules we know how to live by and behave “right” with, at the moment ?).
But that’s neither here nor there wrt Justice with a J, is it ?
Not necessarily. I consider myself to be honest, but plenty of times I have to tell little lies to spare people’s feelings. I recently spent a week with a friend and her family, staying in their home. They were really kind to me, and I was humbled, really, but also glad when the week was up.
When asked if I’d enjoyed my time there, what I am to say? That I take the 5th?
For the OP, there were a couple of threads on suicide recently, and I think lines like “Suicide is the coward’s way out” fit the bill. Just meant to dissuade you from going there mentally.
That’s quite the wallet story. I think it’s interesting how you are able to rationalize all of the factors that may have led to the thief taking your wallet even though only one guy gets the punishment. I wonder if it works in much the same way when the thief is the government itself who takes your tax money and spends it quite lavishly, or the banks who take bailout money to pay their CEO’s record bonuses? Does the punishment depend on the size of the thief? Or perhaps the rationalizations involved?
Well, theoretically speaking the difference is that I implicitly allow the government to do so by being part of society. Even if I never formally agreed to it, and may or may not object to what the government does after it puts its tentacle in my pocket.
All of this if factually moot, since I ain’t actually earn enough to pay taxes :}
That being said, I’m not quite sure what your point is, or where rationalization comes into play for that matter. That word ? I don’t think it means what you think it means :o.