Not seeing reality as it really is, can be quite soothing. For example: Religion. Sure, it’s nice and comforting to think that life has a purpose, and that after we’ve kicked the can, we are all going to some strange magical fairyland, in which beer is cheap and angels are willing. To think of our loved ones as immortal and watchful over us, as we fondle our new sex-partner(s), is also probably very stimulating, especially for exhibitionists. But the nagging feeling of it all being a lie somehow can’t escape ones mind. Doubts manifest and influence us, most likely fueled by previous experiences, in which our lack of circumspect thinking and blindness led to serious issues, which took significant time and effort to resolve, or perhaps are not resolved at all; Facts we are reminded of every time we feel our backpain and/or cough up blood, right after we’ve lit another one.
Humans hate being lied to by other human beings, yet lying to oneself really isn’t such a big deal. Sure, I always think that eating three day old pizza will not impact me because of my superior immune-system, yet these pretenses are dispelled as early as the next time I sit on the pot. But since I’m the one at fault, and blaming myself is tiring (and due to my superiority unnecessary), I simply disregard the previous experience. Thinking about this I am always reminded of “The Simpsons”; In one episode Lisa compares her brother to a lab rat by setting a piece of food under voltage. The lab rat, after it is shocked the first time, sits in its corner, scared to death, never to touch the food again, while Lisa’s brother simply ignores the constant shocks over and over again, trying to get the food at any price. Perhaps rats are superior to humans in this regard, Pinky and Brain would surely agree.
But pretense is not only found in religion, it is also inherent in the culture we live in, our hobbies, and the products we consume. Look at the “losing” console-owners of any generation, trying to defend their pricey and yet so mediocre purchases. Sure, in some years the console may be good, it might make toast and washes laundry, yes in some years this and that might happen. But what about now, what about what we actually want? Why are people defending a console, which is objectively in the dumps, and urging others to buy a failure themselves. Simply because they are unable to admit to themselves, that they have wasted a large quantity of cash and time on a thing they don’t even enjoy. They made a mistake, but are unable to admit it. They want others to buy the aforementioned product themselves, because they want other mental-patients to join them in their assault on logic. Having a bad grade when everyone else has failed isn’t as heart-breaking after all.
Just like priests trying to justify where all the fossils came from, people making mistakes have to build up a huge house of justifications and/or relativizations, to actually skew their mistake in such a way, so that the mistake becomes just, or is even not a mistake at all – Their actions are actually “right”! Making mistakes and recognizing them as such is what keeps one from touching the food a second time, in order to avoid being shocked again. All other cases lead to a heart attack… or permanent brain damage. The latter also leads to the former.
