#155: How to be delusional
Applying universal logic gives our experiences a certain weight and our lives a certain order. I assume this is why we’re so drawn to recasting our life stories into tidy narratives and lessons to be shared with others. But in doing this we risk underestimating chaos, nuance, idiosyncrasy, and the occasional dose of self-delusion. I’m certain I’ve
... See moreWhy Our Belief Systems Create Misperceptions- Published in The European, Nov 2014
Rivahardtowrite.com
We organise much of our lives around reassuring ourselves about the accuracy of the hallucinated model world inside our skulls.
Will Storr • The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better
There are infinite quotidian human experiences ripe for interpreting: putting off housework, caring about who I sit next to at a dinner party, struggling to get dressed. They stack up every day. I’m particularly fond of using them to draw ungenerous conclusions: I’m shallow, selfish, lazy, dishonest. I’ve trained myself away from defending my goodn... See more
#180: Against Self-Analysis
When we presume to lie for the benefit of others, we have decided that we are the best judges of how much they should understand about their own lives—about how they appear, their reputations, or their prospects in the world.