Hypothetical Dichotomous World-View

Suppose with me for a moment. Let's pretend we can break humanity down in a relatively simplistic manner.

There are two types of people in the world.

There are those who can't really trust others, and those who can't really trust themselves.

First of all, this comes off as pretty cynical. Not a single person on Earth trusts both themselves and other people? And there's not a single person who really just trusts nobody?

Well obviously there's a qualification here.  The people who can't trust themselves don't just blindly trust everyone around them.  You're always going to have people in your life whom you can't trust, no matter who you are.

The people who can't trust themselves trust *easier*.  They don't find it hard to let go and rely on other people.

The people who don't trust others tend to do a little more shunning and pushing away of others.  Then they end up facing their problems alone; the problems that led them to push others away. 

The people who don't trust themselves  don't have the same problem. They don't doubt that there are people there to catch them if they fall back; their problem is that they don't trust themselves to handle things on their own.

Now here's something I have written down in my notebook; I'm going to try to rationalize it:

Those who appear outwardly confident are usually one of the latter (those who can't trust themselves).

If you trust others easily and don't worry about what people around you do, that lets you be a little more confident and certain about how things are going to go when you're out and about.  That's because your real crises are not out and about; your crises are internal.  On the inside is where you're struggling and pushing, so you spend your time outside with other people.

If you trust yourself but not others, then your real conflicts will manifest themselves more often externally.  Your crises will appear in your relationships with the people around you.  You spend more time on the inside, because it's nice there.  Of course you've still got internal problems to work out, but it's better than being outside where you're struggling and pushing against the people around you.

Naturally, as with any attempt at dividing and defining humanity, more holes are going to appear the more you describe and detail.  So I will re-abstract and make a tentative conclusion:

Truly trusting and truly self-confident are mutually exclusive qualities.





Happy moment: I got to say dichotomous!


(This post came out of a hastily scribbled paragraph in the notebook I used for just such things this last summer. I think the thought itself appeared on a late night weekend drive between Agape and Raleigh; Probability suggests that Vampire Weekend was playing loudly in the background.)

Introductory Post; Huzzah!

Why do I try to make everything ridiculously over-philosophical?  I feel like every time someone says something remotely random or off-kilter I grab onto it and try to make it a blandly prophetic statement about life or religion.  Sometimes I come up with some pretty profound stuff, but I do it almost obsessively. 

Am I trying to impress people? 

Do I honestly just enjoy it?  

Whenever I’m not trying to make things deep and poetic and resonant, I’m trying to make them funny.  I try to make everything into a joke, with differing levels of success.  If I’m feeling creative and enthusiastic, it’ll work out great and I’ll come up with a lot hilarious stuff.  If I’m not, then I spend hours looking at a sentence trying to come up with the perfect weird phrase that would make it comedic gold.  Then it looks bland and it’s obvious I’m trying too hard.  

But where is the line?  

Am I always trying to impress people, but I happen to enjoy it too?  It could be that I only do it well when I’m enjoying it and it flows, and that I only struggle and try too hard when I’m trying to make myself look good.  

But aren’t I always trying to make myself look good? 

I evaluate how well I’m doing by the reactions of the people around me, so doesn’t that mean the entire thing is just a deeply arrogant, ego-inflating exercise?  Maybe I enjoy it solely because of the attention?  

That’s depressing. 

But isn’t that what art is about?  

You try to make something beautiful, but beauty exists only as a product of people’s perceptions.  You want people to perceive it, to find the beauty and make it real.  Some artists may not care if the people recognize the creator behind the art, but aren’t they still looking for the reaction of the observer?  Is there really such a thing as art for the sake of art?  Isn’t there always an audience, even if it’s nowhere else but in the mind of the artist? 

 Here’s another thought:  maybe I’m just deflecting.  I don’t really have anything significant to say about anything really real, so I say funny and deep things.  Maybe I don’t really know myself well enough to say anything really significant about myself or what I think.  Maybe I know myself but I’m afraid to talk about myself so I philosophize and joke around in a detached way about unnecessary things, hoping that little bits of “me” will get filtered in there and find their way to a real person in spite of all the bullshit.

Whoops – there I go again.

That said, I'm going to be using this space to do some random unnecessary philosophizing.  Then we will look back on it and reflect and see if anything especially interesting or insightful happened.  Then I shall expound upon it. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Ad nauseam.

Huh. Apparently Google doesn't recognize Latin.  Let us scoff pretentiously together at Google.

*scoff scoff scoff*

(This post came out of a Creative Writing exercise involving asking questions about myself and the world around me)