10/14/24 There a lot of difficult things in life. Extreme sports, public speaking, waking up in the morning.. the list goes on. Among the most difficult things is admitting you're wrong. Maybe it's human nature: a need to always be correct about your worldview. Or, maybe, it's a social thing: being wrong makes you lesser than your peers, if only in the moment. Maybe a little of column A and B? Or maybe *I'm* wrong on both accounts. I just know that, at least for me, admitting I'm wrong about something is one of the most difficult things that I do every day. I don't think it's a profound statement to say this is a shared thing among, at least, most of the rest of us. It requires re-evaluating your assumptions and views and understanding that what you previously knew to be true is no longer the case- and then making the choice to accept this new truth counter to your beliefs seconds or minutes ago. And *then* you get to tell people you previously "lied" to that you were incorrect. It's exhausting, especially when you're doing it often. And, let's face it, if you're doing any sort of knowledge-based work you're probably doing it often. The easier and safer thing is to reject this new piece of information with any sort of logic that you can. It may not be *right*, but it sure is a lot kinder to the soul for a short time. Especially when you desperately need things to be simple and not your fault. > [!warning]- TW > From this point on, although I won't be mentioning it specifically, it'll be fairly obvious that I'm talking about current US politics. The problem really starts to show when you keep rejecting this new information because it doesn't fit your worldview. Slowly, over time, your understanding of things drifts from reality and, months or years later, you find yourself in a position where you need to find some way to reject or deflect almost everything in order to keep your ideas of the world contained inside their snowglobe without being broken or contaminated by complications like the real world. A simple scene that never changes. I get it. I really do. As I mentioned earlier, learning new things counter to your previous beliefs is difficult. I *still* don't understand the idea of someone taking on a new name or identity halfway through their life. What I do understand, however, is respecting someone enough to acknowledge their desire to be called by a new name. The thing I learned, here, is that I'll never fully understand everything and that's okay as long as I know that I *lack the understanding* and that respecting someone means compensating for that deficiency. Sometimes people recognize this in themselves, and sometimes they can empathize with others enough that they recognize this same trouble in them. What comes next depends on what you do with that knowledge. For example, if you tell someone that, yes, their idealized, simplified version of reality is the truth and that they're being lied to by everyone else.. Well, confirmation bias kicks in and accepting your words is much easier than poking holes in their own crystal palace. If you tell that same person that the problem isn't them- that there is an "other" that is causing all of their problems, they'll be grateful to you for pointing that out. For acknowledging their beliefs and helping them solidify their defense against what they're certain, now, is the *real* issue. It would be *so simple* to build your own little version of reality. The world is endlessly complex and everything from technology to communities change so often. I mean, we all do this anyway, even unintentionally. We can't know everything at every second and we can't empathize with everyone even if we could. We have to build our own worldview shaped by what we've seen and experienced. It would be impossible to do anything else. All we would have to do is lock in that worldview and assume that nothing changes and that we know everything we need to know already. It all sounds nice and simple. Everyone loves simple. Simple is easy. Simple allows us to focus on important issues and our daily routine, and lets us direct our anger towards "the other" - who is never the same "other" as yesterday but that doesn't really matter because it was never the point. The point is that the world never changes and that if anything is wrong it's not our fault. It's that everything really is easier than what everyone else makes it out to be. The solutions are simple: It's always "the other"'s fault and if we just got rid of "the other" everything would be fine. It really would be so easy, wouldn't it? To stay so safe and warm in your snowglobe. Maybe that's just people being human.