Sanity Check
Just cuz you think it... doesn't mean diddly squat
Let’s tackle a few very widespread and incorrigible (yet, I try anyway) habits that routinely screw up discussions about new ideas, especially when they seem “too” new and alien to people compelled to bark like dogs at anything strange.
I write things considered by most to be radically absurd, “conspiracy theory”, fringe, incendiary stuff.
Beats insipid, conventional, boring stuff, that’s for sure.
So, I run into these habits frequently. Actually, it would be easier to count the times I don’t run into them.
Still, my would-be rebutters—at least so far, and I’d be elated if this changed—quickly find that I’ve invested more thinking, hard work, research, solid facts, and evidence supporting my “ridiculousness” into what I say than they ever imagined investing into their objections: quite a pickle to find themselves in.
I don’t focus on the controversial for perverse, character-twisted, pathological reasons, though, as many have alleged over the years—not even for the sake of my supreme abhorrence of the insipid, conventional, and boring.
Not at all.
I have found, throughout decades in professional (I.T. development and residential construction), philosophical, and religious spheres that the most interesting and pertinent solutions to problems lie in where people are afraid or even dead set against looking into. Often, thanks to our codependent/cult upbringing, education, and socialization, the real and best answers lie in the very places where we were deliberately conditioned to dare not look, where peering into those remote corners is strictly taboo.
So, that’s exactly where I go.
It’s not that I get perverse glee in violating conventions, mores, rules, prohibitions, duties, and the like. Of course I do. In a psychotic world like ours, any sane person does. But that’s not enough to make it worth the price I always end up paying.
No.
I go there for the view. It’s spectacular—not just what I discover, but also the thrill of being there alone, as it were—maybe the first, maybe not, but it always feels that way. And I go there for the answers that the view affords. They’re amazing.
I’m writing this because I’m not the only one who gets shit-walloped for putting controversial ideas and information out there. We all need a good think about what kind of social headspace we’re in when merely bringing up unpopular, disruptive ideas and information for consideration is taken as a threat. I can tell you what kind of society it is not where that vigilance against novelty, creativity, and criticism is the norm: it’s not powerful, secure, and competent.
Here are the three most common piles of pigshit[1] that get thrown at people like me in response to bringing back news of the real world which, whatever their reasons, people seem bent on denying:
Mean and Rude
This is the most common one.
Am I mean and rude? Well, yes, so I’m told.
I don’t give a shit about ego—neither yours nor mine. If it gets in the way, then the butt-hurteder the better.
Do I care if I insult someone’s little me-me-me? Of course I do. I care about you. I care about people. Even when it’s just our pitiful, silly little egos getting their butts kicked, it still hurts. I wish no one pain—unless it’s the only way to stop evildoing. But before I care, I consider the intended goal of their “that was rude—that was inappropriate” pushback.
When someone objects because I misunderstood them and responded to them in a harsh way, or implied or accused them of trickery or dishonesty when I was way off the mark, and then I misconstrue their quite fitting and appropriate pushback—it happens—of course I don’t want that.
But when it does, I can tell what the person is after from their reaction. When misunderstood, honest people don’t behave like gamesters do. Both kinds have tells. When I notice a tell that makes me wonder, I ask questions. Things get very clear, very quickly, after that. If I took an honest person the wrong way, it’s really no problem. I take it back and apologize. These mistakes, while unpleasant for a minute, are easily resolved. And, when an honest person realizes that I get it—it was my bad, my mistake, and I reject what I did—there’s never any lasting damage.
Gamesters are another story. They lean into the transgression. And then they use it as a plank to seize a pretense of advantage, as if my fuckup proves what I’ve been saying is bunk.
Why?
Well, while honest people are actually trying to understand what’s really going on and come to terms and, hopefully, arrive on the same page as those they discuss important matters with, gamesters really couldn’t give two shits about that. What matters to them is coming out on top.
Why?
Well, you know: those itty-bitty, pitiable little egos need another “win” to keep them from imploding in self-disgust.
But here’s the rub: whether it was a mistake or I just nailed a poser, a con person, a liar/shitter caught red-assed just projectile-pooping it out, as far as the discussion is concerned, it doesn’t even matter.
Why?
Because we’re not discussing each other. We’re discussing an issue, and the issue doesn’t give two toots about us, let alone our witless little egos. If we’re in it for the truth, in it for what’s good and right, then we are not the issue. We’re irrelevant to the issue.
That’s why it’s so easy to tell who’s being honest and who’s trying to game me. It’s also why I don’t worry about offending people anymore (hardly, at least—I always try to avoid it unless they’ve already taken an assholeish turn on their own part.) Honest people, even if I truly hurt their feelings, know that their feelings have no bearing on what’s really going on with the issue we’re discussing. They’re too interested in the issue to let their hurt feelings derail them. And, being honest, they recognize honesty in me. So, it’s easy for them to avoid letting my assholeishness derail them.
They are able to keep their personal issues separate from the ideas or issues we’re discussing, because they’re not discussing them for the sake of their personal issues.
Even though insults and hurt feelings can interfere with a discussion, even if it’s appropriate to say what insulted or hurt you when and how it was said, the fact that you were insulted or butt-hurt does not constitute grounds for dismissing what was said without due consideration; nor is it grounds for reframing the discussion to focus on you and how others transgressed your personal feelings and your notions of “propriety”; nor is it grounds for terminating the discussion altogether. In light of important matters, you and I just don’t matter that much.
With narcissists, though, that’s exactly what happens: the whole discussion suddenly gets teleported into me-first, me-central, and-only-me-me-me territory, and now the only thing that matters, according to them, is what was done to them (notice the codependence in that) to make them feel badly.
Of course, that’s ridiculous, even if they’re dealing with an asshole.
I’ve been at this a long time now, so I’ve had plenty of opportunities to have my assholeishness shoved back in my face. It’s not pleasant, of course, so it strongly motivated me to figure out how I went wrong and how to eliminate the causes for my “inappropriate” behavior—inappropriate as judged by me, not them. So, it doesn’t happen, now, nearly as often as it used to.
But, through the process, I learned something that I wish everyone understood.
The best way to make an impression on one of the most egotistical types known to humankind—the narcissist—is to do exactly what they say you’re wrong for doing.
The only reason I can see why people don’t already have a firm grasp on that fact is cowardice: they retreat for fear of repercussions. So, the “Grey Rock Method” was born: do the opposite of pissing off the narcissist. Do nothing. Don’t respond. Don’t react. It’s a great method when you want to avoid the unpleasant and even dangerous reactions that you can get from a narcissist that you’re vulnerable to.
The problem with it—a huge problem unless you’re a narcissist yourself?
Grey-rocking does absolutely nothing to make a dent on the narcissist. The most it can achieve is to get them to leave you alone and target someone else.
If that’s the best you’ve got in mind well, then yeah, you’re a narcissist, too. You might not have any choice about it. You might not know what else to do, and it’s better than playing right into their pigshit. You might not be capable of anything more. You might get murdered or get injured for life if you tried anything more. Being understandable doesn’t mean it’s any less egotistical, though. There’s no point dying just to make a point to someone who doesn’t give a shit in the first place. But the instant you pretend it’s not a weakness, not a failure, and defend it as the best that could be done—or worse, transmute it into the delusion of a strength, a virtue—is the instant you embrace narcissism.
To me, that’s all the cheap shit paranoia of the uninitiated. If you had engaged with narcissists for the purpose of finding how to put them down (instead of just save your own ass), you’d already know: these are impaired people. Why else would they use violence to make up for their stupidity and gross incompetence? Their intelligence, imagination, and capabilities are impaired, because their psychological development was stunted. You can even estimate when the traumas happened that petrified them psychologically. Just figure: for which age would their expressed thinking and behavior be age-appropriate? Then, ask them what awful things happened to them around ____ or ____ years old. Take a step back, though, out of range of the worst of the blowup you just triggered.
I’ve rocked and rolled with the worst of them (short of a literal knife to my throat or gun to my head) and learned that, at their scariest and most awful, they’ve got fuckall. If the guy’s 300 lbs. with a history of violence, sure—I’ll keep my distance—but I won’t keep silent. And, if it becomes necessary and I see no other way to stop his aggression, I’ll make a weapon of my body and anything I can grab and fucking bash the shithole for all I’m worth.
Why? Because I’m out to be somebody, make a name for myself, prove a point, or because I get kicks from bashing shitholes?
Hell no: it’s simply because I’m not concerned solely with myself. I have grown children, and they have children, and one day those will probably have children, too.
I care about them.
So, I’ll be buggered and damned if I’ll leave any more room for stupid, aggressive, evil, violent people that don’t give a shit about harming them—or worse, that give huge shits about making sure they harm them and others.
Fuck them.
I only wish there were more people in the world who reject their own egotism and say, “Fuck them,” too.
Regardless, narcissists aren’t free to just go find some other victim when they realize that they can’t get it over on me, not as far as I have anything to do about it, whether now or in the future. So, I cut them no slack, anywhere, ever.
I’ve had people roll their eyes at me as if I’m making mountains out of molehills. What difference does it make if I or you shut down some narcissistic pissant here or there?
It makes some difference, of course—but what are they really saying with that? Are they saying that it ultimately makes no difference at all? Bullshit. Of course it does.
When it comes to anything else, they’re happy to talk about the ripples moving ever-outward from a pebble tossed into a pond, the “butterfly effect”, “six degrees of separation”, and how we’re all ultimately interconnected. As long as it’s not about the effects of what we do. Oh no, our actions make no ultimate difference. Our effects on others don’t amount to cotton balls or marshmallows against a battleship.
That’s their infantilism, their codependence[2] talking.
My message to hypocritical idiots like that: Shit or get off the pot. You can’t have it both ways.
Emotional honesty—of which the supposedly “powerful” are the most terrified of all—taught me the power of true disruption: the disruption of the subtext and presumptions and unspoken taboos and all the other occult nonsense you’re supposed to silently acknowledge and defer to; all the invisible lines that you didn’t know were drawn until you got punished for crossing them; all the elephants in rooms where you are wrong, the malicious one, the violent one for refusing to play the dipshit “I’m a blind, ignorant fool that doesn’t see” game but insist on pointing them out and demand that others look, see, and admit they’re there, ready to sit on them.
So, my rudeness, “hurtful” and “offensive” and “harmful” ideas and delivery, my “hatred”—actually, what vile polemical sin have I not been accused of?—has become a conscious, deliberate, and narrowly directed tool to target evil, and evil alone.
I want the best for all of us, together.
Narcissists and cultists want the opposite.
Those are facts.
What is the first thing a narcissist does —which necessarily means a liar, a bullshitter, a pigshitter does—when you expose their BS? They accuse you of wanting to hurt them, harm them, insult them, put them down, malign them, on and on and on… They take it personally and make it personal. They sprinkle magic hellspawn poor-little-me powder around them and, Voilà! Instant victim—and me, the violator.
Why?
It’s not only a pernicious ploy. It’s sincere in that they actually feel victimized.
But why?
Because they united themself with whatever evil or stupidity or dipshittiness or pigshit you just exposed. In their own minds, there is no separation, no distance in between, no difference. “Attack” their idea (their pigshit) and you attack them. Attack them and you attack everything they stand for.
They’re all like little Fauci’s: they are the science—or whatever balderdash they’re trying to front. Controverting either makes you the culprit.
It’s pretty funny, yet sad.
A lot of people fall for this malignant malicho. I did most of my life. We fall for it because we don’t want to transgress—but we also don’t want to end up looking like stone-hearted, callous idiots, and that’s the hook. They play on our care and turn it against us.
As soon as I realized this, I was freed from the “hook”, because there is no hook. It’s a gambit. Honest people whose feelings get hurt often don’t even let you know that you hurt them. And, if they do, they don’t speak to you like they judged you in absentia in some secret court you didn’t know had been held.
Why?
Because honest people honestly want things to be good between them and others. So, when their feelings get hurt, they’re looking for resolution that keeps us together.
Narcissists are like Skibidi Toilets…
… whose only interest is to waste you. They aren’t looking for any resolution at all, not unless it’s one that means they win, you lose.
Once I saw this, I realized I don’t need to listen to what narcissist say, period, let alone understand it, because no matter what they say, it serves some bullshit goal using bullshit means.
Bottom line, if failing to comply with your unspoken rules (like those below) buried in the subtext of your opining throws you for a loop, derails you, and “makes the violation itself the topic of conversation instead of the actual subject at hand” as far as you’re concerned—then I am happy to derail you. I’m glad to do it. I consider it a duty.
I’ll grab the popcorn and egg you on as I enjoy your spectacle of self-demolition.
Fools know everything
Probably the second worst habit I’m so very tired of running into is reflected in this proverb:
Herbert Spencer put it differently:
People who do this are, by their own demonstrated admission—although never by articulated admission—fools.
And here is the antidote (link in caption and here):
So simple that even children do it. So do honest adults. Codependents? Rarely. Narcissists? Never.
Until you can reflect a person’s thinking back to them and satisfy them that you understand them, you literally do not know what the fuck you’re disagreeing with, objecting to, or arguing about. You’re full of it, pretending to know what you definitely do not know. But what the hell? You don’t give a shit about that, anyway. All fools care about is compensating for their dire inner sense of inferiority.
Our bad for expecting more of them.
To a sword, everything’s an enemy
This one is the most interesting, and it gets right to the meat, if not the heart, of the basic problem that turns “public discourse” into dialogs of the deaf. It’s gotten very clear to me in just the last year or two.
On this point, John Cleese has no rival. Listen to him, it’s short (link in caption and here):
I can just hear it now: “But that’s what you do!”
Not at all. Anyone using that illogic needs to explain how, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” means, therefore, that there are no such things as real nails. Or why, when a hammer pounds a nail, it proves the hammer was delusional. Or why, when a real nail gets pounded, it’s the hammer’s fault.
I’m not a sword, and I’m not a hammer; but I have both, and I use them.
Here’s the difference between “enemy” paranoids and honest, sane people calling out evil people: the honest, sane people are not agents for anything or anyone other than themselves. In other words, they’re not cultists.
What do capitalists, socialists, Marxists, communists, anarchists, statists, nationalists, globalists, empiricists, rationalists—and any other fucking “-ist” you name from whichever field it hails—have in common? Exactly in common?
They are all agents for an ideology they’ve glommed onto.
It doesn’t matter what it is or how it is or what happened to make them glom onto it: the psychology of glomming is exactly the same, regardless.
The glomming is the cultism.
An honest person has glommed onto the only thing that’s ever worth glomming onto: whatever the fuck is really going on.
That’s the difference between the enemy-paranoid and honest people dealing with evil people.[3]
But even that’s not quite accurate, because honest people don’t see others as enemies at all. They’re not more interested in the narrative that someone has glommed onto than they’re interested in the person who felt they had no choice but to glom onto something. Whether it’s a very, very special “leader” or the ideas of a very, very special “genius”, the glomming and the existential need to glom are exactly the same.
Here’s how you tell that there’s no difference between someone who has glommed onto a cult leader and someone who has glommed onto an ideology iconized by its conceivers: both types hang images everywhere and erect statues and monuments to their idols, their would-be gods, and they do it for the same reasons.
I don’t care if it’s Castro or Kennedy, Marxism or democracy, Stalin or Mussolini, communism or fascism, Rockefeller or Morgan or Debs, monopolistic capitalism vs. consolidationist capitalism vs. socialism, Crowley or the Pope, Satanism or Christianity, Mao or the Dalai Lama, teachings of the “Little Red Book” or Tibetan Buddhism, the “Land of Lion and Sun” or “Little Satan” or “Great Satan”—there’s no psychological difference between idolizing a devil or a saint, an evil person or a good one. Idolizing is idolization. Idolatry is idolization. Worshiping people as gods is insane no matter who the cultist is or who their chosen cult leader is or what their ideology and teachings might be.
Cultism—the psychology of cultists, both followers and “leaders”—constitute cults, not the object (“leader” or ideology/beliefs) of the cultism.
For fucking sure, I don’t idolize anything or anyone: not even “God”. No honest person does that. No actualized person operating in their own agency—not the agency of some “authority”—does that. I used to be a cultist, but that’s over and gone. I used to be one of the glommed, but I cut the umbilical for good over 30 years ago. Actually, it was never fully attached, so I just yanked that fucker out.
I approach new people and ideas as a credicist[4]. This wasn’t an arbitrary choice or accident, it’s a well-studied, fully experimented and tested alternative to skepticism that is by far superior to both skepticism and “critical thinking”. (Not to mention that it’s way easier and involves far less work! 😁)
My credicism encourages people to open up and be honest. I really want to hear what they have to say… until I don’t, that is. What triggers my rejection of what they’re telling me? It’s not my skepticism, because skepticism applies only when there’s room for doubt. I let a person fully express themselves until they raise doubts by contradicting themselves or begging questions about whether they’re giving me an honest report, bullshit, or pigshit. At that point, I don’t jump to preconceived conclusions—I ask questions.
Asking honest questions and accepting the answers is the heart of credicism. It’s not my fault if a person says something that made no sense, contradicted something else they said, or just begs for investigation. If they’re honest, they’ll happily enlighten me. I keep asking honest questions about their glitches and mine, too, as long as any remain. Either they explain themselves satisfactorily, which is something that honest people are more than happy to do, or they grow more and more agitated because they have no explanation to give, since no one has expected them to give one before, so they never thought to make one up.
And, unlike skepticism, credicism is safe. If I misunderstood, asking questions will reveal what they meant. If they made a mistake and called “up” for “down” or “is” for “isn’t”, no harm, no foul. We’ll get it clarified as long as we are both being honest.
So, I have absolutely no reason to see anyone as an enemy.
And I don’t.
Credicism, however, has taught me something that a lot of goody-two-shoes hypocrites refuse to learn:
If someone tells you that you are their enemy, take them at their word.
Furthermore, accommodate them. They are paranoid enough to be delusional enough to treat an honest, well-meaning person who wants nothing but the best for them as if that person were malevolent or evil. Well, then, you don’t have much choice if you want to be understood.
Be their enemy.
Overcome them.
Beat them.
Stop them.
Enemies are what they want.
In a violator’s mind, there is no difference between failing to support their crimes and being their enemy. None.
This is something that “justice warriors” have never understood. It’s also why they post little threat to those they “protest”, “resist”, or “oppose”, and why they come across so obnoxiously… well… hypocritical. In the very act of resisting or opposing violators, they deny that resistance and opposition mean enmity—especially to the violators they stand against. They reject it: “No, we’re not your enemies! We appeal to you as reasonable people and, hopefully, potential friends!” .
You might as well speak to a brick wall, for all you’re going to convey to a violator that way. How can anyone be this clueless? Well, there’s an answer to that question: cultists can.
Violators, at any rate, aren’t similarly deluded. They see right through that, “Look at me! Look at me, God!” shit.
If someone has decided that you’re their enemy, you can try to convince them that they’re wrong—but I’ve got copious experience with that. It almost never works, simply due to the nature of paranoid delusion. If you succeed, wonderful!
Otherwise, here’s why you’re stuck with playing the part:
The person has made clear that you are their enemy. To contradict that perception, as if you know what they’re seeing better than they do, as if your judgment is better than theirs is, etc., is to gaslight them. It’s a violation. You know this well when someone does it to you: telling you what’s really in your mind, what you really meant, what you really experienced, what you really saw, heard, felt, etc. Of course, when it comes to matters about you, you are the expert, you are the authority, you are right about yourself. But that in no way means, when you force what you know on someone who sees you differently, that you aren’t violating them.
If you are unable to grasp that difference, then it’s most likely because you’re stuck in your fantasy of living in enemy territory with a sword in your hand, just itching to swing it. I can tell you, having lived what I’m talking about for almost 15 years now—ever since I started experimenting with “radical honesty”—that the “battlefield” looks completely different to me now than it did when I was delusionally paranoid. Which, I’m sure, means it looks completely different to me than it does to you who see enemies all around you.
NOTES
[1] Lies, bullshit, and pigshit
Lies: deliberate misrepresentations of what’s really going on
Bullshit: information presented as true when in fact the bullshitter not only has no clue if it’s true, they don’t even give a fuck—as long as it elicits the desired response.
Pigshit: similar to bullshit, with an important difference. Bulls do not enjoy rolling around in their own shit. Bullshit is a tool, used for a purpose. Pigs, however, totally get off on rolling around in their own shit. In fact, it seems to be their primary purpose for shitting the stuff out in the first place.
[2] Codependence
The problem with our current understanding of codependence isn’t that it’s wrong. It’s on the right track—it’s just too superficial. Codependence refers to the dysfunctional relationships that infantiles form with each other—an infantile, of course, being an adult the behaves as if they were an infant that’s existentially dependent on others.
Anyone can argue that all of us are existentially dependent on each other—easy one, that. But the argument is wholly beside the point. Infantilism has nothing to do with an “objective”, rational assessment of our mutual existential dependence on each other. That’s just an argument people use to justify their infantilism. Infantilism is utterly irrational. It leads to psychosis. There is no rationalizing it. An adult simply is not justified in comporting themself as an infant that will die unless others take care of it.
That, “I’m going to die!” freakout, no matter how well disguised behind the face paint of sophistication, is the indisputable tell of codependence. A self-actualized, functionally independent person in full possession and use of their own agency—the capacity to act intentionally, make choices, and exert control over one's actions and environment—does not call the sky “falling” when things don’t go their way or when others let them down or betray them. They feel their infantilism, but they don’t let it define or control them, and they overcome it. Their response to calamity is: I’ll find a way and I’ll figure it out: I can.
Not: I can’t, won’t manage it even if I try, and never will unless someone _________ for me.
[3] Evil
evil : deliberate actions intended to harm.
Evil is constituted by the intended effects of the deliberate actions a person takes. If harm was their intention, even if they failed to inflict it, their actions were evil.
Evildoers are, of course, people who do evil. Mere evildoing does not make anyone an evil person. They might do evil for a variety of reasons. They might regret doing evil and swear off.
Or, they might enjoy doing evil, get a kick out of it, or even love it. If so, and especially if they’re committed to evildoing as a standard or preferred mode of operation, that makes them evil people.
That’s not a “judgment”. That’s their own self-identification consisting of their own voluntary, intentional, deliberate actions.
[4] Skepticism vs. credicism
Skepticism is the unwillingness to accept new information of unknown reliability until there is good reason to accept it—a default attitude of initial, provisional distrust.
Credicism is the willingness to accept new information of unknown reliability unless there is good reason to not accept it—a default attitude of initial, provisional trust.
Here’s a chat with ChatGPT where I introduce it to credicism:
My Chat with ChatGPT about skepticism and credicism
(You’ll see that I inadvertently used “believe” in the convo instead of “accept”. I originally wrote those definitions before I did my work on the nature of truth and belief. I’ve updated them to “accept”, now.)
