Strangely Naked

Everybody overestimates themselves. We all think we are better than we are. Too many people believe their own personal narrative no matter how flawed or fictional. For example, I thought I had a premise when I started writing this, but I overestimated my ability to pull cohesive thoughts out of my atrophying, depraved, addled  cerebrum.

There are a giant swath of people who are confident that in a time of great crisis that they will be the one to rise above the fray and survive or defeat the evil. In the gun control debate, the mantra arrises, “a bad guy with a gun can only be defeated by a good guy with a gun,” despite evidence to the contrary (there have been mass shootings at military bases, don’t tell me that you, weekend warrior, will be the one to be clear headed enough to stop a rampage in the midst of chaos to which you are completely unfamiliar). There are people who actively hope for a zombie apocalypse because they think they will be adept enough to fight off the undead. But they forget that they’ll probably have to stop and poop and that’s when a zombie will play peekaboo and bite them.

There are several studies that prove that memory is fallible and malleable. Our brains are not to be trusted. Our brains are constantly lying to us, telling us we saw something we didn’t, twisting what we think about ourselves, filling us with unnecessary fears and doubts of phantom threats. People drink and do other drugs to silence the ever-petulant vitriol polluting their every thought. Not me, of course, but, you know, “people.”

Witness testimony, personal recollections, personal narratives, they’re all incredibly fallible. Yet we rely on people’s personal recollections, contrary to evidence. It’s astounding to me that people will continuously point to the testimony of other people as though it’s perfectly acceptable as incontrovertible truth.

But what else do we have? How can I trust anything that is conjured out of my feeble, decaying grey matter? And is it “grey” or “gray?” There’s objective evidence (despite that even being rejected by some people whose brains won’t allow them to accept the reality of truth), but objective truth is difficult to find and sometimes just difficult to accept. If I’m being candid, this whole post is a my way of condemning my grotesque thought process. But I don’t know if my thinking that with reason and rationality or if my brain is once again trying to attack me like a drunk, sexually frustrated monkey with a knife.