Self-deception must be fought

Humans need to belong, so we’ve created many myths to sustain social cohesion and moral community. We of the knowledge class have our own myths: that equality is desirable and possible, that hierarchy is evil, and that some knowledge is too dangerous. We’ve narrowed the bounds of acceptable knowledge to only that which makes us comfortable.

I thought competition was fair (I know, silly), and that people mostly wanted to know the truth. I was wrong. The competition for dwindling resources in our society is rigged by people who have forgotten how to do difficult things. We’ve decided that if we can’t win the competition through discipline, the rules should be changed. All around us, it feels as though nothing is remotely just. But the answer isn’t ideology — we must acquire the discipline to achieve mastery of something in our short time on this planet.

We must also stop self-deceiving and accept certain uncomfortable truths that explain why we lost the competition. Maybe it was that we are undisciplined, or that we don’t have the natural ability. Blaming others landed me in a deep hole of depression, and I clawed my way out. I want to show you that a better life is possible.

We throw around ‘authenticity’, but how many of us are actually living authentically? Because doing so would bring the trade-off that we may not be well-liked. So most of us choose to be liked, while telling ourselves myths to explain why our lives didn’t turn out as we expected.

But you don’t have to live like this.