Something that fascinates me is the tension that exists between what people do, and what people think they are doing. Or to put it another way, the dichotomy between what happens to people in their lives, and what people think happened. It seems to be that, between these two, there is a vast space that is ripe for an unnatural sort of lying to be created. In other words, the stories people tell themselves is usually much different than the reality of what actually occurred. This can simply be explained as “cognitive dissonance,” but I believe that is downplaying what it is exactly I am attempting to articulate in this essay. Cognitive dissonance is a helpful term, but I believe humans tend to rely on labels of that sort too often, and as a result simplify their thought processes. That term is also not entirely definitive here; an example of cognitive dissonance would be a guy who can’t get laid by some girl he likes, and then decides she’s an awful person and starts believing a bunch of horrible things about her due to his rejection, to make himself feel better after the fact. Or it could be a person who understands smoking cigarettes is bad for them, but continues doing so, believing it helps their stress.
That’s a similar concept, but what I am getting at has more to do with the idea of free will and determinism. There is almost always a clear difference to me between the decisions people make in their lives and what actually happened. (I have written on the nature of free will and slavery previously: I believe everyone on earth is essentially a slave and that free will simply does not exist. A person is born into their particular set of circumstances and conditions, and their entire lives are akin to that of a video game character being molded into an already invented world. They do have choices, yes, but they’re still part of their readymade surroundings and overall mere slaves to life. Even a perceived “cool successful” person is still just a slave, but with golden shackles, in my opinion).
Cognitive dissonance is typically used to explain or excuse bad behaviour, but what I am trying to explain here is the opposite, when people take credit for things they actually had nothing to do with. Take, for example, a guy like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. I do not consider them particularly any better or worse than the average person is probably, but they are considered to be geniuses due to the fact that most people’s metric for success is money. I don’t think they happen to be anymore intelligent than the average person, they just happened to be born into the role of the guy who got there first. Similarly, if you look at every invention in human history, it wasn’t because the person involved happened to be some significant genius by any stretch of the imagination. They were indeed smart for making the right moves, but those moves were not unique to them and could have been made with or without their involvement. It sounds funny to say, but I guarantee you: if the automobile was never invented I could come up with that shit right now. I mean, think about it: a car looks like something a kid would draw😂😂😂.
Think about the word, “colonization,” for another example. That word has always sounded weird to me, and has a dishonest connotation to it: colonization would suggest that there was actual work involved other than….simply showing up to an area and forcing others to do work. It’s also funny because, if you look up a synonym for “colonize” in the thesaurus, one of the words you’ll see is simply, “found.” That’s what I’m getting at on a larger level: we think of ourselves as the proud owners of our actions, but it really involved showing up. That’s it, that’s all it ever was. Those colonizers of the past considered themselves to be geniuses and smarter than the groups they were asserting their dominance over, when all it really required was showing up and being a bunch of violent assholes. Not that difficult. (Ironically: colonizers used ideas like biological and genetic determinism to justify their sociopathic actions, which is an entirely different matter for another day and not the same type of determinism I wish to explore in this essay. I am not referring to race-specific determinism here, I am talking about our actions as humans in general).
To use another example that might be more accessible to the laymen that happen to read this: I know a guy that recently got laid by a super hot girl most guys would dream of being with. She’s thin, tall, blonde, blue eyed, Scandinavian. The hot girl archetype most dudes would dream of. The dude in question is almost the same height as her, and not bad looking. If they were casting for the role of Superman/Clark Kent, but they didn’t have a big budget to get a real star, this guy might fit the role. He’s like a dollar store version of Superman, haha. Now, from my perspective, this guy did not do anything other than play his cards right. To me, a more surprising thing would be if he didn’t get laid by this girl. He was born into the character this other character happened to be looking for at that time, and as a result: he got lucky. This guy now thinks he’s some kind of brilliant player who made the right moves, making such a thing happen by sheer willpower and astute choices. He doesn’t quite get it, and now always gives me advice that would never work for a guy like me. He doesn’t understand what I do, because as an observer I can see the reality a bit more clearly: he didn’t do anything other than….be born. If it were not him, another tall, moderately handsome guy would have entered the picture and this girl would’ve gone with him. It’s that simple.
It’s the same as me being a short nerdy looking guy who reads and writes a lot and works on various creative projects. Let’s say for example one day one of my books happened to capture the imagination of a very famous figure, they shared the book to their many followers, and then overnight I was labelled as some kind of creative genius and sold millions of books. I might wake up one day and begin to start feeling like I was somehow better than everyone else and believe the hype. However, the truth of the matter is simple: I was just born into my role. I didn’t do anything good or bad. I didn’t do anything other than follow the path my particular skillset is capable of. Whatever happens outside of that is extrinsic to my overall work ethic and writing habits, and I have absolutely nothing to do with. All I do currently is write, and a handful of people read my work. If anything more than that were to happen to me it would not be because I’m some genius, it would be because it was pre-ordained.
I think most people seem to have this tendency to flatter themselves and think they are somehow more special than they really are. They get high off their own farts and start believing they’re actually doing something important when it was just gas; that’s how the system works. The reality is a lot less romantic: whatever happens is already what was gonna happen. No one is doing anything particularly brilliant other than what they can at any given time. Everything was already pre-ordained, they just happened to be the person chosen to do so. I know this sounds insane to some people, and I can’t really prove what exactly I am saying here, but this is all a sneaking suspicion I have as an observer of other people and an outsider: situations and things happen to people, they get pulled into them like magnets, and then they make up the story of whatever happened after the fact. I see this pattern with almost everyone I know. Like I’ve mentioned plenty of times already, I don’t consider myself a normal person like other people are; I am an outsider for a variety of reasons, both self-imposed and due to various rejections. The biggest benefit of being on the fringes of existence, is that I can clearly see the patterns in human behaviour that seem to repeat themselves.
To use another example: I was reading about Bob Dylan recently, and his writing process for the song, “Like a Rolling Stone.” From what I’ve read, at that time in his life, Dylan was into stream-of-consiousness writing. He would type up anything that came to his head, what he called “vomit” onto a page, and then edit it later into something that resembled a song. In an interview Dylan once said, "It's like a ghost is writing a song like that, it gives you the song and it goes away. You don't know what it means. Except that the ghost picked me to write the song." That’s exactly what I’m trying to explain with this free will shit: we have a say in our lives, but at a certain point, we really don’t. When Dylan sat down to write the song, he did not go into it thinking, “I am going to write one of the world’s greatest songs ever made, and I will change the history of rock music forever. Watch this!” No, certain things choose us. Stephen King has similarly described the writing process as “excavation” and “uncovering a fossil.” In other words, he sits down to write, but the story was kind of already there. It’s all a matter of being in perfect harmony with the story that wants to be told, and making sure you’re picking the right one.
The flip side of people like Bob Dylan and Stephen King exists too: you can see what happens to people who pick “the wrong” pursuits, be it artistic or otherwise. These types of people were simply not born to do whatever it is they’re trying to do, and are essentially fighting nature. For example, people who have no musical talent trying to be rappers or producers. No one in their lives wants to tell them sincerely that they suck, so they continue to fail and must discover this themselves. Or a person who isn’t funny bombing onstage. Or people who have no business sense trying to build some stupid startup that always fails within 2-3 months, and they abandon their accounts with 12 followers. What these people are failing to understand is that we can’t do every single thing we want in life. Despite the fact that we are told by everyone we can, that just isn’t the case. Whatever we were meant to do will make itself clear to us, because that’s exactly what was supposed to happen. Things happen because they have to happen the way they do. Sounds stupid, but that’s how it is.