Life is about choices. This one is about whether you prefer to be mugged in the mind or robbed in reality. It is my own story as much as yours, because there is no escape from the fact that our beliefs are often no more than plumage whose purpose is to insulate and to display. It is said that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. What is a conservative - or a liberal - who has been mugged by reality?
‘Man is not built for truth, but for survival’, said the deranged iconoclast John Gray, emeritus professor of European thought at LSE. His work is desccribed as ‘intellectual genocide’ by Terry Eagleton. Have a look at his books and see how much of your personal truths survive the experience.
What John Gray is on about is we are not calm rational beings logically weighing the evidence. We believe what is helpful to ourselves, even when it isn’t. Belief isn’t meant to match reality but to help us cope with it, and to feel good about it while we do so. We make up stories to live by…
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