Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Things I'm Hypocritical About

I have my standards. Two in fact.

Blogs:
For othersThere is a percentage (mostly friends of friends of friends, aka strangers, that I feel I’m kind of invading their privacy by reading) that I read mostly because I like mocking them in my head (Sometimes out loud, but then people start wondering why I’m talking to myself). Blogs are easy targets. Everything has already been said in a funnier, wittier, or more informative way, and nobody wants your two cents – they are less valuable than the metal they are made of. And nobody finds your child as fascinating as you do.

For myself: Not only will I blog, but I’ll post it on my status updates. And Isaac is fascinating. I think everyone would agree, unless they’re too busy looking for their nonexistent heart. (Update: Isaac is doing well – as charming and happy as ever. A big thanks to everyone taking such good care of him at Starfish)

Monologue-ing
For others: How could they possibly think I’m interested in this?

For myself: They’re just not interested because they haven’t heard enough yet. I’ll just keep talking.

Being late
For others: It’s rude and disrespectful.

For myself: It takes no time to find keys, check e-mail, or read what the latest political gaffe is, right? And so no matter how many times I add all those “no times” together, I should still get no time, right? And yet, I’m still late to everything. Oh well, nobody probably notices, anyway.

Classmates asking barely tangent questions
For others: It’s irrelevant and obviously an excuse to show off some boring tidbit of knowledge you somehow managed to obtain. I’m not here to listen to you talk.

For myself: It’s kind of relevant. And I’m sure everyone is secretly interested and impressed by my in dept knowledge. Very secretly.

Bashing religious or political beliefs
For others: Formula for figuring out whom your "non pc" statuses are annoying: Take the number of your facebook friends. Then take the number of….oh wait. No, that’s the answer, you got it already ... it’s a simple formula.

For myself: But it’s really clever…they’ll love it!

Looking sloppy
For others: How much effort is it to change out of your pjs?

For myself: None, if you just sleep in your daytime clothes. Loophole!


Saturday, March 24, 2012

Self Delusion - You Should Try It


I know everyone has a certain degree of self delusion. We need it to survive. In fact, it’s clinically depressed people who have the most accurate view of themselves. Fun fact, right? It makes sense. You need to be able to get others to believe in you – to hire, to befriend, to raise, or to marry you. And it’s easier to sell a product when you believe in it, even if, or especially if that faith isn’t entirely justified.

So little amount of self delusion is healthy and it’s fairly easy to obtain. Attribution bias alone would probably do the trick - giving ourselves all the credit when we do well, and giving the situation all the credit when things go poorly. (If you want to be an especially special snowflake, do the opposite for others.)

However, obviously, there can be too much of a good thing. When I look back at the people who annoy me the most, it’s the people who are lazy bullies, but in their heads are the hard working, kindest individuals they know. It just seems so unfair – being such a horrible person should result in a crippling self knowledge, shame and repentance, and yet, these are the people walk around believing themselves saints in a world full of blundering idiots.

PS. And if you think I walk around like that, the irony of this entire blogpost must be killing you. 


PPS. If you think this blog is about you, it's definitely not.