Conceit, in hindsight.
It becomes fashionably easy to fall into conceit, if not full-blown pigheadedness. The foolishness of conceit can become obvious in hindsight, but only if you don't realize the equal conceit of your current viewpoint.
So I'm stuck, railing against the stupidities I perpetuated in the past, but on introspection, can find myself not a hell of a lot closer to a better place. Sure, it looks ridiculous from where I'm standing; that I would so wholeheartedly rebel against common sense for no better reason than base satisfaction; that I would benefit nothing and instead lose important chances to better myself. Whoopsy-daisies. But now I'm looking back, and I can't tell whether I've grown wiser, or just older. The fact of periodically attempting to analyze and interpret my own inexplicable behaviours hasn't changed, so maybe I've just grown more jaded about it. Maybe I've just learned more aphorisms and grown bitter reciting them. You think eschewing the optimists in favour of Machiavelli, Nietzche, Dostoevsky and Hobbes made me a better realist, or just more cynical about the outcomes?
Hfff.
I'm just left with the relative; that I can justify my little conceits with some degree of evidence (hard-ons for objective reasoning aside), because it's the closest I can get. I'm just left with my results in hindsight.
So I'm stuck, railing against the stupidities I perpetuated in the past, but on introspection, can find myself not a hell of a lot closer to a better place. Sure, it looks ridiculous from where I'm standing; that I would so wholeheartedly rebel against common sense for no better reason than base satisfaction; that I would benefit nothing and instead lose important chances to better myself. Whoopsy-daisies. But now I'm looking back, and I can't tell whether I've grown wiser, or just older. The fact of periodically attempting to analyze and interpret my own inexplicable behaviours hasn't changed, so maybe I've just grown more jaded about it. Maybe I've just learned more aphorisms and grown bitter reciting them. You think eschewing the optimists in favour of Machiavelli, Nietzche, Dostoevsky and Hobbes made me a better realist, or just more cynical about the outcomes?
Hfff.
I'm just left with the relative; that I can justify my little conceits with some degree of evidence (hard-ons for objective reasoning aside), because it's the closest I can get. I'm just left with my results in hindsight.