Meet The Person Who’ll Con You The Most: Yourself
Have you noticed a biased person is never the one you agree with wholeheartedly? Also, isn’t it an amazing co-incidence that the person you find genius happens to have same opinions as yours? Same with the person who you think tells the unfiltered truth. It’s just astounding that only the people with your opinion are smart, knowledgeable, honest, and unbiased? With a luck like that, do you ever wonder why aren’t you winning lotteries every other day? Is the world conning you from money or are you conning yourself?
My mother has an amusing approach to marriage. If you’re doing well in life, you ought to get married. If you’re not doing well in life, you ought to get married. Laugh all you want at her logic, but you know you do the same thing all the time. If you’re happy, Daaru! If you are sad, Daaru! It’s like playing a fixed match. No matter how the game is played, the ending is fixed in your favor. You can see it everywhere.
If a comedian’s hot take on society gets laughs, they’re highlighting an important issue. If that take backfires, “people don’t get these are ‘just jokes’”. In society, we hate Muslims coz they look evil. If a Muslim looks angelic, he’s here to take our women, we hate Muslims. We hate Muslims because they’re puncturewallahs, uneducated. When the Muslims pass IAS, they’re infiltrating all the major institutions, we hate Muslims. If you love the military and they protect human rights, ours is the greatest army in the world. If they violate human rights, you don’t know what it’s like in the conflict zone, otherwise, ours is the greatest army in the world. If a beloved leader announces a policy and it’s successful, he’s brilliant. If the policy is unsuccessful, he was betrayed by his advisors and the people of India. We still don’t deserve him. If you believe in a religion and it disagrees with current science — Science doesn’t know everything. If you believe in a religion and it agrees with science — The religion is scientific.
Do a small experiment, notice five yellow things around you. What you’ll actually notice is now all the things that are colored yellow will pop-out to you, while the rest of the colors just fade into the background. You usually find what you’re looking for. So, you’ll always find things that confirm your beliefs. You’ll rarely find things you’re not looking for, even if you do, it will be quite a surprise. That’s why it’s you’re always such a shock when you find you’re wrong.
How to not con yourself? It’s quite simple. Admit the truth to yourself. Admit you’re vulnerable to biases. Admit you’re susceptible to cons. Admit you’re human, you err. Don’t see the world in black and white. You get a far richer-truer picture of the world when you start including various shades of greys. Keep some room for change. Maybe you’ll come across some new information. Maybe the information you had was incorrect. Maybe you just made a mistake.
What? You may say, “I don’t make mistakes. I know when I’m right. “ You know what? Maybe you’re right and I’m wrong. It’s nice that you know yourself so well. Good luck with your future endeavors.
TLDR: We lie to ourselves all the time, in multiple ways, to maintain our beliefs. So, if you think you’re right all the time, you’re wrong. Or May be not. I could be wrong.