Self Delusion and Healthy Self Feedback

[Totenkindly]

Perhaps the best guide is whether you are happy or not. Not just happy as in "I'm sucking a lolly pop on a hot day" kind of happy but the kind where you are satisfied with your current situation. Contentment.

Personally I regard contentment as a sign that everything is working fine. The only problem comes when you're not content but you're not sure why....

I think I agree with that.

I spent a lot of time trying to "validate" my choices via other means (logic, reason, social opinion, family pressures, religion, etc.)... and none of it was satisfying, and I was miserable enough to be dead in spirit even if not dead physically.

Saw my old therapist yesterday. I asked her what she thought about how things have gone for me, and the direction, and she said there was no question about it... I was death warmed over for so long, but the last year I am a totally different person. Happy and well-adjusted. She's blown away by the consistent change.

Because I'm going by what is making me "content" rather than artificially imposed standards. And when I say content, it's not "happiness" per se because a lot of my life still has problems to work out and I wish things were different in some ways.

But, overall, I am content with what my life is right now, and where I am at. I'm where i want to be.

I don't think that can be undervalued in people. We can fight to conform to some particular standard, but at core level we are what we are and if we're being compressed too much, it'll never work.

 

[heart]

That's the "healthy" response... I think. (although I'd say "achieve SOME level of success even if I would never publish" or something like that).

Yes you are correct, just getting the work down and expressing oneself clearly with personal satisfaction and creating something of coherence that others could understand and feel. That would be success enough.


I think about how the pubishing industry puts limits on authors and I always wonder what my favorite author's books would look like if they had a free hand, I want to read that secret book on their hard drive! I think the same thing about music and philosophy too.

I wonder so much about how advertsing affects our world and what we're exposed to, so limiting.

 

[Geoff]

Yes you are correct, just getting the work down and expressing oneself clearly with personal satisfaction and creating something of coherence that others could understand and feel. That would be success enough.


I think about how the pubishing industry puts limits on authors and I always wonder what my favorite author's books would look like if they had a free hand, I want to read that secret book on their hard drive! I think the same thing about music and philosophy too.

I wonder so much about how advertsing affects our world and what we're exposed to, so limiting.

Yep, indeed. People write what they ought, or are tweaked into writing, and not what they want to.

I was listening to an interview with Terry Pratchett (he of Discworld and recently diagnosed with Alzheimers), this morning. He did point out that something he was due to say about J K Rowling had been censored by his agents/publishers... because of that very point. I believe (although it wasn't certain) that he wanted to criticise Rowling for putting wizardly on a pedestal - he believes that wizards shouldn't criticise plumbers for not being able to do magic, because a wizard can't do plumbing. That kind of elitism doesn't help give fantasy novels a down to earth feel - it removes the human factor that he sees as important in his novels. Those well read or who heard the interview will be aware that he is harking back to Ursula Le Guin in these comments.

It seems a shame that the publishing industry weren't keen on him mentioning this by reference to Rowling.