#2036 Rotten Fish
“Many people desperately desire to believe that they are part of a great mystery, that Creation is a work of grace and glory, not merely the result of random forces colliding. Yet each time that they are given but one reason to doubt, a worm in the apple of the heart makes them turn away from a thousand proofs of the miraculous, whereupon they have a drunkard’s thirst for cynicism, and they feed on despair as a starving man upon a loaf of bread.”
I found this paragraph of profundity in a Dean Koontz horror novel. Go figure. I read this and think of Epictetus, Shakespeare, Marcus Aurelius, and other great thinkers and writers. Kudos, Mr. Koontz!
Cynicism turns my stomach like I’m smelling rotten fish. The idea that, as Kootz suggests, one reason to doubt overrides a thousand proofs of the miraculous disgusts me.
And let me take that down a few notches, it isn’t about miraculous for me. It’s the day-to-day desire to believe the worst.
Perhaps we are conditioned by the news, after all, if it bleeds it leads…
Perhaps it is biological. Some scientists say our negativity bias is leftover in our lizard brains from a time when fear and doubt were the primary tools that kept us alive.
Today, though, it feels more like hyenas getting a whiff of fresh meat.
It is another of those areas that require moral vigilance. It’s easy to accept the “social proof” that Alan is only rich because he rips people off or that Sarah’s lascivious posturing got her that promotion. For whatever reason (jealousy?), when people offer us an unsavory explanation of another’s success, we want to believe it. Maybe hard work, intelligence, good choices, and perseverance are boring?
Even in the smallest of ways, humanity seems eager to dish about moral abhorrence. Still, it stays strangely silent when good works are called for, or even dissenting when bad gossip is presented. It’s tough. There are many more Epsteins and Weinsteins in the news than there are MLKs and Mandelas.
To maintain that moral vigilance I mentioned, there are a couple of things we can do.
Carry ourselves in a way that disallows some of the onslaught. If we adopt this countenance, people who want to shit-talk other people can tell quickly that we aren’t their audience.
We can actively dissent. When someone tells us something detestable about another person, our response can be “I don’t believe that.” Or “this doesn’t interest me.” Which, in my experience, is a prompt to the small mind that brought the juicy story to double down with some fake proof or insistence that you need to know, which allows me to double down on my doubt and/or lack of interest. It never goes past twice, and over time, people will realize that you aren’t available for this kind of talk.
Eleanor Roosevelt is credited with the quote: “Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people.”
I can’t say that I agree with her. There are wonderful, enriching discussions about people happening constantly; however, the spirit of her quote aligns with what I write about today.
I believe that if one is to live a life enriched with meaning and happiness, one must have many of these baked-in moral imperatives. Without them, life is like a bowling ball thrown by a six-year-old down a lane without gutter guards. Where do you think it will end up?
Own Your Sales Gene…