You can straw-man yourself

 

Straw man fallacy is giving an impression of refuting an argument — rather than actually addressing it.

 

Straw man fallacy is an excellent way of deceiving others or oneself

It’s because we often confuse the thing with it’s appearance

Furthermore few things in this world are clear and plain — often all we have is what appears

Therefore such straw-man-artist can often suceed at concealing either his desire to convince you — or his plain ignorance

He can always say that he believed things to be so because “it really logically appeared so!”

 

Now, of course, if you do this to me — I will eventually call you a clown

Because I don’t care what appears. I care what works

You can give me logical-sounding-nonsense 2 or 3 times — but there will be no 4th time

 

But when you’re talking to yourself — likely you are not such a stern critic

Likely you have ego

Likely this ego interests you more than the truth

 

Now, depending on your level of understanding of the reality: you may be completely crazy and delusional, or you may be quite logical and practical and effective

If you’re crazy then a crazy excuse will do

If you’re stupid then a stupid excuse will do

If you’re a little bit smarter then you need more advanced ways to delude yourself

Such as a straw man

 

One form I often notice is when someone takes responsibility, takes the blame — but NOT true blame.

A competent person will not simply “fail to take the blame”, “fail to take responsibility”. That’s what stupid people and crazy people and adult children do

What he may do instead is take the blame — but the WRONG blame.

He won’t take the full blame, or the real blame. He will take some other blame — which nevertheless looks like he’s owning up, he’s taking responsibility.

This blame may be lesser — or it may actually be greater. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that the person protected some part of their identity, some core belief.

It’s really marvellous — the contrived ways we find just to AVOID FACING THE TRUTH.

 

Don’t straw man yourself

Truth doesn’t care how convincing you are

Your outcomes don’t care what “appeared” right

If you believe in nonsense then you’re as stupid as the stupid one, as crazy as the crazy one

 

If you care about your outcomes then create FEEDBACK LOOPS from which you can learn. Reduce your problem to something concrete — that you can then either succeed at or fail at

And if you care about the truth: do the above. Only real world can give you the truth. Only real action in the real world can give you the truth

 

When you have the truth — build your identity there.

Once you have strong identity — you don’t have to pretend.

Once you have desired outcomes and strong identity — you don’t have to appear right. Not in front of others, not in front of yourself,

This will cure your nonsense straw man

 

But until then — be very careful and mindful and observant of the MILLION WAYS YOU DECEIVE YOURSELF

If you’re intelligent — you have intelligent ways of deceiving yourself

Doesn’t mean it’s not nonsense

Don’t straw-man yourself