Pertinent Perceptions

People are hypocrites.

Please remember that as you nod along to the above statement, you are also a person, and therefore are a hypocrite. I have now successfully angered a good 94% of my readers.

Perhaps I should explain. Most people are good at rationalization. Everyone has so much information to process, it's overwhelming. So your brain takes shortcuts, and puts things into boxes. The very first box most people have is me vs. everyone else.

Painful as it can be to admit, human tendency is to notice the good in the "me" box and the bad in the "everyone else" box. After all, we know every detail in our thoughts, background, personality that lead to our mistakes. We also don't feel the pain that our carelessness and petty spite inflict. But when someone else screws up or hurts us, we tend to assume that they must not be as good as us since we don't know their thoughts, background, and personality. Or maybe we just don't feel compelled to make excuses for them like we do for ourselves.

Plus, we are our own benchmarks. If we don't know anyone who cooks, say, pie as well as we do, we assume we are an above-average cook. It doesn't matter if there are plenty of people we don't know who are better cooks. As long as we're the biggest fish in the pond, we're better. And people who are better? Well, they're either try-hards or they're the best of the best, but that doesn't keep us from being better than most people. You know, in the things that matter.

Patently absurd as this kind of thinking is, it's something we all do without thinking about it. Can we recognize it? Remedy it? Change? Yes, and some people are better than others at it. I'd say I'm above average-- oops.