The BS I Hate(d), Now Embraced with Footnote

Disclaimer : this is an attempt to explaining something without making any writing framework beforehand, so bear with my potentially messy flow of thought. This is just a personal blog after all :p.

Recently I developed this mental model of information grouping :

(1) Facts/empirically proven information

(2) Wisdom

Recently I have become less rigid in having stance about something, prefer to be a bit flexible with whatever the latest study says (not that I’m always up to date), but modify it depends on the nuance. Easiest example is the thing with privilege. It is a known thing now that privilege plays a role (I restrained myself from typing an adjective before the word ‘role’) in someone’s success. And that is a fact/closest to reality today’s study can offer. However, I see many/some people attach too much emotion on this fact (not that I never do the same thing), to the point they catastrophize their worldview.

Worldview — a comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world especially from a specific standpoint (Merriam — Webster).

I’m not a linguist but in my own word worldview is about how our cognitive function model how the world works. So, it can be biased, it can be neutral, it can be…(fill in the blank). Garbage in garbage out to make it simple — the quality of information and our life experience forms the kind of worldview we have. (Echo chamber/filter bubble also contributes in amplification of our set worldview but I’m not gonna talk about that right now).

Secondly, I think it’s important to emphasize that worldview is something personal.

Worldview — a person’s way of thinking about and understanding life, which depends on their beliefs and attitudes (oxfordlearnersdictionaries).

So when we talk about worldview, we’re not talking about hard cold facts. We are talking about a set of belief, something that doesn’t only show how our mind perceives reality but also affects our decision/action.

Back to the thing with privilege.

It’s a very hot topic in social media some years back up to now. I agree that we have to understand the (relatively) significant effect of privilege, but I have a problem with people who defend both extremes.

First, let’s define the scope. There are things that are under our control, and there are things that are not. I think there are more things that can’t be controlled than the ones that can. *But* for the things that we can’t control — there are things that we can *communally* control and there are things that we just can’t (or we can not yet). Example of things that we just can’t control : anything related to nature I guess (disaster etc; but even so, we can be hopeful of — maybe not to control, but to mitigate — technology).

What does it mean by things that we can *communally* control? Well, it’s a loosely made up term that might not have an accurate definition. Basically it’s something that can’t be controlled individually, but can be achieved with societal willingness (honestly my first word choice was political willingness, but didn’t go with that cause I think the word ‘politic’ has a way too negative sentiment to the extent my next point won’t be conveyed well).

Example of things we can communally control : equality of opportunity / access to wellbeing. The idea of privilege is that we as society hasn’t reached equality of opportunity/access to wellbeing so that attributing one’s effort as the sole contributor to his/her success is a naive (if not foolish) way of thinking.

However, it seems like this privilege thing has become a topic misused by us to demeaning someone’s effort, or to excusing our lack of effort. Why? My hypothesis is because we attach too much emotion with the idea. Well, knowing something new is like an enlightening experience but hey let’s treat that as hard cold fact first before attach too much emotion on it. It is true that privilege is somewhat significant — but is it wise to use that same framework to approach everything? This privilege topic is actually my own trigger to form fact — wisdom duality mental model. I choose not to think about privilege at the time I know I need to push myself (an act of choosing my wisdom to serve my goal), but at the same time I know that it doesn’t change the fact that privilege still plays a role. And how did I achieve that? By detaching my emotion to the idea first. Using 3rd person point of view and categorizing the idea as a fact before choosing the most fit worldview given the nuance/condition at the time.

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So I wrote a lot about privilege but that’s not even the main topic of this post. Look at my title, this post is not about privilege lol.

This post is actually about how I used to obsessed about collecting facts, and feeling (pardon my language) disgusted over romanticised worldview. Example of what I categorize as romanticized worldview:

(1) Everything happens for a reason (nah dude, people are just trained to make reason out of stuffs happened to them so that it becomes more bearable)

(2) Everything’s going to be alright (seriosly, everything? tell that to people who were born at North Korea / Palestine)

(3) Nothing is impossible (bruh, really?!?)

(4) etc

Of course, my disgusted reaction towards these are because I treat the statements in literal way — more poetic people might find these to be useful but well…I’m neither poetic nor romantics.

However, the thing is, after I apply fact — wisdom mental model, I find myself embracing some of these romanticised worldview, with modification.

Instead of believing that everything happens for a reason, I’m thinking that whatever happened in the past is something that can’t be changed, wisest move is to learn something out of it. Instead of believeing that everything’s going to be alright, I’m starting to train myself in recognizing catastrophic thoughts. I don’t believe that everything’s going to be alright, but I believe that there are thoughts that can make problem seems messier than it really is. Instead of thinking that nothing is impossible, I… believe in neuroplasticity lol.

I know there’s nothing groundbreaking about this, but this approach is actually an antidote to my past-fact-obsessed-self. So fact obsessed to the point I tend to be pessimistic (what kind of facts did I consume?!? lmao).

It seems that my last paragraph is anticlimatic haha.

Anyway, it’s late, and I just need to write. Bye!