Confusion is Intoxicating

and logic will destroy us all

I was at a coffee shop and this woman with blood-red hair was sitting across from me, seeking clarity from a man sitting next to her. The usual free coffee therapy session. If you ever find yourself alone in a coffee shop, you’d be amazed to hear how frequently people pour their hearts out over a latte.

“He’s the American dream. He came over here, worked his ass off and now he’s a fucking millionaire. And he’s great. But, who is he going to take care of? His ex-wife and four kids. He isn’t going to care about me.

I don’t want to be a business transaction for a man.”

I would like to point out that I was not eavesdropping, I just didn’t have headphones and they were very magical in their conversation.

As if they were in a confessional, the man sat stoic, listening to the woman until she finished. When he spoke it was clear that he only viewed women as annoying; a kind of man that seemed to generalize the world. And I’m not generalizing him when I say this because he did actually say “all women are annoying.” He also said all women compete for a man. I wasn’t sure where to put his insight, but I thought it was important to mention. 

Everything seemed a stereotype to him. He walked around smug with his knowing grin, convinced that his categorizations of others are always the end-all-be-all truths. When he said that women all fight over men, he didn’t say it to start something, he just honestly believed it. Everything he says is the truth of reality. He seemed like a person of Victorian morality, spinning ideas of values as if they were written into the code of the Earth, speaking in absolutes. The kind of people that are not swayed by nuance. Living in a world of black and white with no room for anything but the preciousness of values. 

At first, I was angry at how the man spoke. My inner moral warrior wanted to jump in and tell the woman to not listen to this man. I wanted desperately to show the man the expansiveness of the world; that his version of reality is just one option and that every truth is valid. I wanted to take him on a journey to show that to judge in black and white values is to put certain beings below others. That to make sweeping generalizations was hindering his happiness in this world. 

And then I realized I was trying to do the same thing to him that he was doing to others.

And it was no wonder this woman was pouring out her soul to this man who spoke as if he is the judge of the world.

A person that lives in black and white by specific morals, is intoxicating in a society that is so attached to the instant solutions given by Google and consumerism, yet so focused on hedging out of fear of being wrong. This man is a walking rulebook in the eyes of someone who feels uncertain; he is the answer. 

When we aren’t sure of ourselves, when we don’t know, we seek out anyone or any system to show us a truth. Whether that truth is found in science, the occult, personality tests, religion, philosophy, they all seek to guide us on a Truth. It doesn’t even have to be an accurate truth, a truth most aligned to us, and it almost never is. But, we seek out this non-Truth, to guide us through the black hole of clarity.