Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Ryan's Delusion

The Atlantic: The Self-Delusion of Paul Ryan - The speaker’s account of his tenure in office is at odds with observable reality. by David Frum
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9 comments:

Mark said...

Jjm,
Here's my big question, if you live your life with "a sense of personal achievement strangely disconnected from the real-world" (Trump, Ryan, guys I know) isn't it absolutely real for you? Discounting the adverse affect you have on people and the price they pay on your behalf (Ryan, Trump, etc.), going to your deathbed thinking you've been the greatest is your reality. You haven't fooled everyone, but you've fooled yourself. You win!! Yes? No? Help me feel better about this!!

5:35 PM
Jim Sande said...

The Buddhists talk about three fundamental delusions - passion, aggression, and ignorance, sometimes also called desire, anger, and ignorance, and also sometimes called desire, aversion, and ignorance. Ignorance does not let us off the hook. If we murder someone and do not know that murder is wrong, or that there are laws forbidding murder, we are not innocent. This includes how we act in society and how we act in our own mind. Working under the spell of ignorance, we are simply wandering further down the path of delusion. In a sense you are also describing a situation where a person's ignorance is used as a springboard to fall under the delusion of desire. The delusion of desire in this case is imagining that you are a good person who has done helpful things for society when in fact you have not or may have in fact harmed people. This is simply arrogance and hubris. Many people who do really horrible things, think they are perfectly fine. This is often well documented. We really have only one reasonable approach, we recognize some action on our part that is harmful to ourselves or other people, after we recognize it, we regret it, and then we try to do better. If all those ducks line up then we can let it go, which means we may not forget what we did, but we no longer need to drag ourselves through the mud every time we recall it.

10:10 PM
Mark said...

Jim,

I'm in sync with everything you draw from the Buddhists. I welcome the struggle to "recognize, regret and try to do better" but only because I've learned to be reflective. It's hard work. I drag myself though the mud less these days. My question is more from the point of view of the permanently disconnected individual.

This all comes from observing how my father's "unenlightened/unreflective" life has served him. I do believe there is a price to pay for self delusion, but my dad will die surrounded by the few people that have enabled him to "maintain his narrative" (I believe all of us to varying degrees create our own narrative).
So if he's basically cool with it, isn't that fine for him? Who cares what I or anyone else thinks - you're own delusion is your reality! I guess I'm saying it "works" for him. I think he's missed out on the beneficial struggle to face demons and do better, but he's chosen to struggle to stay away from that stuff.

Unlike Ryan and Trump, he's not done harm to others (with the possible exception of his sons, but that's for me to deal) but it's the same question. I'm not feeling better yet, but it helps to dialog with you. Thanks.

9:23 AM
Jim Sande said...

Mark - I have a friend who has a sister who had tremendous demons in her life, as a result of likely sexual abuse and childhood trauma, she was also an alcoholic and struggled with finances and all kinds of things. Now she is our age and is regressing. She is in great need. Truth is, she did work hard at her life at trying to agree with her demons, trying to find peace. Probably on the scale of 1 to 10 can we say we worked and put in effort and such even though now she is back in pain? The thing of it is, we all make gain in some of the many streams of our life. But still there are many streams. Possibly your dad did not confront some of his demons, perhaps he didn't know how to, and if he did know how, perhaps he didn't know how to make it stick. ON the other hand what did he do well, what were the streams in his that flourished, places where there was success and growth? I bet he has many, he had you, and you're pretty good!

9:31 AM
Mark said...

Jim,

Thanks for the words of encouragement. Sorry to hear about your friend's sister. Some of us can't save ourselves from ourselves, even as we try.

My dad is a nice guy that has done good for others. He provided 50+ years of service as a clinical psychologist, a good listener. He was very supportive of me as a budding adolescent musician. The list of good is long and I try to give credit where due.
I think we are often drawn to vocations that speak to our inner need. "Doctor heal thyself" for my dad. And music has been my religion, my salvation.

The Ryan article simply implies an agreement we have as a society and as individuals to see what we wanna see. Against my better judgement I sometimes think that being clueless is a good thing. Ignorance is bliss, Dumb and happy(fill in your favorite facetious axiom). I know it's not true for me, but it might be for some.

Continued thanks...
Mark

10:40 AM
Jim Sande said...

From the Buddhist point of view which is the almost the only one I know, we think we are independent, singular, and permanent. Clearly we none of these three if we examine them even lightly. We are not independent, we are interdependent. If we examine how many hands the shirt on back went through before we got it, we would be amazed, from the gathering of the materials, processing the materials, dying them, shipping, retailing, etc etc. We are not singular, we are multiple, similarly we could not exist without others, we come into this world not automatically and instantly but through our parents etc etc. We are clearly not permanent, we are impermanent, we are all heading towards our passing. People that are nihilistic tend to ignore all of these things. They believe their actions have no consequences and resonance. I recently got fan mail from someone who said they had been listening to my work for years and that it meant something to them. That's meaningful to me as the work has some attraction beyond me producing it. Only a few people get all of the streams of their life together in one lifetime. We call these people names like Buddha, or saint. Most of us struggle with our faults, obscurations, blind spots, etc etc etc. A Buddhist monk once said that we should all try to get about 15% better in our life. Better in this case means clearer, more aware, less involved in selfish activity, etc etc. Think about how many great artists were actually miserable people in their private lives. They spent so much time cultivating their art and needing praise for it, that simply being a reasonable person managed to escape their purview. Ignorance is bliss, is simply another phrace for nihilistic in my opinion. Our actions, words, and even our thoughts have consequences. Thoughts have consequences because they influence our actions, and words. Even if a person thinks that their death is the end of all ends and there's nothing beyond that, that person's actions and words still resonate in the world, it might not be a global thing, but somehow it resonates.

1:52 PM
Mark said...

All good and wise. I must be more Buddhist than I realized. Whenever I've felt the most strong & secure it's come with the sense of being part of a something bigger (interdependent, impermanent). The opposite is also true, when I'm most self loathing I feel alone.

How do you think Ryan and Trump feel about themselves after a lifetime of "cultivated praise"?

3:45 PM
Jim Sande said...

They both live within the conservative echo chamber and they rarely stick their heads out of it. Trump goes to his Klan rallies and thinks this is where America is at. It all plays into his fundamental narcissistic disorder which is a gaping huge hole in his psyche that needs to be constantly filled with money, praise, and power. In fact he is so utterly invested in this that he can't really entertain anything else and anyone who threatens it, gets a nickname and is ridiculed. Trump is the embodiment of the very worst aspects of American culture, things that are worshiped and simultaneously rejected things like wanton materialism, limitless sex, living above the din of the unwashed proletariat. Ryan is a stunted individual. He reads Ayn Rand and then discovers he's found the answer to everything. That's like someone who is interested in being a doctor at an early age, discovers band-aids and thinks he's now got all the answers to all the world's ills.

4:00 PM
Mark said...

It sounds like you agree that they feel pretty good about themselves. Having cultivated a successful wall of mirrors & echo chamber, they see and hear only what is agreeable to reinforce their "narrative".

Quoting myself from the top of the page, I believe they will "go to their deathbed thinking they've been the greatest...They win!!"

We lose.

6:05 PM

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