“Do you know you have more nerve endings in your stomach than in your head? Look it up. Now somebody's gonna say, "I did look that up and it's wrong." Well mister, that's cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, try looking it up in your gut. I did. And my gut tells me that's how our nervous system works.” Stephen Colbert, introducing “Truthiness” in the premiere episode of “The Colbert Report” on October 17, 2005
Truthiness is asserting something is true because it feels true or because we want it to be true. It is easy to see it in others. It is harder to see in ourselves. At least, it feels that way to me. It seems that my life has been one long object lesson in seeing only the evidence that justifies my feelings.
This is undoubtedly colored by the fact that I am bipolar (what was once called “manic-depressive”) and the son of a bipolar father. My father claimed to prize logic and the scientific method, and spurned religion as the superstitious and corruptly self-serving enemy of science and reason. Yet his manic rambling discourses were short on logic, long on parable-like histories and speculation, and all in justification of his manic fancies.
My super-power and achilles heel are one and the same. I find it easy to abstract and intuit the workings of systems, and enjoy problem solving. But that facility with abstraction and intuition makes it easy to jump to conclusions without collecting all the facts. And to assume that I know what others are thinking or feeling without asking, listening or genuine empathy. And my gut feeling of what is true comes first, and the evidence is considered second. All contrary data points are deemed to be untrue or irrelevant, or simply not taken in at all.
"Let the jury consider their verdict," the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.
"No, no!" said the Queen. "Sentence first–verdict afterward." Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
I have come to believe that I have a truth-detection system, with components made up of my emotional state, neuro-chemistry, physical sensation and cognition. And I determine what is true or worthy of my attention through the filter of this system. Sometimes this serves me well. But often the system breaks down, and gets stuck, like a stopped clock.
When I am in a manic state, I feel energized and elated. My thoughts begin to race, so fast that I can’t keep up with them. But I have an overwhelming feeling of “Eureka!”. So every thought evaluates as the novel insight the world has been waiting for, heightening my feelings of energetic elation. And every frustration of communication or agreement is ignorance or worse.
When I am in a depressed state, I am not so much sad as overwhelmed by a feeling of shame. I have the emotional, mental and physical sensations that correspond with a deserved withdrawal of love by my entire social system. I feel that I have been judged and found wanting, and I can only agree. Every thought of why I am unworthy of love evaluates as true, leading to further sensations of depression. Any profession of love by those closest to me, cannot be evaluated as deserved, and is only further evidence of how I have concealed my true ugliness.
Of course, this understanding of myself is largely intuited. But it seems to be in harmony with the concepts of “truthiness” and other forms of cognitive bias as arguments against believing everything I think. The irony of truthiness, as a concept, is that it just feels true.
So here’s another intuited speculation: I think our emotional reflexes (including “fight or flight”) make us wired to accept the truth of our emotional/physical state first, and look for reasons second. I think that natural selection precluded all Homo Sapiens who stopped to analyze all the evidence for and against being afraid before fleeing or fighting from becoming our ancestors. So too, our sense of pain and loss at the breaking of emotional bonds was adaptive for a species that relied on the members of its clan for safety and sustenance. So too, the elation of insights that would benefit the clan.
Most physical phenomena can eventually be explained by the scientific method. Gravity is gravity, regardless of what we may believe about it. But our understanding of human phenomena and values is more influenced by belief than most of us would care to admit. This lack of self-knowledge makes us susceptible to cognitive bias and manipulation.
I don’t recall what age I was, high school perhaps, when I saw my father’s stories as Bible-like in their consistent re-telling and parable-like overtones. My mother had her stories, too. Hers often came up in the context of arguments or family-meetings, retelling of past transgressions never to be forgotten or forgiven. My conclusion was that while parents were not church-goers, their accumulated histories, life lessons, and views of themselves and the world amounted to a belief system functionally and practically equivalent to a religion.
I came to my understanding of how this insight applied to me much later in life. In my early sixties, I had a disabling bout of major depression. Talk and drug therapies could no longer reach me, and the resonating echo of shamed thought and feeling took me further down the abyss. What eventually turned the tide was ECT (aka electro-shock). I think it worked in me like rebooting a computer stuck in an infinite loop. The electricity flooding my neural circuits made me forget to believe I was worthless for long enough to entertain the notion that I might have value. But it took multiple treatments for recovery to begin, and my recovery was not complete when I ended the treatments.
Although I was much better than I was before I began ECT, I was still “lost in my head” and had a hard time connecting emotionally. I became resentful that my wife wanted more from me emotionally than I was ready to give. And I found all sorts of reasons to justify my resentment. At some point, before or during couples therapy I began to see that my reasons were not serving me, and getting in the way of the relationship I wanted to have with my wife. Something about the “emotional arithmetic” struck me. Why was I interpreting a desire for a loving relationship as grounds for resentment and alienation? In therapy, I saw how my emotional reactivity was rooted in unresolved traumas of my past, and that I could choose to believe differently about my present.
It is hard to let go of what I believe must be true. But I can never find my keys, phone or wallet until I give up on the belief that they have to be in the places I just verified four times that they are not.
For the most part, I am now better able to identify the thoughts, feelings and sensations associated with the onset of mania or depression, and correct course before spiraling out of control. I remember my own analogy of the stopped clock, and don’t believe everything I think. I apply some emotional first aid to myself, adjust my medications, look out for my and others physical and emotional safety, and ask for help. Another analogy I use is intoxication, recognizing that my ability to judge my own worth can be as impaired as my ability to make other judgments under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
For the most part. The past few weeks have had both racing thoughts and shame. I have been reactive in ways I thought I was past. Finding new reasons for resentment and self-loathing. Writing this is an exercise in trying to get some of these thoughts out of my head so I can live in the world again.
In writing this, I started and removed an exploration of how this relates to this time in the life of our species. Social media reinforcing tribalism and the necessity for us to believe we are all on the same team or imperil the species. Right now, I want this to remain focused on my own experience, and leave it for you to decide what is true or relevant for you.
Wiser people than me have shown the way how we might know that we are free to choose what we believe, and the wiser choices we might make. These are two of my favorites.
It Matters What We Believe By Sophia Lyon Fahs
Some beliefs are like walled gardens. They encourage exclusiveness, and the feeling of being especially privileged.
Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and deeper sympathies.
Some beliefs are like shadows, clouding children’s days and fears of unknown calamities.
Other beliefs are like sunshine, blessing children with the warmth of happiness.
Some beliefs are divisive, separating saved from unsaved, friends from enemies.
Other beliefs are bonds in a world community, where sincere differences beautify the pattern.
Some beliefs are like blinders, shutting off the power to choose one’s own direction.
Other beliefs are like gateways opening wide vistas for exploration.
Some beliefs weaken a person’s selfhood. They blight the growth of resourcefulness.
Other beliefs nurture self-confidence and enrich the feeling of personal worth.
Some beliefs are rigid, like the body of death, impotent in a changing world.
Other beliefs are pliable, like the young sapling, ever growing with the upward thrust of life.
,
With That Moon Language, by Hafiz (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)
Admit something:
Everyone you see, you say to them,
“Love me.”
Of course you do not do this out loud;
otherwise, someone would call the cops.
Still though, think about this,
this great pull in us
to connect.
Why not become the one
who lives with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying,
with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in this world
is dying to hear?
