Apostate:
One who has abandoned one’s religious faith, a political party, one’s principles, or a cause.
A couple years ago I observed a sort of behavioral tendency in one individual, and it’s amazing how the same pattern carries through in many different people I’ve met.
I call it being apostate to your own intelligence.
Apostate is a word with religious implications, and since I come from a very religious background it seems natural to me. I understand it to mean someone who deliberately turns away from God, knowing and understanding that God is God and still turning away from Him.
Of course the same principle applies to other things. For example, a person could knowingly and with full understanding turn away from the smart thing to do.
Here’s where I first saw it:
I met this man , let’s call him Joe, through a friend. When I met Joe, he was cleaning carpets to feed his wife and children.
My friend said, “Joe has a degree in industrial engineering.”
“Good heavens! Why would he want to be a carpet cleaner if he could be an engineer? What happened?”
A few years prior, there had been an infestation of Multi-level marketing in the area. Ponzi’s dream lives on, and it became the dream of Joe. He bought into the product line, bought into the pre-packaged marketing material. He contacted all his friends and spent time trying to recruit them beneath his level on the Ponzi pyramid.
As is easy to guess, this diligent effort did not result in the millions, or at least hundreds of thousands, that the marketing materials implied.
Here comes the point of decision. Joe started this endeavor to make money. He wasn’t making money. Logic would indicate that he abandon this method of making money and find a different method that produced the desired result-money.
But Joe did not choose to do this. He decided that there was a reason he wasn’t making money. It must be because he had not comitted to the plan. He needed to quit his job and do this new job full-time.
He chose to continue on with his original choice, affirming the first decision with a second one.
Now, he’s stepped away from logic and begun to act on faith. Why would he, an engineer, a man of science, choose to act against his own logic? Let’s follow him further.
Joe quit his job as an industrial engineer. He began to sell the MLM products full time, on the belief that the products and the system were reliable and the problem lay in his dedication to them. He fully believed that he would be able to support his family on the money he would be certain to recieve with his new commitment to the plan.
It wasn’t long before his new plan had consequences. His wife and kids had to leave their home and live with her mother because there was no money to pay the bills.
And here came the second point of decision. Should Joe give up his MLM dreams and go back to work as an engineer? There were definitely jobs available. Or should he pursue his MLM career further?
Yep, ol’ Joe believed. He chose to find a supplemental job, one that wouldn’t get in the way of his real job, selling the MLM product.
He took up a franchise to start cleaning carpets. It didn’t pay enough for his family to leave Grandma’s house. As a matter of fact, Joe had to live with friends to get back on his feet.
This is a true story. This man was a fool. He consistently chose the same stupid decision.
What the hell was he thinking? He must have thought that something other than reason or logic (also known as reality) was more important to him.
What could be more important than reality? And what sorts of things fall outside the boundaries of logic and reality?
I have two answers:
1. Self Image
2. Being percieved as being right
Maybe they are just two aspects of the same thing. When Joe chose to join the MLM program, he had a certain image of himself. Rich, successful, prosperous, admired, whatever. That was who he was going to be.
When he came to his first point of decision, he could abandon that first image and admit that he was wrong. This course of action would have made it possible to find another way to gain the rewards he was looking for.
But he didn’t want to admit he was wrong. He didn’t want to crack the image he had of himself, the one he thought he was portraying to others, that was so attractive.
He affirmed his first decision, and chose to act against logic. This was only the first real time he acted against logic. It might have worked, that scheme. But once he tried it, he could empirically know that it didn’t work.
He chose to ignore the reality of the situation, and embrace his inner vision of himself, and shore up the image he assumed he projected to others. That he was a guy that knew what he was doing.
He didn’t see that others were not impressed with him. That he looked a fool.
Just because he had found a way to superimpose his self-image over reality did not mean that anyone else was fooled. It only showed up his foolishness more starkly.
Now, I have seen a number of people decide that they have a story about themselves, they have an image, that is more important than reality. They can take the weight of their supposed position or importance and try to flatten the reality of the situation.
This only shows up the contrast between the truth of the situation and the ridiculous story they are putting forth.
True importance, such that would make a person worth of respect, comes from acting and speaking in accordance with reality.
Which is to say, respect is earned not owed.
And to turn away from Truth towards self-gratification (also known as fear) will only hasten what you fear.