One thing you learn on the path of honesty is that people by and large go through all kinds of mental gymnastics to justify stuff to themselves and others. I have witnessed my parents go through an entire rigamarole just to avoid saying that they didn't trust a doctor for being black, instead trying to blame it on some "evidence" of him being fundamentally incompetent or whatever, despite never interacting with him. Instead of just admitting to themselves that they tend to distrust black people, they bullshit themselves with a long list of rationalizations, and this clouds their internal dialogue, and thus what they tell other people.
The same thing happens with cowardice. Instead of people admitting to themselves that they're afraid of facing certain things and could work on that, some men would rather go through an entire system of beliefs to justify why women are evil and the sole cause for them not getting laid, rather than them being afraid to approach women.
Not that there aren't systemic reasons that make it hard to get a relationship, it's more complicated than that, but also, the fact that most people struggle with courage above many other things strikes me as undeniable, people would rather blame everything on the sun rather than take responsibility.
What happens fundamentally is that people alter how they present their beliefs when those aren't socially acceptable. This is why so many people resort to "science" and "hard evidence" to justify themselves nowadays, because those are socially acceptable, in a way that listening to your body, following a tradition, or simply using untested heuristics isn't. Not that all forms of epistemology are equally valid, this is not what I'm saying.
What this piece is about is the way that people mentally contort themselves because they feel like they simply can't be honest with other people. Instead of simply saying "I think mass immigration makes social cohesion in our countries worse, and I have seen it with my own eyes", they might resort to some sort of "evidence" that other continents have lower IQ, or that violence and rape are literally baked into the culture of the foreigners, that type of stuff. What was initially a sensible statement which could be defended given the right context, has turned into what is essentially scar tissue, numbing yourself to the Truth because you feel the need to defend yourself against something.
It very much helps with your self-honesty if you can simply state what you believe in without feeling the need to justify yourself. There is value in having good reasons for believing something of course, again I am not promoting the belief in any ideas that strikes your fancy, but more often than not people are far too defensive with their justifications, because they erect them to shield themselves from bad faith conversations, the ones where the other person is essentially attacking you.
The consequence of that is that people bullshit themselves and other people, because they feel like if they were honest, they would be attacked for what they believe, so they desperately latch onto "evidence" to feel more secure.
All of this has been made far worse with the global narrative war which has taken over our world. People don't feel safe to simply share what they believe, because they feel policed for ever saying the "wrong thing". This was made most obvious during Covid—remember that?, because we were all on our screens, and everything we said could be used against us.
The left in particular think that they are doing such a service to mankind by policing what people say, but what happens in practice is simply that people's beliefs remain the exact same, if not more extreme because now they are even more motivated to defend themselves, but they are less public about it. This creates echo chambers rather than genuine change, shadows rather than integration.
Thus the polarization leads to narrative conflicts, which leads to a sort of arms races with arguments. Instead of people getting together to talk about how they see life, conversations devolve into a performative game: trying to dominate the conversation to see who is right (fighting), or conveying a bunch of signposts to show that you are on the same side (tribalism), not an actual exploration of what is going on, no real authenticity, just performance.
Social media has, predictably, made that dynamic far worse, because you can get virtual social points from your tribe by being cruel to the other side, far more than if you were more reasonable and less ideologically attached.
All of this is particularly bad in terms of self-honesty because people end up rationalizing ideas that they adopted to feel safe and part of a group, and end up thinking of themselves as a sort of soldier in the narrative war. They end up adopting the ideas of a large group to feel safer, but convince themselves that all of this was done through very "rational" steps.
My solution has largely been to reduce my mental stack as much as possible, and make it as transparent as possible. Say the claim first, and then add justifications if they are needed. Stances are more fundamental than chains of reasoning. The way you feel about modernity, gender, technology, love, art, money, time, death, other important topics, is much more important to see clearly than the specific justifications you add onto them.
Of course, as I have said many times here already, justifications are important, but by and large we add them later, onto things we already believe in anyway. It's better to make this process transparent to ourselves rather than pretend we don't do it.
The point of all of this is that it makes your mental stack clearer and leaner, which means you are less attached to anything specific about it. If in your mind, you have the general sentiment that all of modern art is garbage, and you come across a few pieces that you like, well then you can much more easily update that sentiment by making it more nuanced. If instead you had an entire network of justifications about why modern art is a psyop by the CIA to get people to not trust their senses so that the state can more easily control people, well then you would need a lot more to update your ideas, and you will be tempted to look everywhere for evidence.
Moreover, I would say that it's a bad idea to spend your time around people you don't feel like you can have a safe conversation with. The unfortunate downside of this principle is that it can lead to echo chamber dynamics of course, but on the other side, life is too short to spend all of your time in outrage and defensiveness. It's not that you need people who are ideologically identical to you, this is a kind of hell in and of itself, but that you at least need enough safety to be honest and transparent with others, otherwise the hiding leaks into your own internal space. The more you engage in bad faith conversations, the less honest you can be with yourself and others.
To me the hallmark of a great mind is one which is flexible to adapt to any situation, so that its frames and ideas are fit to it rather than try to hammer down the same concepts onto any situation. On top of that, a mind which is grounded in a way that thinking is never used as an escape from fear, which is unfortunately the main way that people use theirs.
You become significantly more intelligent in life when you stop acting and thinking out of desperation, which is why most people would benefit much more from developing their capacity to remain with difficult sensations, such as pain, tension and fear, rather than read more, even if the latter is important of course (long-form content away from the poison of social media and ideological wars preferably).
A good way to think better is to bullshit yourself less, just like the main way to improve at chess as a beginner is to blunder less, and bullshit is the norm when you come from a place of fear.
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Justification Bullshit Selfdeception Socialmedia Narrativewarfare
2026-04-10