Eccentric Flower:199905/holes in my head
From Eccentric Flower
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may seventeenth holes in my head I've been thinking about idea displacement all day, and in retrospect I don't have as much to say about it as I thought I did, but I should at least explain the term. On Friday I got into an online discussion/argument where several people attempted, through superior reasoning, to shatter a previously held conviction of mine. Now, I don't have a problem with this. They worked hard at it - they had to, I'm stubborn - and eventually made their case. The problem is, my instincts still cleave to my old position. My old position was fueled as much by the heart as by the head; it was a visceral reaction, not a wholly rational one. Now I have no brain-basis for keeping my old position on the matter ... but I also have not yet formulated a new position to replace it. Furthermore my hindbrain wants the old position back, it was much more comfortable with that ... but my reasoning brain can't let that happen, because then I would be sticking to a position that I've already concluded is wrong. In short, my original idea has been taken away and now I have a hole in my head where it used to be. And I find this a depressing condition. Literally. It affects me physically until I can smooth the wrinkles in my brain out. Part of the problem is shame. I don't hate being corrected. I like being corrected. If you think one of my ideas is wrong, I want to know about it. But I do hate being wrong. To me, being wrong involves shame. That's why I want to correct any wrongnesses as soon as possible. I use a lot of big words. Many of these words were ones I learned from seeing them in print, going years before I actually had to speak them in a conversation. I remember when I mispronounced "elitist" all throughout a tirade on elitism. I was corrected only after I wound down, to the general amusement of the room. If the person had corrected me immediately, I wouldn't have made a fool of myself. These things stay with me. Not only has being wrong about this word flustered me so badly that I honestly cannot remember the correct way to pronounce it, I actually make an effort to never say the word aloud. That little whirlpool in my brain has never settled; the hole is still there. And that was a small hole. The discussion on Friday left a big hole. Clearly I must fix it as soon as possible.
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