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A colleague of mine pointed out that he thinks I always have to be right.

Being wrong, of course, is not something I intentionally set out to do. And, if you’ve been paying attention, you know Asher’s First Maxim: The secret to being right all the time is, the moment you discover you’re wrong, change your mind.

I’m not sure why “needing” to be right is such a crime, either. How is it worse than wanting to be right, or actually being right?

But I told him he’d missed the fundamental difference between us.

The real difference is that I’m on a quest, a lifelong quest, to acquire truth, a quest for reality. You can call that “being right” but it’s really just another way of describing the same thing. An epistemological quest.

Most of the people I observe are not on a lifelong quest to understand, to perceive, to know, or even to think.  I’m not saying they can’t do these things – but that they don’t treat them as their life’s goal. What I observe is the mass of people living their lives as though eating, drinking, sleeping – these were ends in and of themselves. They seem to have no ambition that transcends existence. In fact, to the degree that they’re Darwinists, why should they perceive any real purpose (quest) in life, any ultimate (transcendent) meaning? Why, for them, would acquiring the truth, be particularly interesting? In fact, from that worldview, how could truth actually be there? The simple fact is that they wouldn’t value what I spend most of my life on, because they don’t think it really exists. It’s a hypothetical (fantasy) concept, a slick (imaginary) sales pitch, an intangible (unreal in a Darwinian world) construct.

I’m not knocking it. I just don’t want to join them. It’s not who I am. And of course while, given my presuppositions, I must see my goal as transcending their version of life – the life with no particular meaning, their presuppositions must see it only in presumably “practical” terms – practical in a world with no meaning (the argument is inherently circular). So of course, I am warned of the social cost.

The social cost. As thought that were the primary consideration. It begs the question. As though, too, I’ve not counted that cost, more than anyone who isn’t used to paying any costs, who isn’t used to purchasing transcendence. They shake their heads in pity but, as though I’ve violated the basis of our common community. But we don’t have a common community. We don’t really share anything beyond the basic animal elements of living and breathing. And even those, we don’t really share, because in a world like that you don’t die, by degrees or by the retribution of men, for something transcendent. It would be silly. Continued breathing, eating, and sleeping, as ends in themselves, must be defended at all costs. Whereas I would prefer truth to life, and death to falsehood. We are, in practical terms, alien to one another, not part of a shared community at all. How can we be?

And, while I don’t deny that there is contingent meaning, contextual meaning, relational meaning, I distinguish between these and transcendent meaning. This pisses some people off. It’s not hard to see them getting hot under the collar but, frankly, I don’t care. That’s right, I don’t. Their anger is not a deterrent to my desire to understand. There’s no big, bad bully whose “anger” is going to scare me off of my goal. So the angry… well they can just piss off.

Not everyone gets angry, but I am greeted with a lot of cognitive dissonance as well. “Can’t be. Just can’t be.” in the face of reality. That’s cognitive dissonance. Oh yes, I’m real. I overlap with reality as some people define it, but I also am outside of it. It’s not me and the journey I’m on that’s unreal, it’s the circle they’ve drawn and called “reality” – the one that you don’t have to journey into – not journey far, at least.

One associate asked about why I never discuss my family. I gave three reasons, none of which satisfied him. He found all three incomprehensible. Unacceptable. Utterly alien to his experience. Finally, I gave him a secondary reason, a beneficial outcome, and he seized upon it. “That’s the reason. That I can accept. It’s about that.” In short, he was willing to accept something that wasn’t the truth, wasn’t really the explanation, and dismiss the things that were, because he preferred comprehension over truth.

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A colleage once changed religions at about the same time I did. I had been describing a set of significant flaws with the one, and had found they were more or less mitigated in the other. Following my maxim, I changed my mind, and so I changed my life to match. I abandoned one Faith and became an adherent of another and, inspired by this, he followed. Later, I found that the new Faith was transforming itself into the old, and the same probems were arising. After some searching, I again made a change. My colleague was resentful, outraged, and finally consigned himself to my version of oblivion. He said, “What you’ve found may be true. And what I have may be false. But I’d rather live in falsehood, than go through the upheaval that changing, again, would bring.”

He’s not alone. Most people, I’ve observed, live their lives, day in and day out, this way. It’s easier to maintain the status quo in one’s life. It requires less work, less thought, and less social cost. I’m not condemning it, though merely by articulating this difference, in my own terms, my counterparts in the world would say I am indeed condemning them. I could point the same finger the other way. They’ll suggest you are asking to be alienated, isolated, ostracized, exiled, yes condemned, but they’d claim you’re doing it to yourself where, because of their numbers, they are outraged when you describe the difference in other terms, when you envision the map a bit differently.

When I find that something isn’t true, I don’t hang onto it because it’s easier, or because I’m afraid of change; I shift, I change, and I adjust my life around the new discovery. He who exposes the lies in my thoughts, saves my life, as I think of life. There is no amount of work, thought, and social cost I won’t spend to obtain reality. I want it at the cost of my very soul – though, in fact, I believe it is the thing that sustains and nourishes my soul, and to yield to a worldview I regard as pointless, quite self-confessingly pointless, is the death of my soul.

In ordinary conversations, when someone says, “I like this book. It doesn’t require me to do a lot of work. I don’t have to think.” I listen to them, and I don’t respond, but I know we want very different things out of every waking moment, and every dreaming one. Pressed to render an opinion, I say “It’s not my cup of tea.” and, pressed further, “I don’t really like light fiction. I want fiction that challenges me. I can’t read that.” I am regarded as “superior”, “judgmental”, “condescending”, “arrogant”. Yes, to all of these things, given their worldview – given their initial assumptions. Of course, certainly. If the meaning of life is only what they say it is, then dividing, in one’s mind, a path that leads that way, and a path that leads beyond, would be incredibly offensive. If you begin with my assumptions, however, one path would be a sand pit, a tar pit, and another would be the path to life.

A member of my extended family says things like, “*I* don’t have to express my thoughts to the world. I don’t have any inclination. Any need.” Emphasis is on the *I*. So often, people don’t hear themselves offering up their lives as the model. “I’m doing it the right way, unlike you. My life is an example of the standard.” I saw this among fundamentalists, and among the neoconservatives, but really among most anyone who is saying that life is a prepared script. The fundamentalist God has all our clothes laid out for us. The neoconservatives have life neatly explained in binary equations, with a handicap for whatever they find useful. And the atheist family member, to use this example, can tell you exactly what life is about – the acquisition of wealth and status, retirement, and death while enjoying yourself.

Again, I’m not inclined to “save” them – a concept which is more appropriate to their worldviews, whether it be through the platitudes of religion, the expediency of ideology, or the liberation from transcendence in Dawinian theory. And that I hold to my course, without trying to convince others to go with me, or that I’m ultimately right, itself outrages a lot of them. Again, a difference between us. I see a path on which I’m travelling. Occasionally someone wishes to call themselves “friend” and travel with me a short ways. Usually, however, I’m just an extreme oddity to them, a curiosity, or a symbol of their outrage, and they peel off fairly soon. They aren’t “fellow travellers”, so to speak – not on the path I’m following.

They’d call that arrogance. But even if the path I’m on is illusory, or goes nowhere, it’s the plain truth. If it’s arrogant to think that you’re after something that others think doesn’t exist, well, then they’re incredibly arrogant when it comes to me and what I’m doing. Or if they think the path I’m after does exist, why do they trouble me with their attempts to dissuade me, “correct” me, or make me be quiet about it?

No, one must disregard the posturing. It’s just one more attempt to say, “But the social cost. But the social cost. But the social cost…” They are trying to *be* the social cost. That doesn’t work on me. I’ve told them already. That’s just the soft form of bullying, of epistemological extortion.

And so, yes, I go on paying my own way. Paying whatever is the fee, the toll, the price, the tax, the fine. And if I reach a point in the path where the payment is absolute, where it’s my life, then I’ll pay that too. What do they think is the source of my wealth – my capacity to go on paying? It’s a rare currency. I’ve been paying with my life all along. We’re all dying. The only question is how we die. I choose to die daily, paying my way down the path I’ve chosen to my goal, and damn all consequences. The world has no grievous monsters that can scare me more than my determination to move forward. In fact, the very attempt to wave around masks and shout, “thar be dragons!” is one of the multiple road signs that tells me I’m still going the right way. To hell with dragons. I won’t be dissuaded by other’s people’s fear.

And that’s the last bit, really. I’m considered “arrogant” and greeted with outrage because, ultimately, I do not allow the consensus of the majority to trump my own judgment. I’m “judgmental”. Quite conscientiously so. So let this be my compass, then. My judgment is my guide. Not the Judgment of the crowd. Not their consensus. Not their warnings, their fears, their penalties, no their company or their departure. What, I’ll “be alone”? So what? Long ago I chose between cowardice and my own way. It’s funny. When these hangers on eventually go off, they shake their head and talk about how I’ll be “without friends”. They can’t conceive that any other person in the world would go with me down that road, would love me *for* who I am, not “in spite of” it. It’s their last parting shot, their weak, final platitude. The feeble last of their scary shibboleths. What they don’t realize, is that even if I never do another thing, I’ve already succeeded overwhelmingly, because I can’t be made afraid of their worst fears. Besides which, it’s not even real. What’s departing with such “friends” is not what I call friend at all. And I am not alone. If I was, I’d struggle to go forward anyway, until there was nothing left of me. But just because they don’t see everyone in my life, and wouldn’t recognize what they were seeing if they did, doesn’t mean I’m alone. I’m most assuredly not alone.

More than one “friend” has indicated that being around me is “too continually intense”, that I’m “always on”, that there’s never much of just “hanging out, doing nothing, without having to think”. So? “Most people”, they begin…. as though anything they say after that, about that, in that context, will have any bearing on me, how I do behave, or how I will behave. They hang on for a while, until they feel that the force of their personalities is threatened by the force of mine, and then they go off, occasionally coming back when they need help with something. And I give the help, often as not, and they go off again. They call this a “cost”, and I suppose it is. But again, there’s no cost that dissuades me. And I’ve more than enough personality to pinch off a little and give it away. The smidgens they ask for are, typically, minute and inconsequential. They require no more effort to give them than it takes to sip coffee. It’s relaxing. Their company, and this “intensity” they speak of is relaxing to me. They have never see me really shine forth, flare up, or give off any truly significant amount of energy. It’s fine.

When I think about how they are living, mostly from how they describe their lives, they strike me as very protestant. They want little that requires a lot of outright work, ritual, or self-denial or self-control to obtain. They want the sermon, not the fast. Again, they would say I’m judging them but, when they calmed down, they’d admit that I’m right. They don’t want to work too hard. They aren’t wanting a journey. They would rather read an article than a book, and challenge a minor point than absorb a major change of worldview. If I call it “dabbling”, they would call it “not letting ideas interfere with their lives”. Of course, I describe my life largely in terms of ideas. We have different goals, different conceptions of the world, and different definitions of living. They’ll call me for a political insight, a historical reference, a technological recommendation, but ultimately, we aren’t on the same paths, and they don’t call me to go on a journey.

Is it lonely at times? Sure. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t sometimes get lonely. It’s also a relief. If you aren’t walking with me, then at least don’t try to make me turn to the left or the right. The path I’m on is infinitely flexible. If a thing is true, it’s on this path. Persuade me that it’s true. Make your “truth” stand up against my rebuttals. If you’re going to step off this path and follow other goals, then let me go on. I have an appointment with reality. Even if you think it’s not really there. Even if you call me arrogant, because I don’t accept as equally true every little construct that someone prefers to call “reality” – I want, as it were, “the real thing”. So you think I’m arrogant. I can live with that. Call me for your occasional tidbit. I enjoy those times, if you want them. But I know what I have to do. I know who I am and I know the meaning of my life. And yes, I think it’s real for everyone, not just real “for me”. I’m what you call “arrogant”, quite unashamedly so. Do what you’re going to do about that. Put me out of your mind, antagonize me, but I’m going on, through you, around you, or together, but going on. I have to “be right”, remember? Always.