Disillusionment
Sep. 24th, 2002 07:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerWhy is disillusionment considered to be a terrible thing? It's got connotations of giving up, losing your will to live, not caring, etc., when all it really means is that you see things as they actually are.
To stop believing the comfortable illusions (that somewhere there is a perfect partner, that the world owes you a living, that supernatural entities watch over you, that your country is better than all the other ones, that people that do bad things are qualitatively different to people that don't do bad things, that this lottery ticket will</> be the one, and so on) surely means that you can then actually see what your problems are, what your opportunities are. It should allow you to see what mark you can hit, so that you can aim for what's possible. It doesn't stop you aiming for the improbable, but if you know how improbable it is so that you can make a rational decision.
I've lost a fair number of illusions, but there's almost certainly ones left hovering over me, waiting to bite me in the ass. I'm not saying that losing them made me necessarily any more comfortable (some of them occasionally depress me), but overall I'd say that I'm much more free without them.
To stop believing the comfortable illusions (that somewhere there is a perfect partner, that the world owes you a living, that supernatural entities watch over you, that your country is better than all the other ones, that people that do bad things are qualitatively different to people that don't do bad things, that this lottery ticket will</> be the one, and so on) surely means that you can then actually see what your problems are, what your opportunities are. It should allow you to see what mark you can hit, so that you can aim for what's possible. It doesn't stop you aiming for the improbable, but if you know how improbable it is so that you can make a rational decision.
I've lost a fair number of illusions, but there's almost certainly ones left hovering over me, waiting to bite me in the ass. I'm not saying that losing them made me necessarily any more comfortable (some of them occasionally depress me), but overall I'd say that I'm much more free without them.
