I heard this talk by Jordan Peterson yesterday and it struck a major chord. Got me thinking…ya..I’d sooner deal with cancer and death.
“The people I have seen have been hurt mostly by deceit and that’s worth thinking about. You get walloped by life and there’s no doubt about that. For a long time I thought that maybe people can handle earthquakes, cancer and death, maybe, but they can’t handle betrayal and they can’t handle deception and they can’t handle having the rug pulled out from underneath them by people they love and trust. That just does them in. It makes them ill. It hurt them psycho-physiologically, but more than that it makes them cynical and bitter and resentful and then they also start to act all that out in the world and that makes it worse.” ~ Jordan Peterson
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Without a doubt, painful social interactions are uniquely unpleasant for humans.
But I can’t help but think that some people are more sensitive to betrayal than others, maybe because they place a higher value on loyalty.
People also differ in how trusting they are of others. If you have a hard time trusting others, it must make it extra painful if that trust is betrayed.
True. Also in my case there was a string of deception each one knocking my feet out more and more until the last one nearly crushed me. True, I might have been acting in such a way that brought these people into my life. Takes two to tango.
Having experienced both, life ruined by deception as well as cancer death of a loved one, I have to say I would take 1000 deceptions because there’s always something you can do to survive deceit. Even if that means running away from all human contact and living on an island. With cancer and other incurable illnesses (including mental illness) there’s a feeling of hopelessness, that all the money, love and private islands in the world can’t fix.
You have a good point. I guess I got the best of both worlds. I have cancer and deceit in the same time frame. SWEET.
Holy shit. Well look on the bright side… at least you don’t have to waste your time looking on the bright side. A little hopeless humor there. Seriously that’s one hell of a lousy hand life dealt you. If you manage to survive, physically as well as mentally, you’re the hero of the human race.
Jordan Peterson describes the devastation of deceit very accurately.