cantankerous optimism
A better term might be “anecdotal contrarianism.”
I believe first and foremost in what my senses tell me. They are capable to some degree of studying and finding out about what goes on in a larger world, but one also must continually take note of the inescapable fact that learning about the larger world requires taking the sources at their word.
Or not: part of how I interpret what I find out about places and people whose realities are outside my own direct sphere, is by applying what I do know from within it. On the left side of the aisle, if one qualifies as “marginalized” somehow, this is seen as legitimate, as simply one’s “lived experiences.” But absent membership to any “intersectional” group, which white men are not allowed to join unless we either eschew sex with the opposite sex or decide to become members of it, one’s “lived experiences” are conversely tossed aside as not being “evidence” of anything.
It’s all so confusing, this shifting set of ir-rationales on how to grasp the world and where one’s place in its doings might be.
So I reject the whole formula outright:
I believe (so shoot me) in what I decide to believe in. If I can’t prove it, who is anyone to demand that I do? If I can, what difference would that make? I also happen to believe that everyone believes in only what they decide to, but just that most aren’t willing to admit it.
The key, I find, is not to hold that against anyone, or at least not too much.
So you call me “cantankerous”, and given your age group (and what I know about PA folks from having spent a few years in Doylestown back in ancient history, right around when you took that free-fall in your whirly-bird), I take it as a compliment. But offline, I’m the most affable and agreeable fellow you could ever meet. So much so, that a local norm of being a tad cantankerous kind of throws me in an odd light for some folks.
Neither any readership I may have here, nor my analog neighbors who don’t even know I do this at all, really knows me intimately for who I am. Each group just takes me as I present myself, and I have different reasons for different presentations in either venue. I would never rough people up verbally the way I do online, in my daily life. And I would never confide in people I know, some of the things about my life I will make public domain to digital strangers.
And I reckon not a shred of that makes a lick of sense.
Here’s another key: few things do.
We are supposed to believe that all this “evidence” can inform us on what is The Rule, and what are The Exceptions to it. That’s pure bullshit, is Lesson Number One. The only utility the concept of “as a rule” has, is to help us identify what are supposed to be the exceptions to it. Which, it turns out, is pretty much the whole of reality.
Every person, every place, every event, basically anything that ever entered my senses, can be shown as having supposedly exceptional traits as much as or more than it might reflect what is thought to be “as a rule.”
So I just, as a rule, look for what is exceptional about anyone or anything. It’s always there, and that is what informs me as to what reality truly consists of. Thinking that the rule is what matters and that what is exceptional doesn’t, is just having one’s head in the sand.
