Pursuing truth, or the best proxy thereof, makes not only for a life worth living but expands the fractal of human ingenuity and capacity to deal with and best adapt to nature’s entropy. Especially when nature’s truth, upon which humanity depends, yields an infinitely unfolding perspective.
Think
As I explain in Learn To Think, many people skirt the truth for nefarious reasons. Mainly to get the upper hand over greater-fools who have not yet discovered a better proxy of truth. A lucrative endeavor, for we, in the United States, have an ample supply of greater-fools you sell anything to, including fake wrestling.
A new form of deception I discovered recently was performed by what I now call a retrofitter. Somebody who, confronted with -to me- unacceptable behavior we both witnessed, later on, completely changed the story of what actually happened.
Hits Home
While recovering from my spinal and rib fractures, my then-girlfriend unpromptedly stormed out of my house, unwilling to tell me where she was going and when she would be back. Only a week or so later, to attempt to convince me how she had told me she would get tea and would be back in time to ensure I would be okay.
This was not the first time she retrofitted what happened in our relationship.
Of course, my reaction to what happened on that fateful day spawned severe disappointment, vulnerability, and after a three-hour debate discussing her waning empathy, anger. Her retrofitted story a week later made my response to what happened to look ridiculous. From there, her layers of depravity kept piling on.
This is what retrofitters do. They change the truth to make themselves look like angels and shift responsibility and blame they can whitewash to their friends and family.
Deny
I can live with a person who has an imperfect perception of truth from not being privy to the proof of reality. I cannot live with someone who frequently changes the truth of what actually happened.
I have tried to make her see, explore, and experience the beauty, peace, and simplicity of truth on many occasions. A truth, unlike lies, you never need to fabricate. I put in many hours to make her see “the light” of truth she ultimately called whining. Her most recent behavior was a gift for me to not engage on the road to marriage she proposed.
People who skirt the truth are highly insecure, often masquerading in aloof and ambiguous irreverence to appear the opposite. I feel very sorry for them and the nervous dance of untruths they will face for the rest of their lives. They will meet and invite partners to that dance with the same dysfunctional qualifications—mark my words. They will, again, get the short end of the stick.
Impact
Retrofitters are omnipresent in a laissez-faire society, not holding people to account. Since the asymmetry of deception promulgates untruths more than truths, retrofitters play an active role in the demise of civilization.
Let me give you some examples of professional retrofitters:
- One of the largest institutional investors in the world, proclaiming to have invested using ESG sustainable investment strategies for the last thirty years. Really? So what is the sustained benefit to society from those investments that prevented climate change, I must ask?
- The pastors of over 4,200 religions worldwide, all relying on the know-it-all of their Gods, are continuously challenged by recent discoveries of nature to which they must scramble to retrofit their made-up stories, save face, and keep their congregation from losing hope and pecunia.
- Economists retrofit data from events that have already occurred, hindsight, to project foresight to break the norm. An incompatible feat.
Retrofitters of truth confound causal and consequential truths consistently and thus fall prey to grave depravity of reason. The depravity of reason makes the most intelligent animal on our planet behave like the dumbest.
