Comparisons and Standards
- My Seal of Approval is all that counts.
We each have standards we live by. Standards are important for measuring and comparing. Without standards we have no knowledge of progress, of completion, or of compliance.
We compare everything to everybody and everything else. Blue is blue as compared to something less or not blue. Up is compared to down, left to right, in to out, etc. Few things are absolute, so much of our comparison is likewise not absolute. However, sometimes we erroneously assign an absolute value to something that is only comparatively less or more than another.
For example, when I make the judgment that someone is stupid, genius, the best, etc., I am applying an unrealistic absolute to a comparison. Usually such unrealistic judgments incur a level of frustration based on the fact that the judgment is false yet our belief is that it is true.
Agreement or No Contest
Our first inclination is to approve our own behavior. We like to think we are right. This is only a problem because there is no right in a world of illusion and comparisons. Something is only something compared to something else. Even nothing, according to Socrates and others, is something – and so saying that something is something because it is not nothing is a false premise (and mind dizzying as well).
I’m left with either agreement (something is something because WE agree that it is something) or I plead No Contest (I can’t dispute it so, by default, I agree). What I do when I agree or can’t disagree is that I APPROVE. Yes, sometimes it doesn’t look much like approval – yet by adding VALIDITY to my belief in whatever it is, I am placing my tacit approval on it.
Self-talk
It’s ultimately important to me that I impress my APPROVAL via internal dialog – self-talk. Whether it is approving of my belief that I’m a fool or a genius, I create internal dialog to support my notion as truth.
Since the probability of a notion being truth is so small that one might say it can’t be truth, I’m left with a tension created by my comparisons, internal dialogs, and my approval ratings.
Comparing may be the number one way we understand our world. At an individual level,comparing may be the only way to expand the boundaries of our standards. We seek to validate the need for standards by justifying their inherent importance to our survival.
Standards inevitable evoke an ongoing need for proof of necessity. The kind of necessity that instills fear of being without them. Sometimes, instead of directing the flow of life, we are pushed by it towards the support of concepts that demands/ not requests our adherence to, whether reasonable or not. We can become entrapped within an illogical system of universal approval.
Comparing everything can create a rigid structure where creativity is stifled. It could also mean that our ability to have a free thought is about as likely as a baby understanding particle physics. The free world as I would like to think of it, is made up of systems that may not be of the same mind or vision as mind. The idea, “live and let live” may be a concept that sits on the fringe of sanity.