On the Danger of Sacredness

Sacred things only bring pain in the end

My worldview is a graph of concepts. Yours is probably too.

When I have a thought, a flash traverses a short path in that graph, amalgamating the contents of the nodes it touches. Sometimes, the thought results in a conclusion. That is usually a conclusion targeting a certain concept.

If the conclusion is emotionally charged, it may conflict with the feelings I have about the concept it’s about. If it disagrees with my attitude, I get cognitive dissonance and am given a choice: either I dismiss the conclusion or remap my worldview.

Obviously, revisiting beliefs is much more difficult than dismissing new conclusions. That’s what I do by default. I develop a habit of dismissing. Now, some of my concepts only get reinforced and never penalized. Over time, an opaque shell starts to enclose singular concepts in the graph. It usually happens to those nodes I have an emotional attachment to.

It’s nothing bad at first. I don’t usually criticize those things anyway nor do I listen to people who do. Negative conclusions about them are rare and easy to ignore. Given enough time though, those protected concepts get more sensitive and start to sting me if I happen to have a bad thought about them. Moreover, a nagging pain appears each time I dare even to doubt my shelled concepts. They have become sacred.

Yet it is not the final stage of my predicament, of course not. Sacredness is a creeping disease. It starts to infect neighboring nodes in the graph. If I was careless enough to believe that I could have left selected “truths” unchallenged, I will have more of them. The nagging pain will take over large swathes of the graph, and stinging will start to occur after every doubtful flicker of thought.

I don’t know if there’s a point of no return with giving in to the feeling of sacredness. But if there is, I’d like to turn away from it before it devours me.

What options do I have? I can twist and warp my mind to avoid unpleasant thoughts. That will drain me and possibly drive me mad because I won’t be able to handle any real-world evidence that speaks negatively about my sacred things.

Or I can face the pain and burn the shells I have allowed to grow.

The choice is mine.