Out To Get Me

Confirmation Bias:  A tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses.  

I was doing some reading on the subset of our population consumed with the belief that the world is riddled with big conspiracies.  I'm often flabbergasted when I hear people vehemently proclaim that something that's patently false is the absolute truth.  I can't understand how something so ridiculous can be taken as fact.  Confirmation bias occurs when folks who believe something surround themselves with other folks who believe the same thing.  They watch The Television programs that support their beliefs.  They hear new, even weirder things when they hang around people who believe what they believe until they seem to be getting their news reports from aliens on Pluto.

Now, as a guy who used to sit in dark bars getting shitfaced with other guys doing the same thing, all of us patting ourselves on the back at how much fun we were having and how messed up the world was and why in the hell did we deserve such a bum deal in life, anyhow? I may have a glancing knowledge of conspiracies.  People were Out to Get Me.  One of the greatest benefits of my personal inventory - my honest, searching, and thorough personal inventory - was that I tried to put down on paper what was really going on.  It wasn't a pretty sight.  It looked kind of irrational even to me, to be honest with you.  Still, I could justify most of it if I really worked at it. But then I had to sit down and talk to someone else about it.  My Chicago sponsor quickly disabused me of the notion that any of it was acceptable.  Vehement is a word that comes to mind.  

So here I am, a paragon of acceptance and mental health, world-renowned for my wisdom and insight and compassion, in the midst of this potential financial transaction.  I'm dealing with people who almost certainly aren't thinking about me at all and I'm ascribing all kinds of evil, bitchy motives to them.  They are . . . Out to Get Me.  I am going to be Taken Advantage Of.

I'm doing this writing because I'm pretty sure all of this is going to look Fairly Ridiculous up on my computer screen.  And I have messages out to my sponsor and a couple of other guys who aren't as dumb as I am.  I think I'm going to hear vehement things.  I'm pretty sure of it.