un petit défoulement
What if, even just for a moment,
I took seriously the idea that I am categorically wrong.
That my existence, my brain, my subjectivity and the texture of my experience in the world, is wrong, is normatively incorrect, is misconfigured and improperly deployed. What if I retreat from the axiom that It Can't Be Wrong To Be What I Am and allowed for the possibility that, even if not possibly for anyone else, I am simply an incorrect, improper human being in the way that I think and perceive and experience.
Worry not, dear reader! This is only an intellectual exercise, albeit certainly not without origins in my current state of mental health. By the time you stop reading this post, this cruel assumption will be ejected from the implicit bookkeeping of our asynchronous, one-sided conversation, and you can take comfort in knowing that I myself have rejected this hypothetical move since finishing writing.
But anyway, back to our rhetorical pocket dimension where I am a living, breathing error. Join me in looking around, taking stock, and noticing what differs between this world and the one where I'm Valid.
I personally cannot imagine that there would be much that differs at all, in part because I didn't say anything like "Let's assume my society's values have changed in such-and-such a way". Maybe society would yet wrongheadedly cleave to the lie that the way I am is okay, but that wouldn't change the Objective Ground Truth. Regardless of the dominant societal values, some people would defend me, cherish me, love me, and others would scorn me, avoid me, reject me, just like before.
Nor would the specifics of my own subjectivity necessarily be any different (you'll have to take my word on this one, unless you've got a backdoor to my subconscious, in which case holy shit bro can i borrow that for a sec). I would fear, worry, despair, resent, and self-delude as much as I do now.
Crucially, I would also continue to live, and continue willing to live. I only relaxed one of my Core Axioms, after all, so I Have To Keep Trying To Live is still very much intact. I would be committed to the continuation of my own aberrance. Would I be able to handle the cognitive dissonance between my will to live and my inherent wrongness? I suspect that I would be cornered into distorting the latter, into wrenching my system of values away from truth in accordance with my most primal duty as a creature, into concluding that It Can't Be Wrong To Be What I Am.