None of this is real, btw

Just thought you should know.

The cost of Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people is $58.08 this year, according to CNBC.

$5.81 per person.

And that’s great to read, because I was at the grocery store yesterday, and it seemed like $58 would hardly be enough to feed myself for a weekend.

So it’s refreshing to be told the truth:

Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people is just $58.08 this year.

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You’re being lied to.

And before you think this is going to devolve into a “fake news” rant, I promise you it won’t.

Because it’s way more important than that.

Nothing is real. None of this.

At least, not in the way you think.

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I stumbled across this concept in my friend Tim’s Substack the other day.

It’s called Avidya.

Tim:

“A kind of inherent blindness, a distortion in perception that keeps us from seeing things as they are.”

I laughed when I read the CNBC headline about the Thanksgiving dinner from the five-and-dime store.

“That’s not true. It’s obvious. How could anyone believe that?”

But that CNBC headline is what your brain is doing to you.

With everything.

All the time.

Every single day.

And you’re buying it.

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Back to “Avidya.”

“A distortion in perception that keeps us from seeing things as they are.”

Another way to put that:

Nothing in life is actually the way you perceive it. Everything — literally everything — is subject to cognitive biases.

Confirmation bias causes us to seek information that confirms what we already believe.

The availability heuristic causes us to overestimate the likelihood of events based on how easily they come to mind.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect causes people with limited knowledge in a domain to overestimate their competence, leading to things like me trying to help out in the kitchen on Thursday.

Everything you experience and process is run through thousands of mental filters overlayed with a thick layer of cognitive bias.

Nothing that comes out of that process can even come close to resembling objective truth.

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Point is:

The way you perceive reality is just as accurate as the likelihood you can walk into a Kroger with $58.08 and feed a family of 10 without calling on Christ to multiply the stuffing and turkey.

You are being lied to, all the time.

And usually, you’re the one lying to yourself.

You can look at this as discouraging, I suppose. It’s a little unsettling to consider that your perceptions and beliefs are inherently flawed.

But isn’t it sort of liberating?

It means you can question your assumptions. You can identify and expel thoughts that don’t serve you as lies.

And if you do it right?

Accepting that you can’t see anything clearly will help you see everything more clearly.