Betweenity
Intellectualize or irrationality?

To intellectualize is to make a transition towards reason. A person leaves emotion aside by focusing on facts and logic . If only it were that simple! Unfortunately, facts and logic have become almost antonyms of themselves. Facts are often lies and logic is often irrational. The brain needs to be retrained not to think critically. What’s hapeping now is like going back to our simian ancestors, hanging from a tree, beating the chest to show strength, and teaching them to walk on four paws instead of as bipeds.
The problem is that intellectualization is one of our most reliable psychological mechanisms for self-defense, and comprehension while we make our way through the chaos of reality. Its loss can lead to irreversible damage.
As recently as 2016,
one could intellectualize that the US election system was based upon an electoral college who essentially gets to call the last shot, regardless of what millions of voters have decided. One might easily overlook this paradox when is compared to the notion of the democracy we’ve been sold. We understand that the electoral college is a defense mechanism composed of a tiny number of people (compared to the population of the country, a grain inside a bucket), established to protect the nation from a derailed leader, a crook, an impostor, etc. Instead, with vivid ulterior motives, this tiny group of little individuals served on a platter the election to a looser, based upon misogyny and hate.
The great majority of the nation had to intellectualize the outcome, control themselves for 4 years, hoping to eventually try to change the curse of its destiny. We all know this structured charade was put into law with good intentions. But at this time is a passé idea of protection (as it proved not to accomplish its responsibility), forcing intellectual citizens to obey whatever the outcome, including the purpose of democracy itself.
Millions are still trying to intellectualize the cancellation of their health insurance, drink polluted water with no accountability, welcoming chemicals in the environment, lack of consumer protection, persecution of immigrants, their taxes raised, cruelty to animals, apart from another list of cruel and moral offenses. On the other hand, it became legitimate that the top managerial employees of the federal government can bill the taxpayer their fun jetting around the globe as they please, carrying their families, apart from onther kind of looting the fiscal coffers of the nation.
One can say that the flight to reason became more like the Japanese pilots during WW2, a real kamikaze experience. As a result, I decided to meditate upon the other forms of default psychological self-defense mechanism in their logical sequence, in order to refresh my mind, and see which one of them I still have available to access at this time in case I need it.
- Denial is at the top of the list, self-explanatory and obviously, a keeper. I mean, millions love it, why not join the masses while eating chocolate?
- Repression is next to denial. It's as pointless as denial, and beforehand blurs the possibility of explosion.
- Regression maybe revert to the childlike emotional state, and re-train the brain? We have an example of a troubled child who managed to be elected as president by people, who swear they are not certifiable, neither the child. Many swear God approved.
- Displacement should I go, and punch anyone who lost their mind inside the voting booth? Do I think one would be enough to satisfy my thirst for intellectualization? Nope!
- Projection well, that one is tough. I can go ballistic, but where do I start? I mean it’s a wide territory to cover.
- Reaction formation . . . too military-oriented for me. After all, I am an artist. I can have all those noir wishes against causation, inspiring me to feel bitter while expressing myself, but instead, I have chosen to eat chocolate to hide my ballistic desires.
- Rationalization? It’s the twin of intellectualization. It does not matter if I try to intellectualize, as the noir thoughts don’t leave my brain. I continue to blame, blame, blame, who put us through it all? So, I recognize, and admit that (oh oh), I am a blamer! I admit. . . . OOPS! I am at fault that is; I am aware, and rationalized that I am a blamer. So I am closer to the next:
- Sublimation! This one is like the icing on top of the yummy muffin! I am marvelous, I OOOPS, beating my chest that I blame, blame, and blame and, I am recovering my intellectualization, eating chocolate and waiting until serendipity comes, and changes things.
In the meantime, I can spend time trying to decide where my betweenity is. I mean I am between intellectualizing it all or becoming irrational.
Shakespeare comes to mind thinking of my memento mori, reminding me when he submits Hamlet into sort of accepting the “consummation” of his life by “questioning” the point of it all. The end is a chain reaction of revenge, death, and nothing is left.
At the moment, my own betweenity shows a commonality: they are extreme. I am aware that I will die one day. So I keep on eating chocolate.
what else?

I guess the only way to visually explain how I feel is to compare it with a sandwich
I have morphed into a White thin Pepperidge Farm Bread Sandwich filled with shit living inside a geographic shithole.

The final wish is that serendipity shows up with a great solution. But, in the meantime schadenfreude can be handy to hang on to, as events are beginning to feel with pleasure the culprits’ pain. Maybe the ecosystem will end up being balanced as mother nature is wondrous. Predators are beginning to do what nature expects them to do: cleanse each other through the digestive system.
Filled with this giddy thought I feel totally firgunning, joining the elation of friends who are also in the same state as mine, while eating chocolate, of course!
PS: Firgun is a Hebrew word that means to take joy in someone else’s’ joy!
Bread has been a staple as basic food for thousands of years. In case you want to intellectualize which bread you should eat due to content quality and health concerns.
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