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Mr. Possible

@Mrpossidez

May 4

To be a Christian, truly, is to sincerely desire not to fall short, not merely knowing that you may unavoidably fall. And if that desire is absent—if you are not unwilling to sin—then your religion is theater. Very simply, this is why I’m not a fundamentalist Christian.

I am not unwilling. I not only accept that I will fall short, I believe, quite soberly, that the complexity of human life makes orthodox “sinfulness” not just probable, but also necessary. Certain actions and contradictions cannot be resolved by rule, only by presence.

Not all virtue lies in abstention. Some lie in moral tensions, whereby to do right by one principle is to necessarily violate another. I’ve accepted that morality does not always map cleanly onto action, but rather onto context, intent, and impossible choices.

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Mr. Possible

@Mrpossidez

May 2

I think you can love someone fairly unconditionally. You can love someone even if you’re not with them or expecting anything in return. But within a relationship, it becomes conditional. A relationship has its own life. It breathes. It makes demands. It has its rules.

I know people define love as a choice or impose other virtues unto it but I don’t think love is complicated. I don’t think it’s more than deep affection and endearment for someone that inspires (but is not automatically equal to) respect, loyalty, compassion and care. Simple.

In a way, I think of love like the light. It illuminates. But a relationship is like the vessel, it holds. Without a vessel, the light can still exist, but it has nowhere to settle, nowhere to shape into something mutual and sustainable.

Read 13 tweets

Mr. Possible

@Mrpossidez

Apr 13

Here’s one story that shaped me in many ways. Throughout school, I was always first in class. It came naturally to me. I understood quite easily, could memorize with ease, and could read between the lines before most people around me could finish a sentence.

It was normal in my household. Like me, my elder sister was first in her class too from kindergarten till university. It never felt like an accomplishment. There were no congratulatory dinners in my house and most times, nobody asked what we got after the term ended.

But there is one term I remember vividly in secondary school. There was a boy in my class who always came second. I admired him so much. I always told him he was smarter than me and I meant it, though he never believed. How could he? But I really did. He was perfect in my eyes.

Read 23 tweets

Mr. Possible

@Mrpossidez

Apr 8

They say you can’t trust the loyalty of a poor man. But, ironically, the loyalty of a poor man is the loyalty you can easily trust. Wealth creates the illusion of genuineness and freedom, but it makes people fragile—they have too much to lose.

We assume that wealth enables loyalty or makes loyalty more genuine. That is only partially true. Wealth & success also begins to eliminate the very set of circumstances that would put their loyalty to test. And without those tests, what does loyalty even mean?

Success empowers by accumulation but makes people fragile. When you’ve built a reputation, a fortune, a name, you start to move with caution. And then too much of it. You have too much to protect. And in protecting it, you slowly forget how to give yourself away.

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Mr. Possible

@Mrpossidez

Jan 19

A 2021 study showed that exposure to superior intelligence activates our threat detection system in the brain. The amygdala lights up when we encounter someone visibly smarter than us and it’s the same response we have to physical threats. It upsets us.

It’s not just a figure of speech when people say that intelligence hurts the ego. It literally triggers pain responses which make us sensitive. If people feel less intelligent around you, they either avoid you unconsciously, cheapen you to feel better or try to prove you wrong.

What’s interesting, is how people react to this feeling. They don’t say: oh! this people makes me feel stupid. They instinctively assume that the smarter person is looking down on them. Even if the person hasn’t said a word about it. People feel judged by the presence alone.

Read 19 tweets

Mr. Possible

@Mrpossidez

Dec 22, 2024

On critical thinking—

here is how I think it looks practically: first, take a statement and imagine a world where it’s true and a world where it’s false. Then, honestly work to find the essential differences between each of those two worlds and the real world.

Our personalities and prejudices automatically help us choose one, so there’s no trouble there. The hard part is imaging a world where the opposite is also valid or true. Then, finding where the difference maker lies - what is closest to the objective? What is truer than true?

As you can tell, this is hard work. It’s why people take most things at face value without the mental rehearsal. But it is that broad imagination that reveals the flaws in either positions. People assume that what is wrong will immediately reveal itself but it’s not so intuitive.

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