Entering the Asylum: Notes on Pretending

I've visited people in mental institutions and never found it difficult. Yes, such places can be objectively horrible—the smell, the baffling behavior, the eerie screaming in the distance—and I must find common ground with a friend in embarrassing circumstances. But I'm fine with all that, and can offer genuine friendliness and hope. I meet circumstances as they are; omnivorous when it comes to What's Happening.

When I visit similarly dysfunctional people in their homes, it doesn't go so well. I clock circumstances clearly, but am expected to ignore much of it and feign lovely normalcy. My job is to inhabit an alternative reality—or at least maintain the façade. "You're doing so great!"

Having spent my life deliberately dismantling my façades and finding easeful stance in What Is, I can have a perfectly smooth visit in a psychiatric hospital and lift a friend's mood. I ride any truth with equanimity. But the tradeoff is that I've lost my falsehood chops. Saddle me with an obligation to pretend, and I'll grow so confused you might as well have me committed somewhere.

Not Too Sweet!

When I hear someone compliment a dessert for being "not too sweet", my standard reply is "Also: it doesn't have any broken glass in it!"

100% of the time it's regarded as non sequitur.

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No one praises bread for being unburnt, or soup for being not-undersalted, or ice cream for being unmelted. In no other instance is a non-mistake something to celebrate.

But it's not really a compliment. The person is editorializing. They want it known that they don't like sweet things, and while they might have acknowledged dessert was never for them, they've pressed ahead all this time, expecting their minority taste to be catered to, and finally—finally!—it's been done the right way. They are offering a withering critique to the world at large, disguised as faint praise for some random something.

This is so normal that it hardly parses as batshit crazy. Entitlement itself has become an entitlement.

Optimism

‘Optimist,’ at this point, is what people who’ve set their hair on fire call those who think it’s not useful to set one’s hair on fire.

Wine Tip

I remember when you seemed like a lunatic for claiming a Venezuelan street vendor's corn cakes were superb. Serious food was eaten in serious places with linen napkins, and those other places serve cheap greasy sustenance for shabby shmucks. I had to beg my editor at NY Press to publish my rave of The Arepa Lady in 1993 (which became a sensation, as did she). Here it is.

Now everyone takes it for granted that "deliciousness is deliciousness", per the Chowhound credo (which, in 1997, seemed provocatively edgy). Now everyone's a food expert.

But the expertise is astonishingly thin and conformist. People know to eat Thai with a fork, and to tear off bits of pita to grab chunks of Lebanese mezze. There are about 500 little practices and factoids all foodies internalize, but I keep waiting for everyone to catch up on the wider wisdom.

It's not happening. This, apparently, is as far as it gets (which explains why virtually no one bought my app, which dumped all my food know-how into a convenient package for $5). People want to conform, not learn.

But I'll share a seemingly obvious trick not one person appears to have clued in on.

Pity those who create wine lists for fancy restaurants. You might think charging $75+/bottle allows them free rein to include fancy grog. But restaurant bottles are marked up 2.5-4.5x, so those smug sommeliers kvelling over their sumptuous offerings are all lipsticking pigs. Your $200 dinner includes legit pricey ingredients and preparations, but the wine is not special occasion wine. It's ≈$20-35 bottles. To bridge this impossible gap, wine directors wine-hound like a mo-fo, sussing out cheap stuff which pairs well with luxe, refined food. It's an excruciating task. Very much a Wizard of Oz reveal.

But it's fantastic for us. You might not drink $90 bottles at home, but you may drink $25 ones, and if you simply steal tips from fancy restaurant wine lists, buying in-store sans mark-up, you can draft on their labors.

I've never seen anyone do this. Just me.

For that matter, wine directors could draft on previous efforts (every wine list is out on the Internet). They don't, because they're smug and snotty and want to feel like wine experts, so every curation is bespoke. Me, I could "create" your four star wine list in like two hours by zeroing in on a dozen particularly clever ones, and mixing/matching.

If you read wine magazines for tips, or ask friends for tips, or (jesus) ask wine store bozos for tips, you're doing it all wrong. Print up the wine list from the most legit upscale place in your town, and go buy a bottle or two for 20-30 bucks.

"Wall-ah!" as the French say.

Marjorie Taylor Greene

Prediction: Marjorie Taylor Greene will be a major force in the 2028 presidential election. Perhaps even the candidate.

Trump won’t live forever (he keeps dropping out of sight for 4 or 5 days at a time), and Vance, Miller, Trump Jr. and Hegseth are not loved by Republicans or MAGAs. Being a clownish asshole helps, but, alone, it’s not enough.

Many Republicans are shaking off some Trumpism, presenting an opportunity for someone to draw smart lines between themselves and Trump. Greene’s done this with health, the Epstein Files, and inflation—the places where Republicans disagree with Trump. It’s smart, and nobody’s noticed what she’s doing. She’s extremely strategic (look how much power she’s wielded as a newbie!). Her break from Boebert (remember the "catfight"?) was perfectly timed. We’ve underestimated her savvy.

Independents currently think of Greene as a white trash bomb-thrower. There’s time to fix that image, and many press cycles for her to act grown-up and sane (she’s already doing it). Also, she’s never really been as trashy as she’s been seemed and acted. She’s actually done some stuff in her life. And her strategy sense and smarts have proven, and continue to prove, orders of magnitude better than dems or reps recognize.

By 2027, all the others will be shucking and jiving with the full Trump agenda, including stuff conservatives hate. All Wile E Coyotes hovering in mid-air having sprinted past the cliff edge with enthusiastic momentum. Only one person is acting smart now to position herself where she needs to be - a slate-cleaner who still fits the bill.

Right now, I’d put money on her being the 2028 candidate, but lots of stuff will happen before then. I don't "like" her, nor do I "agree" with her, but she's a phenomenon.

A friend who's a top honcho in the anti-Trump movement agreed, adding "Her pivot on the shutdown is absolutely a work of art."

Discussing "Letting Go"

Following up on my recent posting, "Levels of Letting Go"



What exactly are you suggesting letting go of at "Level Four"?

Everything.


Everything?

That's right.


So I'd quit my job and wander naked through the streets?

I didn't say to do anything differently. Just let go.


How can I let go while also participating?

If you drop a grudge, does anything materially change?


No. Just my perspective.

Bingo.

You can drop tons of exhausting weight without anything materially changing. Far, far more than you'd imagine.

Like I said, Atlas was wrong. He could have let go of the world at any time and it would have been fine. You have no idea how much you're holding up, because you're used to it. But it was always unnecessary. You can drop the unnecessary. When you do, you'll discover that it was the weight of the entire universe.


You wrote that we're all keeping Neptune going in our heads. I don't feel like I'm devoting much energy to that.

Not much, but you're devoting some. And Neptune's just one thing in a vast internal realm. Let it all go in one big drop, and that's Level Four. Nothing changes. You've just dropped an exhausting, unnecessary process.


I don't feel like I'm putting myself through an exhausting process.

Are you exhausted?


Yes.

I rest my case.


But I'm exhausted because my mom's in the hospital and my kid sprained her ankle and my boss underpays me and our president is an authoritarian racist. How could I not be exhausted?

Try it and see. Problems are mandatory, but burden is optional.

Atlas was silly. The world never needed him to hold it up. Letting go would have freed up his energy to really help!

We are all like Atlas, subconsciously obliged to pretend to bear all the weight. You won't fully understand until you opt out—of the pretending (not the engaging!). It all clears up once you finally let go.


How do I go about it?

This entire Slog is pretty much devoted to coaxing reframes. Meditation loosens up the gears.

Practice shifting perspective, aka reframing. Work on levels 1, 2, and 3. Forgive willy-nilly—even people you're not mad at. Even people you don't know.

Then, once you get a feel for it, bear in mind that the whole edifice can drop. Remember the foolishness of Atlas. Remember that burden is needless. Remember that when you cut everything out from underneath you that you'll float, not fall.

Correcting the Record?

If someone has a wrong idea about you—about something you said, did, or thought—you might, with effort, convince them otherwise. Maybe!

But here's the problem: we exalt our assumptions and opinions, even when they're whimsical. They outweigh provable truth (if this seems odd, imagine how different this world would be if it weren't so). So after all the explaining, you won't have cleared yourself. You'll have been given a reprieve. They'll frame it like forgiveness. They've forgiven your transgression...this time!

So the next time you offend, confuse, or simply trigger another wrong conclusion, you’ll be treated as a repeat offender. No more benefit of the doubt for you, mister.


I no longer correct people. Whatever wrong thing they're thinking about me, they can hold on to it. I don't exhaust myself playing whack a mole.

Levels of Letting Go

Level One: Forgiving
You finally decide to forgive your neighbors for having backed their car over Sparky, your beloved pet slug. One can't hold a grudge forever. You immediately feel better, confirming the old saw that "holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die." Not that we ever learn.

Level Two: Really Forgiving!
Your parents were alcoholics. But with maturity you realize they tried their best within behavior patterns learned from their own alcoholic parents. All those horrible memories you've hoarded and revisited innumerable times were just you needlessly stoking misery and senselessly curbing your happiness level.

You let go, and this one feels great! It's a bigger letting go, so the reward's commensurately more dramatic. You're downright unburdened, and the relief feels like the good Lord Himself rewarding your high-mindedness.

Level Three: Grinch/Scrooge
The Grinch drops his lifelong Grinch act and tries a little tenderness. Ebenezer Scrooge screams MERRY CHRISTMAS at strangers and neighbors.

Dr. Seuss—who, being a doctor, ought to know—insists that the Grinch's heart grows three sizes larger—or so it feels. This is the zone of transformation. It's like forgiveness, but at much grander scale, and the aftermath is ecstatic. No longer encumbered by a duty to cosplay this miserable character, you are free, and you bubble over with cheer and love.

Level Four: The Whole Thing
What if dropping pretense felt so good that you kept going? What if there's a chain reaction? What if, since you're letting go of a tectonic assumption you've been nursing your whole life, you let go of the whole damned thing? What if you even let go of, say, Neptune?

This is rare (few people read my "Surprisingly Uplifting Examination of Suicide" and come away thinking "That's relatable!"). But it happens. You drop the entire pretense, the whole shebang, the whole nine yards.

Reward Levels
All four levels use the same process of reframing, but they're increasingly broad wipes of caked-on assumptions and needless graspings. And in terms of after-effect, the more the merrier.

At level 1, you feel the peace of mind of removing something that's been on your mind. At level 2, it's a deep refresh after reinterpreting a foundational story. At level 3, you've reframed at the heady level of Identity, and it's like a reboot. At level 4 (assuming you can manage to refrain from dramatizing your de-dramatization, and simply let go into the letting go), you've got spiritual transformation.

Each stokes a greater intensity of emotion. Level 1 rewards with a cookie, Level 2 is a sauna, Level 3 is tearful bliss, and Level 4 is, well, all the power in the universe (the yogis call it Kundalini, which I wrote about here).

Why's the rush so immense on that last one? I've never seen an acceptable explanation. So here goes: upon letting go of Everything, you consciously experience the assets previously devoted to holding up Everything. And it's many orders of magnitude more than you'd realized. You've been busy!

You know the circus performer spinning 50 plates? Each of us spins billions of plates. And, at any moment, we can drop the whole ordeal. The effort. The clenching.

The good news is that the plates won't crash (Atlas, poor shmuck, never needed to hold up the world; it was always fine on its own). And all those assets come free like a tidal wave.

It's impossible to imagine the full magnitude. As I explained at that last link, when you let go of everything, you free up the energy you were using to create and maintain, for example, Neptune. Or, at least, the Neptune you've kept running inside of you:

Everything you conceptualize about the planet Neptune is in you. Is there a "real" Neptune "out there", too? Let's say, for simplicity, that there is. But you certainly model and maintain an inner Neptune. And a Toledo. And a Roman Empire. And an Andromeda Galaxy. Pile on top of all that emotionally fraught tales of struggle, victimhood, triumph - plus the myriad details of your Persona - and keep all those plates diligently spinning, and you'll have created a monster. A universe. A monster of a universe!

Smaller lettings go yield a cookie reward, and it's a lot like how our biology encourages us to eat, drink, sleep, wash, and procreate by making those things feel good. One might assume that letting go is another thing our bodies encourage. Perhaps so, but it's much better explained subtractively. Letting go of a grudge frees the assets and energies previously locked into that. We maintain myriad projects of poison-drinking, but letting go of it all brings ecstasy.

Whether the biology coaxes you or the good Lord consoles you, the ironic truth is that devoting massive energy to pretense means massive relief when pretense is dropped. Here's the first joke I learned as a four year old child: "I asked the man why he was hitting himself in the head with a hammer, and he replied 'Because it feels so great when I stop!'"

We carry the full weight of the world. And every Atlas deserves a break.


Here's a follow-up posting clarifying what, exactly, we let go of at Level 4.


See alsoJnani Train
The Toddler and The Steering Wheel 

"Both Sides" is the Way Out

"Both sides" thinking is the time-tested cure for contretemps, personal or political.

Step one: Refrain from shrieking like a stuck pig when you hear the phrase.

We need more bothsidesism...on both sides. That’s the only route back.

By turning our withering gaze on ourselves first, we start a process of transforming seeming-monsters back into friends and neighbors.

Sunk Cost Prolongs Idiocy

I'm replaying this posting from January 2022. If you're interested in some of the themes that fascinate me, this is a deeper dive tying a lot of them together. It's the heavy version.

It's not a "read", it's a soak (people, alas, come to blogs expecting to read bloggy stuff). One needs to spend time with it and perhaps reread multiple times.

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Sunk-Cost Fallacy(noun)
The phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial.

"Important" Means Never Letting Go
An acquaintance of mine has spent a full decade anguished over a single finite loss. She'd insist that it was a finite IMPORTANT thing. Fair enough. I get it!

But the universe won't bring it back just because she insists and fixates. Tagging phenomena "important" garners no special dispensation in this immersive cosmic swirl of unending creation and destruction we've opted into. We knew the rules going in.

Her friends try to soothe her. None would ever utter the obvious thing they're all thinking: "Let go! Move on!" Contemporary civilization is built upon an immutable law that the whiny must be consoled, and never have their assumptions challenged. While consolation only reinforces the false premise, sinking the person deeper into a mental tarpit, we want to seem helpful much more than we want to actually help. So we reinforce frozen perspectives rather than risk the friction of inducing a shift of perspective (aka "reframing").

Etch-A-Sketch People
Every torturous passing year adds greater incentive to tighten her clasp rather than let go, simply because of sunk cost. If she were to lightly shrug and simply move on with a hopeful spark in her eye - if it were that easy - then what was all that Sturm und Drang for? Opening up and reframing and letting go and moving on would reveal that the closing-down, holding-on, and paralysis was willfully unnecessary. And that is the last thing she wants to reveal to herself. She wants to avoid feeling silly far more than she wants happiness.

So she just keeps doubling down, planting herself so deeply in mental mud that she's become what I call an Etch-A-Sketch Person: so unflinchingly committed to a counterproductive dramatic trope that she'll drop it only upon the ultimate reset (i.e. Etch-A-Sketch shake) of death. She is tightly strapped in for this ride she’s decided to characterize herself as taking.

Improvement Requires Owning Your Shmuckiness
Please don't be an Etch-A-Sketch person. You needn't commit to a preposterously grim pretense of immobility. I've previously explained how we freeze perspective and how effortlessly we can self-liberate via reframing, but the insidious component is sunk cost. If my shackles could be effortlessly cast off, why have I been lavishly lamenting my plight? What was I, a shmuck?"

"What was I, a shmuck?" is the biggest problem.

Why can't adults learn effectively? Because that would mean acknowledging previous ignorance. What was I, a shmuck?

Why can't people change? Because that would mean acknowledging previous stuckedness. What was I, a shmuck?

Why can't people let go? Because that would mean acknowledging previous grasping. What was I, a shmuck?

That asshole Dylan Thomas really messed us all up with "Do not go gentle into that good night...burn and rave...Rage, rage against the dying of the light." NO! Opposing the inevitable is not admirably staunch and feisty. It's just poor mental health. Heed, instead, the incomparably wiser Anthony de Mello!

Why do people double down when caught, deny indisputable facts, and stick with hopeless causes? Commitment! It's a choice: Strap in tenaciously, rather than humbly concede your shmuckiness. Never drop character. Your impulses are solid gold, so remain fully inflated at all costs!

A Shmuck Never Has Far to Fall
I've come at this world ass-backwards, always presenting shmuckily. My underlying assumption is that I know nothing, am horribly skewed, deluded, error-prone, and sadly, pathetically clueless. In today's America, I sound like I require medication, if not institutionalization. I suffer from a POOR SELF-IMAGE, an unthinkable proposition for this society. One must fervidly hypnotize oneself back into delusion:

I am powerful and competent and people love me! I am powerful and competent and people love me! I am powerful and competent and people love me!

Stand tall! Straighten your spine! Accept without doubt that you are indisputably above-average in every respect! Be a WINNER, for chrissakes!

Nah. I never did any of that. I did recognize when I was right - because when you're right, you're right - but I never identified as "Mr. Right". I was always a zaggy hairball of wrongness who occasionally spat up an errant gem or twelve. I still feel that way! Have a look at this Slog's subtitle!

I've held onto this framing because it's worked out great. We all must choose between being right or feeling right; being smart or feeling smart; being wise, creative, insightful, or feeling those things. You can’t have it both ways, and I've blithely sacrificed the latter for the former. It was a rough ride, but, finally, teetering on dotage, I enjoy some perqs. I sit at the keyboard and some level of insight somewhat reliably flows. I once dreamt of that (of that HAPPENING, not of being The Guy Who Does That. I want to sing way more than I want to be a singer).

I stick with this framing, registering rightness and good results as they arise, but without trying to act the part. It doesn’t need to get all over you. One is not, it turns out, compelled to savor one’s own farts through haughtily dilated nostrils. It can feel like play, and be performed like a child, with unbridled enthusiasm and no grippy grown-up dramatic hooey.

And so I have nowhere to fall. Whenever new information, insight, or perspective reveals that I've been wrong all along, I swoon with delight. Being shown I've been wrong all along fills me with hope that one day I'll feel genuinely right! Who knows, maybe I'll turn this thing around!

The normal cure for feeling shmucky is to fix the feeling. I've always figured it made more sense to strive to become less shmucky. This approach is widely rejected, though, because it leaves people feeling starkly under-elevated. So it's a non-starter.

One advantage I enjoy is laziness. It takes vast energy to create and maintain a lofty self-image. You must strenuously reject fact, truth, change, improvement, and The Universe At Large. But with no self-image to maintain, I'm breezily unattached. I can drop any assumption or self-notion without existential crisis. Without sunk cost. Without looking back and saying "What was I, a shmuck?" The answer is eager affirmation. "Shmuck, yep!" This leaves me freshly, lithely responsive.

Better Cupcakes
Haughty food experts used to newly arrive at Chowhound, pronouncing this or that cupcake "The Best." Period. Truth has been revealed. Thor has spoken!

Inevitably, chowhound B would pipe up, "Nah. Try this other cupcake. It's better!" And chowhound A would grow huffily combative. Because if his cupcake isn't the greatest fucking cupcake, that means he's a shmuck. And, as he will assure you, he is certainly no shmuck. Whence flamewars.

I'd enter the conversation.

"Hey, buddy! :) You really like cupcakes, no?"

"And how!"

"Then wouldn't you want to know about even better ones? Wouldn't that be a welcome outcome? Me, I'm a recognized food expert, but nothing on gawd's green earth would make me happier than for someone to inform me that all my favorite places suck, and lead me to greater deliciousness, amen. That's my dream! I want it! Don't you want it? Don't you want even better cupcakes?"

"I don't know that his cupcakes are better!"

"Sure, but isn't it worth finding out? Isn't it enticing? Why would you fight so tenaciously against the hope of possibly-more-delicious cupcakes?"

It often worked. Maybe, just maybe, his momentary cupcake love could entice him out of the sunk cost of his shmuckiness denial.

Persuasion
I'm abnormally successful at changing people's minds. My success rate, when I'm not being ignored, misunderstood, argued with, patronized to, spat upon, or face-punched, can be as high as 5-10%.

My trick is to deal directly with perspective (framing!). I don't traffic in the usual clichéd talking points. I don't shame people or make them feel stupid. I don't ram them from the opposite direction. Heck, I don't even offer crisply logical argument, which is persuasive only to computers.

Rather, I try to coax a shift of perspective. You know the old canard of "Make them think they thought of the idea?" This is how that's done. Coax them into a fresh perspective, and let them draw their own conclusions. One can't force a conclusion, but one can certainly induce a shift of perspective (that’s what art is, and coaxing shifts of perspective is also the only viable route for a would-be Messiah).

The Cupcake Dialog was successful more than 5-10% of the time. Maybe a whopping 25%. Though it was often hard to tell, as they'd never come back and admit it. It was never really about cupcakes. It was about phenomenally misguided notions of who they are and what this life is.


I try hard not to manipulate. So, as I write this, I realize the Cupcake Dialog maybe was too much. First, their sunk cost is enormous, so I'm coaxing quite a violent drop back into sanity. Plus, many people need to feel absolutely fantastic to so much as get out of bed in the morning. Shake them into questioning their splendor and you might leave them with absolutely nothing, because splendor's all they’ve got.

This is why I've started viewing the conceited, the bullies, and the control freaks (have you ever noticed the latter are always the people least deserving to be in control?) as the desperate unfortunates they truly are. I frame them as adorable toddlers posing in cheap superhero Halloween costumes. Best to hug them, offer some candy, shut the door, and hope they go knock elsewhere. Nothing else to be done, nothing to change, because, in most cases, if you stripped off their preposterous cheap garb, you’d behold only trembling gelatin.

Trembling gelatin. My God. No wonder they're terrified.

So even the practice of inducing reframing - aka art - might be yet another hapless Messiah misfire. There really is no good reason to ever, ever raise the house lights. Just talk to the mask. Always talk to the mask. Never stop talking to the mask.

Problem is that I feel compelled to help them transcend that. I look behind the mask, and speak, sotto voce, directly to the mask-wearer, and have developed clever means to help people break free of facade. I had to go through a lot (a LOT a lot) to possess this ability. But it’s as useful as mastering Neptunian. Because it is in no way beneficial to expose trembling gelatin. Masks are often shields, and people sink vast cost into armoring, and beneath all this lies trembling helpless gelatin that's never seen the light of day.