There are Simpler Explanations
Obvious explanation of his behavior
One of the most powerful principles I have ever encountered is called “Occam’s Razor.” It is named after a Scottish logician from the 13th century, and it states that a simpler explanation is normally better than a more complex one and thus preferable. It should be generally appealing, but I have found that even very educated people can react rather hostile if you demonstrate that their worldview is unnecessarily complicated and can be explained in a much more coherent way that unfortunately challenges some of their long held beliefs.
In the Middle Ages, if you wanted to make live a bit harder for yourself, all you had to do was to claim that the Earth is not the center of the universe but instead revolves around the sun. Having irrefutable proof wouldn’t have helped you escape prosecution either. It possible to develop a mathematical model of our solar system that describes the other planets as revolving around the Earth, but it is much more complex than the now universally accepted notion that the Sun is the center. But back then the authorities were in denial to further their own egoistic agendas, not unlike our contemporary leaders.
Beliefs are immune to logic, but before you now laugh at the short-sightedness of the authorities in the Middle Ages, please consider how many modern beliefs, maybe from the realm of economics, we are told to accept as gospel. I won’t bother dissecting political myths in this article. Maybe I’ll do so in the future. Instead, I’d like to show you how you can use simple reasoning to make your life easier.
We humans have a tendency to not immediately accept reality but instead make excuses. Say, you are a girl and you’ve met your Prince Charming at an art exhibition. You’ve had great chemistry and seemed to really hit it off, and weren’t surprised that he called you shortly afterwards because he wanted to meet you again. You felt there was connection, so it was just consequential that you ended up sleeping with him after the first date. Of course, you are an “empowered” woman, so you do what you want.
However, it’s now been almost a week since you’ve met him. You’ve called him at least a dozen times, and because you got desperate, after all, there aren’t that many men out there you consider interesting, you sent a barrage of text messages as well. Looking for a plausible explanation of his inexplicable behavior, you were wondering whether something might have happened to him. Maybe he got into an accident, or maybe he lost his phone? Thus, you track him down on Facebook, and message him. But he still doesn’t reply, even though he seems to log in rather frequently. Not wanting to read the writing on the wall, you say to yourself that maybe he has just missed your message, or was too busy to read it.
But what about the most obvious explanation of his behavior, namely that you got played and he only wanted to see whether you’d sleep with him. He never really was interested in you, and what you perceived as a “connection” was nothing but a figment of your imagination. Yes, the truth can hurt, but you can’t move on if you prefer denial instead.
Those were just two examples, and I am sure that if you think about your life, you’ll find more than a few instances in which you refused to accept the obvious for a while and preferred your fantasies over cold hard reality. Occam’s razor will help you dissecting them.
- Tags: relationship management, seduccion
