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Quote of the Day: The Small World of the Paranoid
[S]uppose it were the case of a man who accused everybody of conspiring against him. If we could express our deepest feelings of protest and appeal against this obsession, I suppose we should say something like this: “Oh, I admit that you have your case and have it by heart, and that many things do fit into other things as you say. I admit that your explanation explains a great deal; but what a great deal it leaves out! Are there no other stories in the world except yours; and are all men busy with your business? Suppose we grant the details; perhaps when the man in the street did not seem to see you it was only his cunning; perhaps when the policeman asked you your name it was only because he knew it already. But how much happier you would be if you only knew that these people cared nothing about you! How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny selfishness and their virile indifference! You would begin to be interested in them, because they were not interested in you. You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always being played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers.
GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Chapter 2
Too often we are prone to worry about what others are thinking or doing about us, yet so very often there’s nothing of the sort going on. We see something that offends us or gives us offense by proxy on someone else’s behalf. Yet, in most cases, the actions of others are utterly devoid of the motivations we, in our vanity, ascribe to them. The truth, both sad and liberating, is that most of the world doesn’t think about us at all, nor we of them.
This is part of the January Quote of the Day Series, for January 6
Published in General
I remember a discussion online a few years ago regarding a sign at a nail salon informing customers that the workers would speak only on English. I was quite puzzled by this so I read through the comments to figure out why this was important. It seemed that most people cheered this. Not because speaking whatever their native tongue was impaired their performance but because the customers wanted to be sure the worker weren’t talking bad about them.
I found it mind boggling.
Thanks, Skip! GKC is a favorite! You might enjoy Aidan Nichols, OP’s “Chesterton: Theologian”
Yup, it’s part of the job of the church to puncture human self-importance, which narrows the horizons of mind.
Paranoia is the unfounded belief that those who are plotting against you are sufficiently organized to be worth worrying about.
Then there’s narapoia, the feeling that you’re always following someone else around (I forget the author). I especially like the part where he says he feels like people are plotting to do him good.
Edit: Looks like Alan Nelson.
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And then the paranoid lashes out at a third party who has innocently and unknowingly stumbled through one of the paranoid’s pet grudges. Which in turn transmits paranoia to the unexpectedly attacked person. (Why’d they hit me? I wasn’t doing anything. Who is going to hit me next for no reason?)
Seawriter
But nothing like that has ever happened to you. ?
Oh, heavens no. It is just a hypothetical. Someone would have to be paranoid to think I was talking about them.
Seawriter
”Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.”
“People aren’t against you; they are for themselves.”
— Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Trump’s mastered both of those.
Exactly what a dear friend told me 6 years ago:
“People have their own lives!”
Wow. I’d never have encountered this had you not posted it. Wow.
I’m there. Growing old has its benefits.
I’ve been listening to this book for the first time myself. Found a free audio version released as a podcast through podiobooks.com.
What’s kinda funny with the narration (Grizzly Adams is the narrator), is that the narrator is American, but Chesterton was English and to hear “Chesterton” discussing things of London, and matters English, it jolting. Grizzly also occasionally mispronounces words, either in their entirety (which is jarring), or as an Americanism (which earns a smirk from my Anglophile sensibilities).
It’s a good book, and I aim to review it when done, but it is at times rather a dated read, for he often refers to writers and personages no longer familiar to us. H. G. Wells, for instance, comes in for much scorn, and how many of us remember that he was also a prolific philosophical writer, hostile to Christianity and enamored of Nietzsche and fascism. Or George Bernard Shaw, who was an active socialist.
Skip, this book has a companion volume: “Heretics”. Both make clear that nothing is new under the sun. You can substitute current personages, if you like, and the responses would be the same. Truth is never dated. Fr. Nichols’ book may offer some helpful context, too.
I can’t remember where I heard it, but the line stuck with me: I recall years ago some writer being interviewed, who said “you wouldn’t worry so much about what other people thought of you, if you knew how infrequently they did.”
The whole answer to race relations.
I remember reading both of those birds. I read Wells on my own. The gubmint school had to make me read Shaw.
I am very much enjoying Chesterton (and the dated references don’t bother me as I know them already – it’s just a warning that others might not), so I’ll eagerly see if I can find an audio of Heretics next!
I thought of that too, Randy!
An answer to the Trigglypuffs of the world, too. Mr. Chesterton was truly awakened – and woke others, as well.