What is Real?
December 15, 2009
My lengthy rejoinder to this post about a female who blogged under a man's name went poof into the Internet. In sum: Bernie Madoff was as real as it gets. He wasn't anonymous. He had credibility. It was all illusion.
Once you realize that most of life is an illusion, and that nearly everything you've learned is a life, you stop caring about authority. Who are you? It doesn't matter to me, since you could lie to me. Even your accomplishments could be lies, or only half-truths.
If you scored in the top 10% of law school while having your parents support you the entire way, your accomplishment doesn't impress me. Of course a person with nothing to worry about except school should achieve such grades. I had a blind law school classmate who graduated in the top 10%. Now that's an accomplishment. Yet a bullet point on a resume or biographical sketch would tell the same truth about each.
What's the truth? Well, the truth is that both students graduated in the top 10% - which means that the truth often tells us much less than we think it does.