The Chronic Pain of Naivety

I've had this lifelong insecurity around the dreaded suspicion that my very nature is hobbled by chronic naivety.

This culture’s general attitude is that naivety is childish, a foolish and easily fooled frame of mind out of which a well-adjusted adult must grow.  It's regarded as shameful to an adult yet naive. But, it's apparently not a state out of which some of us grow.

Perhaps our culture should recognize that the inability not to be naive-- like blindness or deafness-- is not a deficiency. And, just as it would be morally repugnant to mock a person's blindness or deafness, asserting cynical advantage on a person unaware of deviousness is stooping beneath acceptable human stature.

Merely a suggestion-- and admittedly one made out of self-preservation.

The best illustration I can make of the nature of my character to which I refer is my reaction to two separate friends playing the same game.

Sometime in the mid-80’s, I and a group of friends-- artsy theater types-- sat and played the game “Scruples".

The game, as I recall, consisted of selecting cards, each presenting a moral dilemma. The card-drawer would share with the group how she would react to this dilemma. The group in response would share their opinion of the card-drawer’s “confession”.

It's significant that I don't have a clue from that first experience how the game is scored or how one wins. I don’t recall who won-- that wasn’t the point, it seemed.

The second time I played “Scruples” was about year later, again with a completely different group of artsy theater types. My initial enthusiasm about participating drained away as I witnessed this group’s approach to the game.  

Scoring and winning was very much the point of the game and one successfully gained points by being utterly disingenuous about how one would react to the moral dilemma presented on the game’s cards. The more convincingly you lied, the more points you gained.  It was explained to me that the game had no point otherwise. 

I’m sure I grew huffy; I don’t recall who won but, even though I must have tried to adjust to this new and unexpected strategy, I’m sure I didn’t score many points. (My passive-aggressive revenge was to contribute names such as “Dame Kiri Te Kanawa” and “Hermes Pan” in a subsequent game of Charades.)

I consider most of the individuals with whom I played these two different versions of the same game friends and make no judgment on their character or morality.

But I do assert that I believe we are now in the midst of a massive national game of Scruples and I am appalled at the utter dishonesty of those have always claimed the higher ground-- which I will assert include members of my own family.

Much has been made of the recent confirmation hearings for a very dishonest individual to sit on this country’s highest court. Sharp criticisms have been made of the uncertain and ultimately unsuccessful efforts of the Democrats on the Senate Judicial Committee to hold a arrogant undistinguished man to account for recent unethical professional behavior and his patter as a young adult of exploiting intoxicated individuals.

I’ve heard for years of the U.S. Senate’s decorum, a kind of institutional naivety, grounded on the high-minded and-- perhaps-- utterly foolish notion that we as a nation are all pulling in the same direction. If the Democrats on the Judicial Committee seemed haplessly unmoored, they were-- from the principle that the Senate’s decorum would surely prevent the Republicans from forcing rotten meat into the country’s gullet.

But-- lo and behold-- there was the wizened Senator from the Smelly Dump of Rot in the Heart of the Heartland (this, by the way, is a clue to the riddle on the So I Went page) presiding over the foisting of diseased mediocrity onto another national institution which demands always superior candidates.

I can’t prescribe a remedy for the pain of such injury. Personally, pain relievers have  never worked on me and my other meds are not showing much effect on my overall depression and confusion. 

It is not wrong to feel unmoored when the person opposite you abandons principle and continually changes the rules, so much so that the once familiar game is unrecognizable.

It is, at last, all one can do to stand aghast regarding these New Strangers, who once were countrymen and family, with an unconcealed expression of stricken naivety.  

Expecting them to have a corrective crisis of conscience is a voyage beyond naivety’s Final Frontier.

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Self Assessment: This was an unusually easy task in conception and composition, especially given the wretched insomnia I suffered last night and my lack of sleep. 
Sometimes, when feelings are strong, words flow more readily and for most of the day yesterday I was more depressed than I've been in months.
While I'm pleased with the way this came out, it doesn't represent work I'm capable of under the weight of a deadline or expectations of consistency.
This links back to my first examination by a neurologist. After a brief series of simple tests his estimation was that I was all right. I had to advise him that I am conditioned to perform well on tests and let him know the mnemonic tricks I used to get my replies. Having coping skills to succeed at tests are literally brilliant-- until your coping skills begin to fail.