A Discarded Hope

I long so deeply for other people to value truth as I do and for them to employ and honor reason as I do.  I truly do.  For years I have wanted others to seek truth and orient their feelings, goals, priorities, desires, and actions around what is true and verifiable instead of their own individual whims and opinions.

But the depressing reality is that this is almost never the case.  People generally don't want proof; they want personal persuasion.  They usually do not seek truth; they pursue comfort.  They do not want reason; they want assumptions.  Blaise Pascal was right: people largely choose beliefs based on the subjective appeal of the ideas to them as individuals rather than the ability of those ideas to be objectively proven.  And this is why most people are useless when it comes to helping others seek truth, reason, and certainty.

I am at a point in my life where I am finally willing to sever my intellectual ambitions from the rotted and naive hope that other people as a whole would respond positively to my endeavors and methods.  Now I discard that hope, freeing myself to focus on my own intellectual journey without the unwillingness of others slowing me down.  When other people remain apathetic to truth or continue to rely on irrational epistemologies after your prolonged efforts to convince them otherwise, it is time to leave them behind in your pursuit of the truths they are not rational or dedicated enough to desire as intensely as you do.