If you are anything like me, you’ve made some mistakes in your past. I mean, look, you aren’t fooling anyone. You’ve done some truly terrible things, because we all have. I’ve said some bad things, things that I’d never even consider letting slip anymore, let alone cross my mind. For example, in high school, I was instrumental in assigning a truly horrible nickname to a girl and here we are, fifteen years later, and people still remember that nickname and occasionally call her by it. I’m a monster.
Ars Technica cites new research that involved 2,109 participants and found that most of us like to block out these awful, cringe worthy things that we’ve done in the past. The human mind apparently has its own ways of dealing with our moral shortcomings.
“Because morality is such a fundamental part of human existence, people have a strong incentive to view themselves and be viewed by others as moral individuals,” the authors write.
So, our minds play tricks on us so that we’re able to reconcile our self-image with what we’ve perceived are our actions. If that sounds kind of crazy, it really is. We just want to be decent people and for others to think well of us, even if we aren’t always that good. I’m just wondering why my brain doesn’t do this for me because, man, do I remember some stuff and it keeps me up at night.
(Via Ars Technica)
