Curse of cognition

Following up on yesterday's post...

It is imprudent to hope for an injury that causes head trauma that would bring about the incapacitation of cognition, but let's just accept that such an unfortunate incident, while awful in most respects, would not be without an upside (assuming that it rendered the injured as incompetent—as oblivious to suffering—as those who were that way naturally…so to speak).

That type of mental incapacitation is precisely what people strive to achieve when drinking to excess; it's a temporary head injury that first alleviates the awareness of one's suffering, then later it's a head injury that involves such suffering that one's "usual" suffering seems insignificant.

A throbbing hangover can take one's mind off the incompetence of others that causes one's suffering, but it can hideously exacerbate that suffering if one must deal with the incompetent while hungover.

[Why is it not "hangedover"? Eh, no matter.]

If there is any consolation (in a manner of speaking) to this, I suppose it might be this: Accepting the basis for the thesis (eh, what the hell, let's call it that) that the lack of suffering indicates incompetence, then suffering connotes competence. If you are one to draw some modicum of joy from not being incompetent, then you may be able to take all those moments of suffering the fools on the road and those fools in the mall parking lot and those fools at the office—oh, dear goodness, especially those idiots at the office—and all those other moments and consider them a source of happiness. With sufficient effort, you may even be able to reduce your suffering in those moments. Conceivably, over time, you could even eliminate the suffering altogether, essentially rendering yourself incompetent through competence.

Yes, I believe I've just confirmed the theory by destroying it, and destroyed it by confirming it.

Reaching conclusions that are paradoxes makes me happy. It's a bit more convoluted than a fifth of Jack Daniel's, I admit. I would not recommend it for others, if my opinion is being solicited. Which, ideally, is not the case.

Uh, yeah. Let's stop.