Back in 2018, I self-published a fantasy story called Faarland. This story is about a faar called Cullford and his journey in uncovering various disturbing facts about the organisation he works for—the Science Ministry. Over the course of his adventures, Cullford has shocking realisations about many ideas he once believed wholeheartedly.
For instance, The Third Truth is “Too much thinking can drive a faar brain insane.”
Without giving too much of the story away, I want to say that the Third Truth was not about over-thinking. Rather, the Truth was used as a mechanism of control. It was used as a way to keep faars from questioning things.
Back in 2018, I’d not yet delved into emotional processing. My focus back then (coming from an engineering background) was more on using my analytical capabilities to cultivate clear thinking. During that time, I was reasonably unhappy about how the media was touting certain ideas and how those ideas never got questioned. Also, since I’d worked with students in a teaching capacity, I was saddened to see how the educational system had taught them to think in terms of procedure without teaching them to question what they were doing and why they were doing it. The educational system in South Africa is atrocious. Embarrassingly pathetic and staggeringly terrible. (I should stop there because otherwise this post might turn into an anger rant.)
That said, we have so much information at our fingertips these days that self-education is really easy. My view back in 2018 (and still today) is to cultivate clear and logical thinking by reading and learning as much as I can from good sources. A second part to that, is to question my assumptions. If there’s one thing that engineering teaches you it’s to relentlessly question things. That does require serious thinking.
So, as a mindfulness enthusiast, I want to emphasise that clear and logical thinking is important and often goes hand in hand with emotional awareness. Sounds like a bit of a contradiction if you read my previous post, but it’s not.
In my previous post, I wrote about how emotional awareness (and eventually emotional integration) trumps intelligence because if we do not have the capacity to deal with difficult emotions constructively, those emotions will continuously derail us. But beliefs can also hold us back. Wrong thinking can also keep us stuck. Faarland was about that. Also, questioning your own assumptions requires you to put aside your wounded ego. It requires a willingness to be wrong. That does require emotional fortitude.
Mass control through deception is indeed one of the central themes of Faarland, but I want to emphasise that Faarland was never about over-thinking. (As a side note the story doesn’t have anything to do with religion either. I once had someone ask me if I was advertising a church. Uh, No!) .
I don’t believe that one should make a statement with a novel or a story. But I do believe that stories have themes that relate to the real world. And if Faarland had a message it was this: Don’t just believe everything that you’re told. Question your own entrenched beliefs. Question. Question. Question.