You say something in a conversation, and for about a second afterwards you are watching the other person’s face. You are checking how it landed. Wallace uses the word worship for what is running underneath that check.
There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.
Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.
Wallace’s first claim is that worship is not something you opt into. Something in your life is load-bearing, and it is doing that job whether or not you have ever named it. The only live question is which thing.
His second claim is about what the choice does to you. Rest your weight on being seen as smart and the fear that arrives has a particular shape: being found out. It does not resolve, because there is no day on which you have been seen as smart enough for the possibility to close.
Look at what that costs the man holding it. Every sentence he says now has two jobs. It has to be true, and it has to be good. The second job is the quieter one and it tends to win, because the first job is finished the moment the sentence is accurate and the second one never is. The sentences get a little longer. “I don’t know” gets expensive. He is doing more talking and less checking.
The other position costs something too. If what matters is whether the thing is true, then most of what you say is fairly ordinary, and you get nothing back for it. Nobody looks up. You have to be able to hand over a plain correct sentence and receive nothing in return for it.
So what are we aiming at. We want it to be enough that the thing was true.
Let us see where this shows up in an ordinary day. Three places.
- Someone at home asks you something you happen to know, and you hear yourself give a bit more of the answer than was asked for.
- A friend is describing a problem and the solution arrives in you early, and you say it before they have finished laying it out.
- Someone tells you a thing you already knew, and you feel a small pull to let them know you already knew it.
In all three, watch the second right after you speak. One question, two answers. Was I checking whether that was true, or whether that was good.
You are not deciding anything in that second, and you are not trying to say less. Watch which of the two you were checking, and leave it as it is.