I think quitting the PhD in February last year has left me feeling defeated, and I only realised it in the last month. I intend to write more about this but I just don’t have the energy right now, but that’s also part of how I think I know I feel defeated - I feel like don’t have the energy to “fight the good fight” any more. I just removed and blocked somebody on Facebook, which might be trivial enough for some, but is a huge thing for me, because I feel like I’ve passed a huge judgement on somebody by removing them as a “friend” on Facebook, but blocking them feels even worse because I’ve effectively shut the door on them. Generally I make a point to “leave the door open, but stop checking if they’ve come through it” in situations like this; as in I don’t want to turn my back on anybody, but this person’s demonstrated on several occasions to seemingly discard the evidence and draw a conclusion completely to the contrary of what that evidence would have suggested. And the most worrying thing about it all is that - from what I can tell - they genuinely think they’re right.
In the film “Captain America: Civil War”, there’s a line where Peter Parker (Spiderman) says to Steve Rogers (Captain America) that Tony Stark (Iron Man) said that Steve thinks he’s right, and that makes him dangerous. I thought I understood and this statement and the gravity of it well enough and of course it made me reflect on my own convictions well enough (including now; I’m aware that just because I think the aforementioned person is wrong doesn’t mean they are, and the consequences of me thinking that they are could also be dangerous - it’s not a comforting notion to doubt oneself, of course, but it’s still something we have to do…I think), but I think I had never seen such outright denial of evidence/facts until the last year or so with this person. As in full on twisting of facts without seemingly being aware of it, of the fact itself that they had completely misinterpreted a number of people pointing out their argument was wrong and coming away from it thinking they had managed to convince some of those people they were right and this was cause for celebration =/ And whilst it’d be plausible in this day and age to think that they are a ‘master troll’, I really don’t think that’s the case. And it’s so worrying.
But yes, I think am defeated. I couldn’t put in the effort any more to try to gently and constructively point out the flaws in their logic, nor put up with their accusations about me, when before I could and would tolerate it in the hopes that this was just an innocent misunderstanding on their part. I couldn’t fight “the good fight” (could a fight ever be such a thing?). The thing that makes me really think I’m defeated, though, is that it no longer feels “All or Nothing” to me, I don’t feel like “either I will live in this world upholding principles as best as I can or die trying”, I just feel as if I should resign to whatever this fate seems to be, and just accept things as they are, not as they could be.