Evident Truths

People seem to have so many things which are evident truths, so evident that it is only a moron who would question why they are truths. As usual, I never could understand this instinctively and, so, quite obviously my friends and family wondered about when my IQ would make the big leap to double figures. If ever. I was fine when I was a child. You know the basic evident truths you start out with - 'Mommy knows best' and 'Daddy knows best'. Well, I was keeping up with everyone else then. The first problem came in my teens. There was this sudden 'Mommy knows nothing' and 'Daddy is out-dated' which were evident truths, then. THAT's when I started losing the race. My mind was not nimble enough to make that transition. That comes of missing out on an essential component in what passes for my thought process, I suppose. As a child, you accept people telling you what to think. Once an adult, you respect people who ratify what you already think. Parents presume to criticize you, they do not look on you as a budding Solomon, so, by definition, they have to be stupid, right? (Generation gap? Nonsense, did you not have friends who disagreed with you on some issues? True, you thought them stupid on those issues but did that make you think that they were totally stupid and not worth listening to?)  Now, THAT is the leap I failed to make. I mean, yes, I did think my parents were stupid to insist on the importance of grades, discipline, studying daily and other such things that parents seem fixated on (Is it some sort of infection that affects only parents? I don't know, never having been one). But, I could not make that great leap of believing that they were fools in ALL things. THAT is where I started falling back. As time went by, I found more and more evident truths which I was missing on. I never could get the 'Boss is always right or, at least, treated so in public' OR the 'It is better to be on the right side of the right people than to push for the right decisions' and so on which are evident truths in the corporate world. But, then, that is because I never did understand the evident social truth that 'It is good to be at the top of the totem pole'. Well, I could never convince myself of that. It looked like such an uncomfortable seat up there and, besides, I have vertigo. Essentially, I suppose, that I never could understand why the world thought that it is an evident truth that 'It is desirable to sacrifice your personal happiness for social respect'. I mean, I sort of have this idiotic thought that social respect is desirable only if it contributes to your personal happiness but, apparently, that's an idea which can rise in the mind of one with an IQ upper-bounded by 9. And, now, apparently, people have reached to where the evident truth is 'My leader is always right' OR 'The other leader is always wrong' or both. Now, it seems to me like they have come full circle. 'Daddy knows best' OR, perhaps, 'Mommy is stupid', I don't know which. And I am behind the curve with no hope of catching up.