Option A: Having complete knowledge of yourself all the way down to the dregs of your subconscious; possessing awareness of all prime and subprime motivations of your actions; able to trace all the rivulets of your emotions and the personal historical contexts from which they arise; understanding all the nuance of your desires, but in exchange no one else would know you any better than they do right now.
Option B: You would have no more knowledge of yourself -emotions, motivations, desires – any better than you currently do, but in exchange at least one other person would have complete and exhaustive knowledge of you, of the kind mentioned in Option A.
I put this question to an informal poll with my coworkers and they overwhelmingly chose Option A, with a few exceptions choosing Option B.
Before reading further, answer Why is this?
Consequences of Option A: Translating the guttural language of emotion and feral growls of the subconscious to the clarity of size 12 Times New Roman font for the mind to read allows for the abstraction of the self and the safety of detachment. If we are to be surprised by any findings, it is best to see them in a well formatted report. There is something alluring to having complete self-knowledge and seeing all the tiny cog works cranking in the basement of our souls. Afterall, what were all those online personality tests for? A large drive of relationships with others is for the purpose of knowing ourselves better. However, relationship comes with the risk that they may find something they do not like, and we would be confirmed in our suspicion that we may be ugly and unlovable. Having total self knowledge we would be able to dispense with this portion of relationships and curate what others see without a friend mucking about in the engine room, seeing all the rusted parts, frayed wiring, and deep, unabating fear of rejection, abandonment and banishment.
End result: Sealing yourself into a hermetic chamber with the eight inch thick bricks of concrete knowledge. You are safe. However, having achieved omniscience you begin to wish omnipotence was part of the deal, since the list of your character flaws has recently expanded, but that was not in the contract. Relationships will be negotiated based on highly curated knowledge which will inevitably make you look pretty swell.
Unintended consequence: The question of being unconditionally loved will never be answered, for there will always exist the possibility that, “if they only knew who I really was…” There, safe in your cell, you may contemplate the most salubrious conditions in which you will be accepted, or, having seen how glorious you may have been in comparison to how hideous you have discovered yourself to be, you find the most expedient and painless way to kill yourself.
Consequences of Option B: After the initial searing searchlight through the inner junk yard, the paralyzing fear of another person going through all your mail, scouring your dirty laundry, sifting through childhood traumas wet with saltwater, inspecting underground storerooms of toxic motivations leaking radioactive envies, exhuming of mass graves from all the humans murdered with hatred, leafing through the post-it note cruelties fluttering on your wall like battalion of napping butterflies, flipping through stacks of polaroids featuring rapacious lusts of complete strangers and perhaps that one girl who was a bit too young, or that other woman’s husband you envisioned ravishing you – after this shakedown will come the deafening silence as you wait to see if this someone will cast you aside or will still love you.
End result: You are completely open and naked, no fig leaves for miles, no shadow in which to hide from this penetrating Sun. All the cats are out of all the bags; the cans of worms lie sideways and empty on the counter. You have surrendered and placed yourself at the mercy of the other. If loved now, despite all of you, you are loved forever. If rejected, the desert of shame and banishment from all relationship whatever and forever lies before you.
Unintended consequence: If accepted and loved, in place of the lack of any further self-knowledge, you will be assuaged by this one fact: that despite yourself, you are worthy of love for reasons that you would not be able to understand had you all the knowledge of Option A, because that reason does not lie in you, but in the lovingkindness of another. You are safe in the choice of another’s love.
Follow up question: If you look at the above options and respond with something like “why does it have to be all the bad stuff we find in our subconscious? Mightn’t we find glory deep down there and by discovery be edified in our humanity?” If so, please explain why we universally broadcast that which we find good about ourselves and universally sequester and bury our failures, shames, sins, mistakes. No one goes to a therapist to reconcile all those great things about themselves.
And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Hebrews 4:13 (ESV)
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:6-8 (ESV)
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Romans 8:31-35 (ESV)
Thought Butter 