On the insistence on ignorance.
Nov. 27th, 2017 02:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreadedcandiru2There's another problem I have with the way Michael proceeds throughout his failed romances: his inability to quite ask himself the question "Am I really seeing what I believe myself to be seeing?" owing to personality defects we all know about. First off, there's his inability to admit that he could be wrong about something and then there's his misapprehension as to what the consequences of being proven wrong might be owing to having a limited social circle and an inability to see how that's making his life worse. This belief of his that since he assumes that the only reason a person would share his note is to laugh at him, Martha's intention was to maliciously ruin him because that's what he thought was going to happen is not something he ever really managed to question. He'll 'give her another chance' because he likes being kissed but he never figured out that Martha was the only person not playing a head game. It's like he will go on in four months' time to not realize that what looked like Martha flirting with Lawrence was probably really just her dancing with a boy who took the trouble to ask her instead of one shoving chips in his face while passively-aggressively stewing about being asked to humiliate himself.
This is because when a Patterson follows the path of least resistance and fails to realize what the right questions are, let alone when to ask them, he or she leaps to the least generous and most catastrophic interpretation of events as a matter of course. From Elly on down to probably Meredith and Robin, they'll deny it with their last ounce of strength but it's obvious that the family sees the world as a hostile place and themselves as a prey species fighting for their lives against a world of deadly dangers in which everything trying to kill them had babies with everything that wishes to. This means that Mike is pretty much fated to eventually torpedo his marriage with Deanna because assuming the worst is second nature to him....as is not understanding the phrase "self-fulfilling prophecy."
This is because when a Patterson follows the path of least resistance and fails to realize what the right questions are, let alone when to ask them, he or she leaps to the least generous and most catastrophic interpretation of events as a matter of course. From Elly on down to probably Meredith and Robin, they'll deny it with their last ounce of strength but it's obvious that the family sees the world as a hostile place and themselves as a prey species fighting for their lives against a world of deadly dangers in which everything trying to kill them had babies with everything that wishes to. This means that Mike is pretty much fated to eventually torpedo his marriage with Deanna because assuming the worst is second nature to him....as is not understanding the phrase "self-fulfilling prophecy."
