Hi! My name is Eileen Li. I’m a sophomore here at Baruch college and am majoring in accounting. I’m also a self-taught artist and started drawing at the age of 10. I like to draw mainly drawing cartoon/anime characters derived usually from my own imagination. While drawing I like having music playing in the background, as I do find them to be very calming.
Just recently I picked up a book at the library called ‘Useful Delusions, the power and paradox of the self-deceiving brain’ by Shankar Vedantam. What caught my eye was definitely the title of the book. Before checking this book out, I watched a crime documentary about a girl who stalked a guy under the delusion that they are meant to be together, so immediately after seeing the title of the book I knew I had to read it. I haven’t gotten so far into the book, and just a few pages in, but something really stuck with me. “I realized that one reason people cling to false beliefs is because self-deceptions can sometimes be functional- it enables us to accomplish useful social, psychological or biological goals” -(Shanker Vedantam). It seems very obvious, yet some people think it’s wrong to be delusional, that it is best to face reality. Being in a delusion could mean that one is escaping from whatever they are dealing with in real life. And the same people will tell us to follow our dreams, to believe in our dreams, and keep chasing it. Is dreaming not a delusion? In the case where the girl was stalking the guy, wasn’t she just following her dreams? If the difference lies in whether or not your delusion is harmful to someone else, then what about the “Church of Love”. This is a case that Vendatam referenced in the book. There was mail fraud, that seems to have actually benefited some of the victims, as some claim that it had saved them from committing suicide as a result of fraud. Although I had not yet finished reading this book, something else was made clear. Which is not everything is black and white.