“Most people who get to know me find me disagreeable”
This line is delivered in the film Se7en, by the older detective (summerset) played by Morgan Freeman. The younger detective (Mills), played by Brad Pitt, makes no effort to disagree, yet, surprisingly, there is no self-pity in the delivery. It is stated merely as a fact, long since realised, and accepted by Summerset because he knows it’s true, and he knows why, and he’s ok with it.
I could make this statement too, people in general do not like me much, and you might think that would bother me, though it rarely does. I get a bit disappointed at times at being misunderstood in what I’m saying, I figure it’s a price some people have to pay. Rick Roderick spoke of the deflationary way of approaching a subject when it might take some effort to understand it, being easier to be both humorous and dismissive about anything that was beyond your intellect rather than to feel disempowered by someone else’s apparent greater mastery. Easier to speculate that eggheads and knowledgeable people lack what is described as “common sense” in an effort to equalise you with them as if that were important. There is no common sense, if there were it would not be common sense it would just be agreed upon, sense, and if it were common, it would never need pointing out. People use the term to describe what they think should be the case, as if their preferences were correct simply because they are their preferences.
Anti-intellectualism is an actual and very common thing, and it’s often quite vicious as well as being misguided. There are people whose only motivation in conveying the wealth of their greater life experience, or the results of their scientific endeavours, is to help, not to score a point or to make someone else feel inferior. Far too often the opposing force, as if there needed to be one, misconstrues the goal of our would-be willing assistant as hubris, or egoism. That’s not to say that it’s not often the case that people throw in their oar for self-aggrandising reasons, but that mainly only happens amongst stupid and/or ambitious people. We can use Anthony Fauci as an example, a man of science who pursued a scientific solution to the Coronavirus pandemic from 2020 onwards, and who served as the chief advisor for the US government on the matter. He was, and continues to be, treated as if he had both an ulterior motive, and was a fame seeker with his own agenda.
One man stood atop a podium because he had convinced the US that he was a leader, his support was mighty, even when he said the most ridiculous and stupid of things (the US had an air force at the time of the civil war, you could inject bleach, his uncle was a professor so that made him also a smart man by association etc.). Another man stood just off to the side and he was extremely well qualified to be there, but lacked the faith of the populous (Fauci). You see the problem Plato pointed out with democracy more than 2000 years ago? That superior people would become ruled-over by inferior people because, in a democracy, the people vote for the people who are most like them, usually charismatic non-experts with passion. The biggest non-expert is always going to be the elected one, that can’t be helped if we stick with democracy, look at any UK politician and you will see that they need hordes of advisors to review every piece of their work before it is proposed. On a more local level than government we can see the same phenomenon happen almost anywhere. The popular guy in the pub or club holds court on subjects far and wide, spouting half thought out semi-truths based on his assessment of what is common knowledge or sense, or a bunch of oft used is-ought fallacies that we all recognise and too are often fooled by.
I am not a quiet man, but I am not that charismatic either, and I am not that funny (I have my moments though). What happens to me is I reserve what I think for when I know that there is substance to any argument I might want to make. I will not say that I am never wrong, that would be ridiculous, but I will say that my utterances are rarely without a lot of consideration. Many friends and work colleagues have been much more compelling than I have in conversations, and often been so wrong in their estimations that they are almost ridiculous, but audiences have consistently been convinced by them because of popularity. It is this same mechanism that has you trusting the wrong people, paying the tradesman before the work is done, or believing the pastor simply because you turned up already half way there in having faith in a book that they told you was the truth long before you had the sense to know otherwise. This is the art of the con (confidence trick), the Barnum Effect (people will shoehorn ambiguous statements into their own narrative), confirmation bias etc. Yet all the while people will, in a general sense, self-identify as being swayed by data, evidence, good sense, though a brief examination of American politics, and the work of Edward Bernays on the hive mind, would tend to dispel that particular myth. Take my good friend ***** for instance, a man of average intellect, but possessive of a sort of infectious charm and devilishness. People seem, anecdotally I measure this, to want to believe him in what he states (with far too much confidence), but I’ll bet he has never read a book worth reading, or gotten past the headline in a tabloid newspaper. So why does this phenomenon occur?
Simply put it is WILL, the inner desire to align with the most influential person in the tribe. We recognise, even when we don’t know it, the leanings of others that encounter the same influences as we do, and a movement toward conformity just happens, completely without a plan. To criticise this would be like calling the decision to pick the direction that leads you past people of your own race when given two equally viable routes to a destination, an act of overt racism. When in fact it is possibly an act so covert that it is not even consciously decided upon. Remember Freud pointed out that we have within us desires and preferences that we are unaware of, these can be labelled as unjust or prejudicial.
If I am correct, people influence each other at a subconscious level in groups and tribes, and we act upon those influences without any awareness, then the task of convincing anyone of anything rational becomes a much harder prospect since they would first have to uncouple themselves from a perspective they cannot fully explain nor understand (the “I just feel” position). Let us compare two very old schools of thought, Hedonism and Stoicism, but let’s not get bogged down in the details (you’ll just have to trust me for now, though the points I will make are of course arguable). A hedonistic society is not what you would imagine; it’s not a society of excess, rather a society where people would seek pleasure and the absence of pain (Epicurus). A Stoic society is one where people accept injustice, inequality and strife, yet act to be happy with their lot as they realise things could be a lot worse. A stoic is someone who has given up on the idea of bettering things in a social sense; they may act to improve their own life standards if the opportunity arises, but will be a willing subject to the conditions of a falling empire or a failing economy. Abrahamic religions are stoic doctrines, they preach that to do without is virtuous, to bury desire is virtuous, to have or want things is sinful, and to indulge without guilt is wrong. Modern religions use self-punishment and collective social punishment as tools to oppress the masses for the benefit of the rulers; this is why religion is so useful to government. Did you think that Boris Jonson was a religious man? He played the part when he was in office but he was not that. Neither was he a hedonist, at least not a social one. He has a much older virtue system, his is the value system of the Greek myths, the man who fools the gods is virtuous because he fools the gods, the clever liar that gets away with it is the winner and winners are always righteous.
Hedonism is a more active way of thinking, the hedonist feels empowered. Hedonism only occurs in a rising economy or empire where opportunities increase as resources and productivity increases as it is the value system of the liberated and those with the greatest resource of all, time. The Roman Republic was Hedonistic, the Etruscans were hedonistic before them, and the Greeks were hedonistic before them (apart from the Spartans). For the hedonist it is virtue to gain pleasure in acceptable measure (not excess) and to mitigate pain where possible. The Hedonist wants one glass of fine wine rather than fifteen pints of lager; he wants sex but not to slide into debauchery, exercise for the body beautiful but not for combat or for competitions, books and learning but not for endless tiring debate and argument.
Britain is full of stoics, this has become a necessary method of restraint for the populous, a self-policing of sorts where each person provides their own uniformed guard for the jail cell of their mind. Why I say it is necessary is that so much keeps happening and nobody ever does more than just complain, and this links into why I am so unpopular… bear with me… I say stuff that I think matters about things that I see wrong with the world, particularly this country, and because I do I must face the pushback that is general stoicism. Expressed sometimes as humour, sometimes as disappointment, and other times as anger. Stoic people collectivise their stoicism, they align. We can see this when we look at the backlash against striking workers in 2022-2023, which is quite paradoxical since what is good for them is by virtue of a mechanism that raises all boats (not an uncomplicated theory but I’ll spare you for now), good for all the workers of the country. The winning over, by those that own and benefit, of the minds of those that labour and are exploited, into resenting the struggles of persons from their own class to better their position, can only be achieved under circumstances where a person looks up and sees no wrong (toward highly remunerated suits that do no more a difficult nor skilled job than they do), yet looks sideways (toward someone that shares their lowly rewarded position) and feels anger rather than sympathy.
What has this to do with my lack of popularity? I am one of those people who points out the flaws with society and those flawed persons in it, I am an overt misanthrope, a man thoroughly disappointed in the pitiful society his species has built when the opportunity and the resources should have yielded much more for many more…. and… most people who get to know me, find me disagreeable.
pinkfloydpsw's Blog 