Haltom's Eighteenth Law -- Never mess with someone who has more free time than you do

In a war or contest, beware the enemy or competitor with abundant leisure and deficient sense.


I learned this formulation of common sense from a colleague at my first academic job. This colleague practiced what he preened. At any hint of resistance to his designs or demands, he would escalate unconscionably. He thought himself an academic warrior. He would mass his forces to overwhelm an opponent who did not realize a battle was imminent. [That did make for a surprise attack because, as Richard Mulligan's psychotic General Custer might have stated in Little Big Man, "Nothing in this world is more surprising than the attack without reason!"] After the opponent capitulated to the bluster and psychopathology, my colleague would bray that the opponent should not have started a conflict with someone who had more free time.

The persons with the most free time tend to be those who invest in conflict time that they otherwise would spend on blogging, schmoozing, drinking, or other "social" leisure. This means that Haltom's 18th warns us not to clash with those who have little better to do than to strike poses, project outrage, protest umbrage, and otherwise play the blameless victim. While others may free up time by restricting their energies to essential tasks and by neglecting time-drains that are not very meaningful or rewarding, many layabouts have been clearing their schedules for years.

Even more dangerous is the loafer with something to disprove: his record of dissipation; the hard-earned disrespect of all or nearly all coworkers; his overweening arrogance based on no apparent talents or attainments; actual stigmata and imagined slights that sullied an otherwise spotty reputation. The truer the characterization that the wastrel wouold deny, the greater the wastrel's investment in reclaiming the good name he never enjoyed. Behold the notoriously unreliable chaps who bear any burden and meet every hardship to assure that those who see too clearly and who say what they have seen pay dearly for candor.

Please re-read my immediately previous entry [Haltom's 17th Law] to see how malignant narcissists scare up time to attack the enemies over whom they glory and to "demonstrate" their precarious self-worth. Since they define themselves by defiling others, these "people of the lie" are even more dangerous than loafers and layabouts. The latter losers badly need something similar to a victory and have ample time in which to post ersatz wins. The malignant narcissist craves triumph through conquest and subjugation and has little control over what he will do to crush the enemy.

Sarah Packard [Piper Laurie] saw the malignancy in Bert Gordon [George C. Scott] in Robert Rossen's The Hustler:

Sarah: And that way you are looking at me. Is that the way you look at a man you've just beaten? As if you've just taken his money and now you want his pride?

Gordon: All I want's the money.

Sarah: Sure, sure. Just the money. And the aristocratic pleasure of seeing him fall apart. You're a Roman, Bert. You have to win more.

So avoid the loafer and the layabout and others with ample free time. But most of all, avoid the malignant narcissist who will create free time for your destruction.

Coming soon -- Haltom's Nineteenth Law: The greater your ambition to lead, the less fit for leadership you are.