Isn't he a bit like you and me?
Of whom did I immediately think?
Possessed of some talent in book-learning or blather-slathering, perpetual students eventually land a job and enter a system that selects for
- "professionalism," which in context means cowardice and aversions to conflict and to candor;
- "civility," which in context means smarminess and unctuousness; and
- "smarts,"which in context means cunning and cravenness.
So of whom at the University of Puget Clowns did I immediately think?
2 comments:
I've been thinking lately (yes I know, always dangerous) about themes of debasement that come with power. Something in that quote struck me: "even when it gained him no advantage." It's like abusive behavior is an attractor, it has its own dynamic. My dad explained it to me once. I was droning on about how WMD couldn't possibly be the real reason we had gone into Iraq. He responded, with neither bitterness or irony, more like glee, "we invaded because we could". And you can see this at a much smaller scale sometimes, too: at a conference, a scientist takes down another not because truth has been ill-served, but because s/he can. Is it like a muscular reflex that, in the heat of conflict, you seize upon as the best (or only) resource available to you? Or maybe it's more like chess: "Ah, I recognize this as the such-and-such gambit; now I will crush you!" And so you do it, because you can.
I recently saw this in an elected official. A man self-heckled at a meeting attended by 100 community members concerned about the councilmember's attempt to close a nieghborhood food bank. The councilmember had the self-heckler removed from the room by two police officers. He did it because he could. Two young officers later said to me, "We need to respect him because he is an official." I said, "Really? A lot of people said that about Hitler." -Whiteperson, 1988
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