When I started this blog I had high expectations for my creative output. I wanted to put something out every few days, and at first I didn’t have much trouble meeting this goal. There were a fair amount of things going on in my life that I thought were worth writing about and I had a good time doing so. Things sort of trailed off as the school year came to a close, and as summer began I found myself having very little creative energy. Perhaps it was that I was in a less engaging environment. It could be that I simply ran out of things to say. It’s also possible that I just got lazy. I had ideas from time to time, but never got around to expanding on any of them. Then something happened that really got me thinking.
I had a few friends over early in August for a friendly game of poker. Well, perhaps it’s a bit of a stretch to say that I was friendly. Throughout the course of the game I was really put off by comments made by one of my friends about how much luck is involved in poker. He was content to bet on nearly every hand under his belief that “anything can happen” on the flop. I had no idea how somebody could believe something that was so obviously wrong. There wouldn’t be repeat champions of large poker tournaments if the game was simply an observance of random chance. The notion that some hands aren’t just better than others is preposterous.
Some-crazy-how he ended up taking second in our ring of six. His philosophy landed him the short stack very early on, but he had managed to claw his way back into the game, lucking out on a number of horrible bets along the way. He said something about how he had been getting better at poker recently, which left me completely baffled- both in terms of how this was very much in contradiction of his philosophy and in that I couldn’t wrap my head around how far beyond bad he must have been before.
Of course, in my mind this was about a lot more than just a game of poker. What I was thinking about was the injustice of somebody saying something completely wrong and then being handed anecdotal evidence that they believe validates their position. Nobody is good at anything simply by merit of having succeeded at something, nor bad because they experienced failure. Results-oriented thinking is bad juju. From my perspective this was a clear-cut case of somebody that “won anyway”, but for whatever reason it really bothered me that he didn’t understand this. And it REALLY bothered me that it bothered me.
A few days later I was having some beers with the guys and as I’m all too often inclined to do I got to running my mouth. Obviously there was no way I could let my friend get away with thinking he was better at a card game than he is. That was, of course, the most important thing in my life. I said some things that were completely out of line about how easy my friend made the game for me and was met with very negative reactions from everyone there. Now, at this point it should be clear to everybody that I’m the villain of this story.
Everybody except me.
After this incident I came up with what I thought was going to be a brilliant topic for me to write on. It was a work that categorized people into two camps- people that realize their own flaws and strive to improve themselves and people that are content to believe that they already know everything they need to know. It was going to be magnificent and I was going to show everybody just how brilliant Ryan Overturf is.
But the words wouldn’t come out right. Something was off, and I couldn’t grasp what that might be. I shelved the idea and thought that I might be able to articulate my ideas better if I worked on some of the other topics I had on my list, but I couldn’t focus on any of them. None of them were nearly as important as exposing the division between geniuses and fools.
I stopped trying to make the pieces fit after a few weeks. That is until I came across what I considered to be among the worst articles I had ever read. It was an attempt at a sob story about a man who was “chasing his dreams” by quitting his shitty day job because he couldn’t get the weekend off and being a prick to his wife. It was clearly written strictly in the vein of finding somebody- anybody- to agree with him and to help him justify the choices that he had made. After only two paragraphs I wanted to scroll down to the comments section to make sure that everybody else hated this piece as much as I did. Then a strange feeling came over me. It felt wrong to criticize this article, but I couldn’t figure out why. After reading it in its entirety it became clear that if nothing else it was very honest… but considering just how abysmal it was that should only make it worse.
That’s when it hit me- This was the exact same piece I was working on.
It wasn’t a conceptual writing or anything, but it was doing exactly what I denied that I was trying to do- justify being an asshole.
For a long time I convinced myself that working towards correcting my imperfections elevated me above those that didn’t seem to care. As if awareness of vices somehow turned them into virtues. I couldn’t in good conscious write about how people should realize their shortcomings while I ignored mine in my ignoble crusade to force people to think.
One of my professors made a comment that really hit home with me last week. He was talking about philosophers in the early modern period and how at that point in time a person could literally master every subject explored by humanity. Science and math didn’t reach nearly as far as they do now. Literature was considerably more limited. The world was, well, much simpler. There is so much more to know today than there ever has been. Before thinking about this it irritated me when I understood certain concepts on higher levels than my peers. I took it as a sign of their laziness- and as a person who has no problem admitting my own sloth this caused me to think very lowly of people. Not in terms of them not measuring up to me, but in terms of them comparing unfavorably to their own potential. While this doesn’t necessarily lead me to an inaccurate conclusion, it does ignore the possibility that they have invested just as much effort into something else that I don’t understand. I by no means consider all knowledge to be equally respectable- and I certainly wouldn’t say equally useful- but difference in substance doesn’t always imply difference in quality.
I have recently made it part of my credo that I have no sensitivity for the egos of others. I stand by this statement, but now realize that in the past I have not always properly scrutinized potential expressions of hubris.
It’s not arrogant to think that you’re good at something when you only ever engage in that activity casually. When my friend said he was good at poker I evaluated his words using definitions unique to my experience and foreign to his. Speaking from my perspective, he’d have been a liar. Speaking from his perspective, he’s as good as he needs to be. An artist need not waste their time on game theory.
Over the years I have said a lot of critical things to a lot of people, and much of it was not deserved. As hard as it may be to believe, I can honestly say that I had good intentions. Well, most of the time anyway. For every time that I unintentionally crossed the line between tough love and being just plain rude, I apologize, and I hope not to repeat this behavior in the future.
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