Last night I read a post by Nicholas C. Zakas on being nice, which in turn lead me to a post by Tom McNichol on being and asshole which it’s self caused me to start to muse on the nature of being an asshole.
The Tom McNichol’s article was largely on Steve Jobs and how he was successful despite being an asshole, rather then because he was an asshole. One quote in particular caught my attention
“Even people who worked with Jobs told me that they'd seen him make people cry many times, but that 80 percent of the time he was right” – actually that was McNichol quoting someone else. I don’t know how to show that.
So this is concerning because I am right 95% of the time. And while I’ve only made someone cry once in recent history, I do get the sense that I am perceived to be an asshole. So my musings are as follows.
I believe there is room here for a discussion on intent, however, I don’t have time and this is long and boring enough already. But I will say this, regardless of how I am perceived, I am always surprised and saddened when I find I have hurt someone’s feelings. Well, almost always. I guess I see myself as eminently diplomatic. And other's? They may see me as an asshole.
If one, in a certain situation, is correct, should that person accept an inferior solution, poor reasoning or miss-understanding of facts? I find that very difficult to do. In fact, at times, I feel that tacitly accepting poor thinking is a disservice to the thinker, and perhaps to the world. So does the fact that you are right, in effect, make you an asshole? ( I know what you’re thinking, ‘It’s the fact that you think you are right that makes you an asshole’, but let’s just assume for the sake of argument that you are in fact right. ).
I understand that it’s also an issue of presentation. How do you go about correcting a situation. If you have the ultimate say it’s easy to be easy going, but if you do not have the ultimate say and there is a very real possibility that a bad outcome may come to pass, then you really need to be more assertive. You must make sure you’re points are taken into consideration and clean up the mess later.
I guess this internal rambling comes down to two points.
Point 1) A) do you follow the Christian ethic and turn the other cheek, hope to inherit the earth, and make an unpleasant situation pleasant at all costs, or B) do you follow a more Nietzschean track which says that pity is a disservice to the person you are pitying. That one must seek the higher road of intellectual authenticity before pandering to the feelings of those that may be offended.
Point 2) How important is the issue at hand. I often find that appalling grammar, and sentences which do not actually convey the meaning that the speaker believes they do, is in-fucking-tolerable. ( bad spelling is ok 
). I believe this may fall into the he’s an asshole category. But hell it’s sooooo annoying. Other issues such as should we purchase this car, or vote for this politician, may have much greater ramifications.
I guess I could go on here about how in effect nothing really matters as one can not reasonably predict what might happen next week much less predict the course of human events and so one should always opt for making people feel good about themselves. But the fact is I’m a freakin optimist, a romantic if you will. I have to believe that doing what is ‘right’ has some effect somehow. Of course what is ‘right’ conveniently lines up with my belief system perfectly. Which causes, perhaps an endless recursive loop.
Whatever
