Missive #41
Many, if not most people, including the Spectacular Failure, want to believe that they are unique, deep, and complicated people. Most, however, are in for disappointment.
For the Spectacular Failure, though, the wanting to believe he left behind long ago. He has embraced the truth in the lie of wanting what should be. The Spectacular Failure is not part of the world of wants.
For most others, though, living in the lie of what should be is the straitjacket for anyone who even thinks for a second that they are special or deserving of some kind of extraordinary consideration. “I am special,” they never fail to remind you, incessantly.
Or perhaps the worst, most vile manifestation of this inherent self-centeredness are those oh-so-very, very precious people who go about yammering primarily about themselves — howling to whoever may hear, that they are “victims.” Victims of life, humanity, and circumstance.
Boring. Take a number.
I am sure somewhere it is written — and proven — that there are really only a small number of “personality types” for all people. Big Companies pay Big Money to try and find out what their employee personality types are — despite their oh-so-selective interview process of hours and hours with all the Key Players — primarily to impress rather than be impressed. Is it any wonder the uppity-ups of these emotionally crippled companies get suckered into shelling out money to the latest industry trend huckster, selling further employee intimidation?
The Spectacular Failure, for instance, was subject to one of these personality insight discovery tests at one of his most recent jobs. The results came back that he was a hybrid type in the tech world: A “Creative Supporting Helper”. The only one in the company of designers to be so identified. So that he wouldn’t feel special in any way, he was let go from the company immediately. Either they didn’t want any Creative Supporting Helpers, or they were too embarrassed to only have one.
All a waste of money. No tests are needed to learn the personality types of people. In my own experience of simply walking the streets, I can easily see there are but a few. Anecdotal data, sure, but obvious to anyone just paying attention.
Half a dozen, maybe a few more, of different types of people. I may have to take off a shoe to be able to count them all, but only one. This is why — and further proof of there being only a very small number of distinct personality types — we are so easily able to, and very accurately, pigeonhole people very quickly. Bias and subjectivity certainly come into play here. If living is anything, it is subjective. Practically everyone — anyone — after spending fifteen minutes, are able to say; “Oh, he’s nice,” or “he’s an asshole,” or “that guy is just weird.” Oddly, the Spectacular Failure has heard all three said of him by the same person, in the same conversation.
These assessments, along with other quick labels — while certainly being generalizations about how, in what way, a person is nice, or in what ways a person is an asshole — describe how anyone can see and make judgments quite quickly, applying instinct, reason, and experiences. And they are very rarely proven wrong over time.
The comedian Mort Sahl, like most comedians, trafficked heavily in generalizations. For comics — excluding Boxcar, who had a tendency to simply dismiss everyone in the audience as being insignificant and irrelevant — most comics throw around generalizations as shorthand for various human characteristics to abbreviate the setup and get to the laugh. Mort was a master of this. So much so that when Time magazine put him on their cover in August of 1960 — seems like only yesterday to the Spectacular Failure, as he hadn’t even been born yet — they described his success as being attributed to: “Sahl has a knack of being able to take a large group of people and reduce them to a generalization.”
Sahl’s response, on stage, after reading from the article: “In other words, I would make a great racist.”
Generalizations are scary because we all fit into them. As the Spectacular Failure’s father once said, unbeknownst to its greater deeper resonance, and hard to explain without getting into trouble: “Stereotypes exist for a reason.” Well, said, pops. At least you kept it clean. And so they do, as any open mic night comic would tell you: “
“Women love to shop for men who put the toilet seat down!”
As a generalization, all comics are hacks.
The disconnect between how we see ourselves, want to believe that we are, and the reality that none of us are nearly as unique, special, gifted, different and deserving of any kind of treatment befitting what we think, or more succinctly: feel and believe that we deserve — and the reality that each of us are really only a slight variation on a very small number of “types” — is a chasm most can never see across. Let alone dare to try and bridge.
For even the Spectacular Failure, it took years. A landfill of failure filled the chasm, and the bridge — like his dreams, fears, and wants — became unnecessary.
Through recognition, acceptance, and the content acquiescence of seeing the duplicity of our own mind’s desires against that of how others actually see us, we can see it is nothing more than an illusion of our own making: The battle between what is and what one wants — the source of much of our confused unhappiness.
As that cagey, immovable tree stump Siddhartha so jovially reminded us:
“Suffering is the result of when our expectations collide with reality.” So, The Way is to accept that there is no chance of ever getting out of your own way.