I spend a lot of time around people. Because some of what I see is downright depressing
I often try to distance myself from the actions of others by dispassionately
observing and attempting to draw logical conclusions from the evidence and
data. This may make me seem to be a
rather aloof person who sees himself as being better than other people. After spending a couple of minutes examining that
description of me I decided I can live with that.
The first observation was something I had been kicking
around in one form or another for some time and then I heard a guy on a podcast
(Marc Maron) put it pretty succinctly. His
basic message was people’s brains are hardwired to “find the bad guy”.
This doesn’t just mean it is easy to spot Darth Vader is the
bad guy because he is dressed like Johnny Cash’s closet exploded quite near him. It means in run of the mill life people look
for who they will cast as the bad guy in their own personal life story. Like the guy at work who has no problem shirking
his duties so other people’s lives become more difficult. It is not unreasonable to cast him as your
own personal Snidely Whiplash while you Dudley Do-Right through your day. The inept boss who constantly makes the lives
of his underlings downright crummy is another example. That guy, on some level, deserves being
mocked by his employees as they call him Voldedork a.k.a. He Who Must Not Be Able
to Pour Water Out of a Boot Even with the Instructions Written on the Heel.
There is another motivation behind people finding the bad
guy in their lives. This motivation
could be called “blame displacement” (also swiped from Mr. Maron). This is when people have screwed up all by
themselves but look for a bad guy to blame.
We have probably all done this at one time or another.
Like that time you were backing up out of the garage and due
to your own inattentiveness you got too close to the wall and broke the
rearview side mirror. Most of us just
start using all the words our mothers told us never to say and then go looking
for the duct tape. The people who choose
to go the blame displacement route will start looking for the bad guy.
Oh, it wasn’t my fault I broke the mirror on my car. It was because of those darned politicians. If Congress hadn’t passed the Smoot- Hawley
Tariff of 1930 which raised tariffs to the highest levels in U.S. history since
the Tariff of 1828 than the economy might have rebounded faster during the
Great Depression and World War II might have never happened which means Japan would
not have been forced to become a country who only made electronics and cheap dependable
cars which eventually caused American homebuilders to shrink the size of
garages built post 1979 to sizes not conducive for parking anything larger than
a Datsun 240Z and I wouldn’t have ripped the rearview mirror from the door of
my man sized Chevrolet Pangaea. Curse
you Reed Smoot and Willis Hawley!
Now to the second observation. People do not say thank you often
enough. Oh, sure people say “thanks” all
the time but that has become as meaningless as the word “fine” when said in
response to “how are you?” It is simply
pro forma.
Before we go on I feel I must say I still want people to say
“fine” when I ask them how they are. I
do not have the time or the stores of sympathy required to listen to a litany
of maladies, both major and minor, that people are actually experiencing at
every given moment of their lives.
How are you? Oh, my
sacroiliac is acting up, the Eustachian tube in my left ear filled with fluid
last Thursday and is really causing me some discomfort and I think I may be
developing a case of scurvy because you just can’t find good citrus fruit
around here. (Don’t care, sorry.)
Back to thank you.
This week I worked on a project which wasn’t all that fun with a group
of co-workers. After it was all said and
done I sent them a heartfelt thank you note.
The responses I got made it look like I had volunteered to give them a
kidney. If thank yous had been more
common in their lives mine would not have elicited such a response.
Christopher Pyle is
certain there are times he deserves being called Voldedork, but he is
particularly pleased with that joke so he won’t mind. You can contact him at occasionallykeen@yahoo.com.
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