August 19, 2012
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Arrogance
I just had the most frustrating conversation with a man who summarily decided that I did not understand economics.
After five minutes of back and forth where he tried out such wonderful assertions as “you aren’t logical,” I finally got him to stop and READ what I had been saying. He admitted, with some reluctance, that he had gotten it wrong, and he didn’t realize it was possible for me to understand and explain a viewpoint without necessarily holding it. But he maintained that he was philosophically right.*
The topic? Institutional arrogance.
Because my sympathies were with a consumer terminated by a business, he (a business manager at an unrelated business) assumed I was “on the wrong side” and didn’t know what I was talking about. He started talking about all these general themes in economics and how the corporation’s alleged behavior wasn’t economically efficient and therefore couldn’t possibly have occurred. What is the biggest lesson of economics? That individual actors are often inefficient! Merely knowing the right (or efficient) thing to do is no guarantee that it will be done. Which of us is really the one in need of a review of economics?
No, to him, the truth is the truth, and others “just don’t see it.” Never mind that he’s perfectly capable of discounting the truth as seen by me, or the truth as seen by the customer. He can’t conceive of the idea that the truth as seen by him is equally to be discounted. His truth is apparently the unfiltered truth. Lest you think this is only in business, I saw this all the time in editors of news organizations, who couldn’t possibly believe that any of their writers would misrepresent the truth, even by accident, and would get all kinds of offended if you broached the possibility that something they said was not necessarily true.
I weep for the future.
*He also made sure to let me know that he needed to go bake biscotti for his wife, hints that they are “living the good life.” Aside from being a catty dig (“Perhaps you’d agree more with my perspective if you were as successful as me”) it underscores a more troubling assumption: that being able to get away with behaving a certain way means that way is morally justified. It might be a little comical to put it this way, but he has in some sense chosen to be concerned with biscotti over justice.
I have no doubt that being able to treat people poorly and justify it to yourself can garner you a profit, but that has been going on since time immemorial. It is not in need of further proof.
Comments (2)
Usually the ones who have to step on people to garner some “wealth” are the ones who end up the most immoral. I am pretty sick of people who believe that just because they have a lot of money means that the law or consideration for fellow humans does not apply to them. When you mix greed into the equation of human compassion, greed contaminates so thoroughly and horribly that there is little chance of compassion surviving. And it’s a shame that more people nowadays are teaching greed instead of compassion.
One time Im in this coffee shop with this guy I just met through a mutual friend. Its his idea to play checkers (or was it chess) with me. He bragged about how wildly wicked and sharp he was at the game. So when I had him cornered, he threw such a fit that he got up and LEFT. He was too proud to be beat either at the game or by a girl or whatever. Sometimes people for whatever reason are too proud to even share a reasonable game or conversation with anyone else unless they are becoming some glorified winner.