Monday, October 31, 2016

Lying, Contempt and Incompetence Go Together

"Tyranny...finally develops into a disease. The habit can...coarsen the very best man to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate...the return to human dignity, to repentance, to regeneration, becomes almost impossible." - The House of the Dead - Fyodor Dostoevsky

I have mentioned I used to work for a nut who was so bad at his job, in so many ways, that he got lateraled out of state. It took years to achieve this justice. Such is the incompetence of bureaucracy – it’s like one of those dinosaurs that when bit in the tail it takes seven years for the message to reach its brain.

All of us (except for his deluded boss, who defended and protected him until the end) saw straight through him. Two people told me he was evil, with which I agreed.

He was a liar, treated people with contempt, and was incompetent. He did not know any of this, being he had no self-knowledge whatsoever (his boss, who could not see what he was at all, once told me that even though he acted “like the sun shines out of him” he really was a good guy!). All of us could barely tolerate being in his presence (when he called our secretary would put him on hold and announce, “Asshole’s on the phone”).

Personally, I wanted to ether hurl myself over his desk and strangle him or leave the room. Fight or flight. When I mentioned this to a woman who knew him, she nodded and said she felt the same way.

For one example he once told me he made sure the editor of the daily we worked for "put verbs in all the headlines." The editor was a lawyer out of Yale and the nut was a high-school graduate in charge of classifieds.

He said this with a completely straight face. As I've said before, in order to successfully lie to others you first of all have to lie to yourself. And lying to yourself is one the easiest things in the world.

I have worked for other people who lied, treated people with contempt and were incompetent. All of them were fired, demoted or transferred. How they got their jobs in the first place is beyond me.

Hillary Clinton is a perfect example of what I mean. She is a pathological liar, treats people with enormous contempt (witness her "basket of deplorables" comment, which is the least of what’s she done) and is utterly incompetent. And she was fired from her first job in government, in about 1974, for lying and breaking the law.

Too bad she didn’t serve time then. It would have saved the U.S. from her machinations.

The ancient Greeks noticed these things a long time ago. They called it Hubris (which they saw as leading to kind of insanity). The Bible calls it Pride, as in "Pride goes before destruction" (the Greeks called that Nemesis).

The Greeks also had an observation about knowing your limitations. They called that Sophrosyne. You might call it having some humility.

None of this is taught anymore, not in school, at home or in church.

About the only place you can find if anymore is on TV or the movies.

I use Walter White of Breaking Bad as an example of Hubris followed by Nemesis (if he wasn't incompetent, except for cooking meth, he wouldn't have lost everything). He was a liar, treated people with contempt, including murdering them - and lost everything.

And I remember one of Clint Eastwood's characters claiming, "Man's got to know his limitations."

The problem with those afflicted with Hubris/Pride is that they don't know their limitations until reality comes crashing down on them. Even then they still try to blame everything on other people. They always have to find a scapegoat.

Bizarre that you can learn more from TV or movies than school or church.

A more common name for Hubris/Pride is just simple arrogance. I have noticed, as have many people, that the more arrogance, the more weakness is covered up. I am reminded of something Humphrey Bogart's character told Wilmer "the gunsel" in The Maltese Falcon: "The cheaper the punk, the gaudier the patter."

The bigger the mouth, the weaker the character.

I've never seen an exception to arrogance/Hubris/Pride/contempt/incompetence going together.

4 comments:

Glen Filthie said...

Not so.

Couple weeks back the preacher at our church was going off on the 'holier than thou' types and reminding them (bluntly)that before they found God, they themselves were doing the same thing the turdies they detest did. Humility is a cornerstone of the failth, and trust me on this - it has become very important to the church of late. It had to, they can't keep going the way they were.

If you are utterly repulsed by the degenerate filth being mainstreamed by liberals as I am - ya might want to give the church a second look. They are well aware of the sanctimonious assholes that used to run their affairs - and they are being swept aside in droves.

Unknown said...

Humility is a virtue so indistinguishable from cowardice that I take no notice of it. Staying quiet in the face of fear will get your friends and family killed for sure. The difference between Courage and Hubris is Skill. Its always foolhardy for idiots to face danger, but somebody has to do it. Heroes are the ones who did what others wouldn't, not for acclaim, but because it had to be done. Corruption and incompetence go together. The wise do not disregard the law, because they know it has purpose. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Few with wisdom would go there unless they wore the Armor of God. Hillary is a sign of Hope. Her haggard old geezer frame shows her fellow travellers of the 1960s have finally lost their youthful disdain of those over thirty and old enough to know better, and are now not long from their graves. Her incompetence at the highest level also shows how weak and dumb the enemy has gotten to need to scrape below the bottom of the barrel for their shills and hirelings. This decrepit old hag is the face of the system. The enemy is old and weak.

Anonymous said...

"If you are utterly repulsed by the degenerate filth being mainstreamed by liberals..."

It's not just the liberals, it's also the (((you-know-who's))).

Unknown said...

"Humility is a virtue so indistinguishable from cowardice that I take no notice of it."

Knowing your limitations is not cowardice. It's smart.