Here’s a question: how do you know whether or not you’re an asshole?
In fact, how do you know anything about yourself?
Humans are subjective. We see things from our own biased point of view, or sometimes from someone else’s biased point of view.—When someone says they’re “just being objective,” I mentally mark it down as a red flag. Humans are so biased that we have no idea how biased we are. None of us can really achieve a truly “objective” position to take, because all “objective” knowledge is selected by, systematized by, and filtered through a human mind, that is, a “subject.”
Something I covered via a couple of college classes was how much a culture’s religious or magical practices affect its ideas of science, and how a lot of great leaps in scientific knowledge come from cross-cultural contact of religion or magic; it was eye-opening.
Let’s talk about something small and simple with regard to “objective” measurement.
Take the example of slicing a cake. Two self-interested (and hungry!) brothers, one piece of cake, a mom who says, “You can each have half.”
What’s a fair way to cut the cake? Exactly in half, right?
The older brother cuts the cake and puts half on his brother’s plate, without consulting his mom or brother.
Are the two pieces consistently equal or are they unequal?
The answer depends on whether you ask the older brother or the younger one; if the mom is smart, then one brother cuts the cake and the other picks the first piece, so that each brother’s bias tends to balance itself out.
Another example of “objective” measurements: accuracy and engineering tolerances.
It should be easy enough to make a machine that makes a notionally one-centimeter widget to the length of one centimeter exactly, right? And to make the other widgets it interacts with of the correct size to handle a one-centimeter widget, right?
One centimeter is objectively one centimeter, right?
No: otherwise there’d never be a problem assembling flat-pack furniture, nothing in your car or bike or wheelchair would wear unevenly and break down, and the Space Shuttle Challenger space shuttle wouldn’t have exploded in 1986.
Thinking “objectively” means treating world as consisting of perfect, ideal, essentially separate objects, unaffected by real-world conditions and limitations. The real world, however, is messy and interconnected and filtered through our distorted, limited, subjective awarenesses.
We’re never going to reach true accuracy. Accuracy refers to an ideal, arbitrary standard, not the real world.
Objectivity is an ideal, not something real that exists in the world. It can be approached or approximated, but never actually achieved.
The real world is not an idea. We have ideas about the world, but our ideas aren’t the world itself: the map is not the territory, and the idea of an inch is not the same thing as an inch worth of spacetime, especially at the speed of light.
We can, and should, build in what failsafes we can to hold ourselves to uniform standards within reasonable tolerances, review situations from other perspectives, and question our assumptions—for example, we can build systems that empower the younger brother to pick the slice of cake after the older brother cuts it, and we can discover delightfully odd technicalities to measure things with increasing accuracy. We can hold people and ideas accountable.
But, if there’s no point of objectivity, where do we even start?
It has to start from the inside.
And now we’re back to the question: how can we really know anything about ourselves?
On the one hand, we can’t truly know anything. Humanity is too subjective to be able to locate objective truth, inasmuch as objective truth actually exists.
On the other hand, humans are usually pretty good at identifying other people’s bullshit; the older brother might think the two pieces of cake are the same size, but the younger brother knows when they are not.
Let’s say you’re the older brother in the older-brother-cuts-first-but-younger-brother-picks-first situation.
How do you know when the two pieces are cut fairly?
It’s not actually when the original piece is cut exactly in half, but when the older brother is willing to accept that the younger brother might take either piece of cake. Equal pieces in size might not be equal in choice: who has more frosting? what about cool decorations, who gets those?
In order to correctly cut the cake, the older brother needs to know how the younger brother sees the situation and how he will react. Otherwise, the younger brother might take the piece of cake that the older brother secretly wants most.
In childhood sibling battles about cake and similar items, it’s not just a minor discrepancy between cake pieces, but an existential crisis: one of those pieces of cake is “good” and the other is “bad.”
Why? Because kids can’t cope with nuance. Their brains aren’t developed enough.
If you’re a kid and there’s cake on the line, you might make mistakes about what your brother sees as fair. You might not negotiate the best deal, where your brother gets the cool plastic superhero decoration so you get more cake.
But you can cut the cake under your mom’s watchful eye in a way that makes you feel equally bad about giving up either half of the cake.
Yes, you want cake. No, you don’t wanna share. But yes you’re gonna find a way to make it as hard for your brother to pick which piece of cake as it was for you to cut it.
No empathy. No maturity. No intelligence as such. Just the acknowledgment that your brother is gonna pick first and you don’t wanna make it easy for him.
On the one hand: you could cut the cake to favor yourself and you will be disappointed when your brother is delighted to take the piece you actually want. On the other hand: you could cut the cake fairly, and you’re both equally annoyed.
It’s not objectively fair. But…it’s not unfair, either.
Let’s step back from the cake thing.
Politics.
As I write this, Shitler is fucking up the world economy, gutting human rights on an international basis, and lying about his involvement with Russia and the Epstein files, along with who knows what else.
He is bad; don’t worry, I won’t be asking you to sympathize with him or find the nuance in him.
From where I sit, the narrative that is being told to me is:
- Trump supporters are insane, narcissistic, stupid, evil, or some combination of those things.
- Never-Trumpers are sane, community-minded, intelligent, fundamentally good, or some combination of those things.
I’m sure the opposite narrative is being told to Conservative people, with an additional bit of spin: Trump isn’t great but he’s what we’ve got.
Two narratives, one supporting a fucking fascist, that is, a fucker who would rather shit on the cake than share. The two sides are not the same.
And yet…are Trump supporters necessarily insane, narcissistic, stupid, evil, or some combination of those things? Are Never Trumpers sane, community-minded, intelligent, fundamentally good, or some combination of those things? (Or vice versa?)
No. Assholes abound on both sides. An attempt to cut society into black-and-white absolutes is irrational.
Example.
Film producer and convicted sex criminal Harvey Weinstein is a Democrat. He is not good. And if you’re willing to say that Weinstein and other rapists aren’t reeeeallly Democrats, then…Trump and his cronies aren’t, either.
If one side gets to toss out a guy for being an asshole, so does the other. However you slice the cake, you have to be willing to let the other side pick first.
Yes, Weinstein was an asshole and a Democrat. No, that doesn’t mean all Democrats are bad just because they went to a Weinstein movie and put money in his pocket. Yes, Weinstein should still be held accountable.
Yes but no but yes.
By the same method, Republicans should not be lumped in with Trump, either (even if they voted for him). You should only use the black-and-white thinking that you’re willing to tolerate it being used against you.
You should expect, at bare minimum, to be treated the way you treat others. Anything else is irrational; it lacks even the most basic, native awareness of consequences.
…and lacking a native awareness of consequences is the main trait of assholes.
So:
How do you know whether or not you’re an asshole?
If you can, consistently, over time, avoid black-and-white thinking.
(Everyone hits moments of black-and-white thinking. Being an asshole is about being unable to do anything else.)
And how do you know anything about yourself? If you’re able to set aside black-and-white thinking and instead see the situation in a way that makes you uncomfortable, and stay with the discomfort. It’s not objective, but it’s not unfair, either.
I call this yes-but-no-but-yes thinking: when you’re able to see both sides of a thing, fully acknowledge that different perspectives exist and will affect the outcome of how people act and react, and still make a decision.
For people stuck in a black-and-white mindset, the idea of navigating a “gray area” is distasteful. They would rather split the world into clear categories than live with the discomfort of not being unfair.
Know thyself: it’s essentially advice to live with the knowledge that your perspective is just a perspective, and neither essentially “good” nor “true,” but merely “yours.”
There’s nothing wrong with being subjective. But if you’re gonna start mitigating assholes, you have to start with yourself—and learning how to navigate that gray area is essential.
You can find the Asshole Mitigation Plan series outline here.
