(September 27, 2019 at 7:18 pm)Belaqua Wrote:(September 27, 2019 at 4:32 pm)mordant Wrote: So based on perceived intelligence (though he was in fact extremely bright and intuitive, just not broadly or socially), on appearance and perceived attitude, he wasn't worth a shit.
I can't answer the bigger question, but I think you make an important point here.
People are really complex. It's very hard to pass judgment on fuzzy qualities like intelligence. When we try, we're likely to use obvious and contingent values like how much money they've made, or how "successful" they look from a social standpoint.
Maybe the difficulty of judging quality should push us towards a sort of tentative default -- since our yardsticks are flawed, best to err on the side of compassion.
I can agree with you on substance here. I've known a heck of a lot of "complex" people in my time. Our ability to be butthurt or to feel insecure or unmanned or disappointed by Other People is all out of proportion, generally, to how much they intend to evoke such emotions in us. We have a strong tendency to take things more personally than justified or necessary. As such ... compassion, empathy, self awareness of our own role, and epistemological humility are better things to strive for then to control or punish or exclude or ignore others for failure to "measure up" to our personal standards.
The problem of course is doing all that while avoiding being truly weak and manipulated. Always lots of fun threading THAT needle. But I can testify that more often than not, my first "read" on something that bothers, disappoints or offends me in someone else's conduct tends to be lacking in empathy and weighted with negative assumptions, and I've learned not to rush to judgment.
