Disappointment

People disappoint.

Let there be no doubt, every person on this globe makes mistakes, each and every one of us will periodically do things to let others down. Some make mistakes a habit, others make them the exception, but we are all subject to the same pitfall of being human and disappointing one another from time to time.

We are also a nation that believes in shortcuts: Reader's Digest and Cliff Notes survive to reduce our reading time, instant coffee is there because that brewing thing just takes too dang long, cement can never dry fast enough so make sure to get the quick drying kind, and the American fast food industry is a financial behemoth larger than the gross national product of many other countries. We're a society that loves shortcuts, we can't get the answer fast enough, and we can't get there fast enough.

Unfortunately, with this sort of mentality, it's obvious that we would take shortcuts in realms that are not justified, and one area in which we often tend to make this mistake is in judging others. We label, we judge by stereotypes, we believe our prejudices even when we know better. We tell gender-based jokes that we say are simply meant in jest, yet in our hearts many of those jingoistic beliefs are held as credible (especially when we are talking among our same sex). As much as we know we should not do these things, we all fall prey to the quick answer syndrome, even when it is something as critical as getting to know another person.

I've managed more people than I can count over the years. Honestly, in twenty years of high tech, I've had well over 100 direct reports, and I would not be surprised if the total number (first, second and third level) runs close to 1000. I remember some very well, I've forgotten others. What this means is that over the years I've seen more than my share of mistakes and disappointments due to the shortcomings of others. (Yes, I've contributed my own share as well!) Of all these disappointments, however, there is one class which seems more sorry, more regrettable, than any other: The inability to look at others fairly, to judge each person based on his or her own merits. While I have more than my own share of weaknesses, I'm very pleased to believe that one thing I have done relatively well over all these years is to consider each individual as an individual. I seldom take shortcuts getting to know another. It takes time for me to assess others, and while it may be obvious to most that "That guy's a jerk," for better or for worse I tend to take a little longer to reach that same conclusion. It's not that I enjoy being slow, but the beauty is that every once in a long while, one of those universally-accepted-as-jerk types actually turns out to be a pretty decent person, if you take a little extra time to understand him, to figure out what he is about and why he is the way he is.

My point: Fight the bias. To paraphrase Shakespeare, "Speak of him as he is..." Each individual is unique, each is complex, each is a mix of good and bad, some traits coming from nature, other from nurture. One of our goals, our challenges, in this world of shortcuts and instant answers it to take the time to consider each person as unique, to get to know him/her as a real person, to weigh the individual as an individual, not as a middle-aged heterosexual male who thus obviously believes a, b, and c.

The irony of this is twofold: We all know what I have outlined above to be true, yet we really just can't quite take the time to get to know another person, so we'll just fall back on our hunches a bit here and there. Worse yet, let's not even take the time to develop our own hunches, but instead let's have somebody else to do the thinking for us and tell us what to think; let's take that shortcut so we get there quickly. No need to waste the time and braincells trying to understand another person, let's just flip to the back of the book and let somebody else tell us the answer.

What has prompted this diatribe is an event which happened to me recently. A person I consider very bright, very intelligent, very much an individual, in fact somebody I could almost have labeled a friend, threw her ability to value another person out the window, deferring instead to the "wisdom" somebody else had. In this case, rather than trusting what she had believed to be true, what she had seen and felt for months, she instead decided to let an expert (oh yes, a psychiatrist) demean and degrade her view of another. The psychiatrist, of course, is the universal king omniscient, knowledgeable in all ways of judging other people, even if the shrink doesn't know the person. Yes, that is the beauty of psychiatry; you see, the shrink has the magic ability to hear but a few words about a person, and magically, thanks to an epiphany straight from heaven above, he can tell you all about that person's psyche, thought process, and worthiness as a human being. After all, with a piece of paper hanging on the wall proclaiming one to be a psychiatrist, he has the license from God Almighty to be His proxy, to pass judgment on the rest of us, good or evil. The rest of us need not think, for the Almighty has done so for us (the Almighty in this case not being God, but of course the shrink).

When a racist or bigot passes judgment on a black, we have no trouble seeing through the fallacy in the blink of an eye, rejecting the bias as something we know to be absurd. When a trained psychiatrist, however, exercises that same bigotry, we fall to it, accepting it to be true and correct since it was deemed so by a psychiatrist...err, I guess that should be capitalized, Psychiatrist.

Why am I so animated about this? I've seen this too many times over the years, having heard too many news reports, too many expert testimonies, too many proclamations by the psychiatrist, too many which are taken to be true, without debate, simply because it has been deemed so. I know all too well how psychiatry was used to the benefit of the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, the heinous crimes committed in the name of psychiatry. Most recently, my former "friend" fell to this same prejudice, casting out what she had believed for months in favor of what a shrink said about another person, in this case a person the shrink had never met. (Remember, the shrink is all knowing, so actually meeting a person is not necessary for him to pass judgment.) When this happens, some part of our world shivers and dies away, to forever be a slightly less joyful and happy place. Truth and individuality have been replaced by bias and jingoism, in the form of a sheepskin hanging on a wall.

Laurie, I'll never understand why a person of your character could not see through this, but the world truly is a slightly worse place because you elected to trust a shrink to think for you instead of believing yourself and what you knew to be true. You caved. You sold your mind, your spirit, and the spirit of another in trusting your shrink friend to think for you. The world will go on, of course, but sincerely, a tiny corner of it has been ruined forever since you elected not to fight for what you knew to be true.

For the rest of you, fight the bias. Think for yourself, get to know that person and to judge him, warts and all, for the person he is rather than who you are told he is.