Posted on May 17th, 2015 by Adam-Troy Castro
You’re a decent person. You really are.
Oh, sure, you have some bad habits, some irritating beliefs, some things you do that get on the nerves on people around you. But by all the low bars, you’re a decent person. You don’t molest children. You don’t attack people with broken bottles. You don’t set bombs. You’re good to your family and polite enough to people who are polite to you. In some ways, you’re admirable. Even noble. Your worst enemy, considering the way you live your life, would acknowledge it.
But then we get to the part of you that is objectionable. You’re just a little bigoted, just a little misogynistic, just a little homophobic, just a little xenophobic – any one of those four things, to some level, in some combination.
You are not any of these things to the degree of all-out, full-bore toxicity. They are trace elements, the same things that many of us have. Maybe they are a bit stronger in you than they are in some people who we would consider more enlightened – and maybe you have many compensating virtues.
As a character flaw, this is like a managed medical condition, in that it is possible for you to live with it comfortably, and for you to control it without causing too much offense to others, possibly even without them being visible to others.
But here’s the problem. You then surround yourself with the wrong people.
You make friends among folks who will not correct you when you step over those invisible lines, but who will instead applaud you, who will react to you most positively when you slip up and allow this ugly lesion on your character to hang exposed. They laugh and clap and tell you that you’re speaking truth, when instead you’re engaging in a little bit of social Tourette’s. They call over others, even worse than themselves, and before long you find yourself playing to a crowd that is itself getting worse and worse.
Here’s the thing.
People can be trained, the same way dogs can. Even the most refined person, spending a few weeks in the company of the coarse, will find his language becoming more vulgar, his behavior more gross; if he hangs out with friends who think that it’s a great idea to yell “pussy” at women he doesn’t know, and earns their applause when he does so, his attitudes and actions will come to reflect that, just as his attitudes and actions would have come to reflect hanging out with people who would react to such behavior by telling him he’s not funny and that he should quit it.
A decent man who doesn’t consider himself a bigot can indeed be trained to behave like a bigot if he welcomes feedback exclusively from those who consider bigotry no big deal, or indeed an attribute to be admired.
The feedback loop can be toxic. You only have to look at some highly-concentrated internet communities to see human beings who might be perfectly respectable people, away from the keyboard, engaged in rhetoric of the most insane sort, because they spend time with the insane, and receive their cues from the insane. You can see writers who have attracted a fine group of sycophants around themselves, giving them thumbs up as they spew bile and venom of the worst sort. This is why it’s a good reason, on and off the internet, to cultivate the company of those who would, (forgive me from quoting Aaron Sorkin, but it’s an elegant and concise phrase) spend their lives advocating at the top of their lungs what you would spend your life opposing at the top of your lungs.
In the absence of open toxicity, the people opposed to everything you believe in are the reality check that prevent you from sinking into open toxicity yourself. Like a few of them as people and you will surprised how measured and rational it makes you. Declare them non-people and refuse their company and you will be surprised how quickly you become the mirror image of that which you find most sickening.
But above all: don’t allow the most vile elements in your character to attract a crowd that you will then feel you need to play to. Don’t flatter the gibbons. Don’t let them define you, don’t shift to please them, don’t let them move you farther into the realm of the insane, until you become their creature; until you are what they would have you be, until you are no longer aware of who you are.
There is such a thing as a shared psychosis, a view of reality so insane that it can only develop when somebody only listens to people who believe a particular stupid thing, and will not accept reality checks from outside. It doesn’t happen because of any organic reason. It happens because no context is accepted, other than that which furthers the narrative. See Randy Quaid and his wife. See the two young New Zealanders profiled in HEAVENLY CREATURES. It happens to groups of friends, to entire political parties, to nations; it can certainly happen between, for instance, an author and his supportive fans.
Limit your inputs to only those that support a certain kind of self-destructive behavior and you can be cheered with enthusiasm as you drive yourself off a cliff.
This is equally true whether you’re talking about private life, or existence as any level of public figure.
Play to the base, and I promise you, absolutely vow to you, that you will become base. I promise you, honestly. You don’t want this.
When everybody outside your crowd is telling you that your crowd is making you a terrible person, you should give it serious consideration. You really should.
Tags: Rabid Puppies, sad puppies, Self-defenestration | Category Blog Business, Books, Commentary, Science Fiction
