Fugato

Consider this:

Tech Support: “Ok, ma’am, I need you to do a ctrl-alt-del.”
Customer: “How do I do that?”
Tech Support: “Push and hold ‘ctrl’ and ‘alt’ at the same time, and then hit ‘delete’.”
Customer: “Where are those?”
Tech Support: (explains the location of the keys)
Customer: “Nothing happened.”
Tech Support: “Try again.”
Customer: “Still nothing.”

A minute or two later….

Customer: “Should I turn my computer on? Would that help?”
Tech Support: “Yeah, it might.”

Chortle, chortle.

That’s the computer tech-support variety, but there are thousands more. The Aussie caller on a radio show who just has to spell “ACDC” to win a Harley Davidson, and can’t. The guy who proudly states his IQ as “20/20.” The hundreds of blonde jokes and Dan Quayle quotations and “Darwin Awards” stories. The zillions of situations in which one gets to say “well, he ain’t exactly the sharpest blade in the drawer” and chuckle lightly with the glee of superiority.

Yeah, it’s funny. Why is it funny?

Simple. You’ve done it. I’ve done it. We reassure ourselves of our own intelligence by basking in other people’s lack of it. We patch our fragile little egos by comparing ourselves against a suitably inferior reference point.

• Am I a good programmer? Sure; you should see some of the code Joe writes.
• Am I good-looking? Certainly better than that loser over in Accounting.
• Do I play the piano well? Oh yeah, you ought to hear some of those losers I went to music school with.
• Am I a pro? I must be; I’m surrounded by amateurs.

Why do we boost our self-esteem with contempt for others?

Because we’re short on self-esteem to begin with. Because we’re insecure. That’s why.

That is just about the world’s lousiest, cheapest way of feeling good about oneself.

I’ll be doing okay when there is only one person I enjoy looking down on with a feeling of superiority: yesterday’s me.

(Yeah, I know that’s corny. Deal with it.)

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 21st, 2005 at 11:24 pm and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.