THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 18

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I have no friends. Everybody likes me. I'm always upbeat; always have a joke to tell, always lift my voice and smile when greeting people I know. I spend time with folks who don't matter, give to the poor, comfort the afflicted and always slice every circle in those little plastic six-pack holders before throwing them away so that ducks don't strangle on them during massive oil spills. Still, no one ever comes to my house, I pay strangers to help me when I have an emergency and no one feels close enough to borrow money from me. No one really knows me, and even fewer people understand me. I won't even bother having a funeral. It would be embarrassing.

Only in the company of other curmudgeons do I talk about this friendless condition. We all agree friends are a pain in the ass. They snoop into every corner of your life, call you when you're busy napping, ask you to help them move furniture and run for the exit when you start a barroom fight and need back-up. They can explain every betrayal with a story that makes you the bad guy. It's like being married without the sex.

An old woman I know recently decided to build out the space over her garage into an apartment. She had a friend in the building trade so, rather than take bids on the project, she hired her friend. He was the only one she could really trust. I told her it was a bad idea. I said it would take twice as long as he forecast, because he would service customers he didn't know before he would service her. His private justification for this, I told her, would be that strangers would not tolerate missed deadlines, but she would forgive him because, after all, she was his friend. She's now three months into a project that should have taken two weeks. A friend will screw you before he'll screw a total stranger.

The old woman says I'm cynical, pessimistic, without faith in humankind and always expect the worst in people. I told her I wasn't looking for friends, but at least, she was beginning to understand me.

People are a little like stage plays. There are only so many plots. "Pretty Woman" is "My Fair Lady" is "Pygmalion". "Westside Story" is "Romeo and Juliet". Like play plots, there are only so many people types. They keep showing up in different costumes, at different ages with different haircuts, but after you've been paying social security taxes long enough to start collecting checks, you can see each of these people coming a mile away. When I explain this to those who require my guidance, they accuse me of being prejudiced and stereotyping. I'm insulted by this, but at least, they are beginning to understand me.

Stereotyping is a convenient device for anticipating and, thereby, avoiding trouble and confusion. It doesn't always produce profit. Sometimes, stereotyping people leads to incorrect guesses about what they'll do next. The trick is to play the percentages. For instance, when you're walking down a dark street in a poor neighborhood late at night and you see four men walking toward you swinging chains, stereotyping these people is a good idea. React as if they are about to steal your money, beat you viciously and leave you for dead. Sometimes, they are only accountants on their way to assist a friend whose car is stuck in the snow. You lose when you misjudge them by your prejudice. Here are four friends you might have had if not for your bias against chain wielding gangs who roam the streets after dark. However, in the vast majority of cases you will be right, get to keep your money and live. Your function on the planet is to take care of yourself, not to martyr the only life you have on the altar of social justice.

Why are you usually right when you stereotype someone? It’s because stereotypes only come into existence when a preponderance of truth is associated with them. This puts the odds on your side.

Occasionally, you miss a jackpot by exercising prejudice. I'm prejudiced against movies named after food. I will avoid a movie called “Truffles for Sunday Brunch”, “Oatmeal”, “Turnip Sprouts” or “Fried Green Tomatoes.” I expect nonsense and the sort of feel-good, air-headed romantic comedy you take a woman to see when you are attempting to get laid. I avoided the green tomato movie for years, because of my prejudice. Finally, I watched it and realized it was among the better movies I'd ever seen. What did I lose? Nothing. I wouldn't even know about my mistake if I hadn't, eventually, watched the movie...plus it was saved for a moment when there was nothing else to watch but gay films, teen outings, video game movies and films driven by someone getting mysterious calls on a cell phone. What did I gain by exercising my prejudice? I wish I could count the hours of squandered leisure I might have wasted watching movies named after food that really were mindless romantic comedies. On the other hand, I don't get laid much.

The terms stereotyping, prejudice and bigotry carry a lot of baggage, but there's a good reason for that, which I'll explain in a minute. First, imagine a world where we did not make judgments based on experience. It would be populated by people flying kites in the rain, getting struck by lightening and learning nothing from the inconvenience. Governments everywhere would be launching rockets to the moon every month and scratching their heads when the projectiles exploded on the launch pad. There would be no cars. In fact, we'd still be trying to figure out how to make a horse behave. All human progress is the result of lessons learned by mistakes we made. Every useful invention follows a sequence of failures that combined to teach the inventor a lesson. When you are looking for the freeway and you come to an intersection, don't take the dirt road option. Be prejudiced.

The truest nitwit in our midst watches movies named after food, forever hoping for that one in a thousand that will be Fried Green Tomatoes. He makes this sacrifice because he has been programmed to avoid pre-judgment and he would rather waste his time on disappointing films than be labeled a bigot or accused of stereotyping. He will never discover electricity, walk on the moon or know the exhilaration of 1400-pounds of organic power pulsating between his thighs. A horse will not obey a true nitwit.

To understand why bigotry, prejudice and stereotyping have such bad reputations one must consider that most of the nation's wealth is concentrated in the hands of 2-percent of the population. Advice about how to become successful is coming from the other 98-percent. The 2-percent know better than to give advice about how you can take some of their money away from them. Similarly, those disadvantaged by bigotry, prejudice, stereotyping, class judgments, racial bias, religious preference, tendentious partiality and partisan preference represent the vast majority of people on the planet. These are the people attempting to hang negative baggage tags on the process of pre-judgment.

Until we are receiving that monthly stipend from the social security office, we are consumed by the propaganda churned out by the disadvantaged victims of prejudice. This service to stupidity is a large part of the reason we are depending on the social security office to avoid starvation in our sixth decade of life. But when we leave the workplace and are released from the obligation to fall in line, toe the mark, don't make waves and follow the duck in front of us a curious transformation takes place. Now, we have seen all the plots, known all the people types and come to understand bullshit for the true stink our olfactory organ suggests it possesses. It is the victims of prejudice that have given the process a bad name. Whadda you expect?