The Rampant Asshole Fallacy

 Hey everybody. It's Craig Boreth, welcome back to The Great Ungaslighting.  Do you remember the cartoon, The Far Side?  Well, my favorite Far Side cartoon has been stuck to the side of my father-in-law Martin's refrigerator for like 25 years.  It shows God in the kitchen cooking something. He's got a chef's toque on and he's got all these ingredients around him, and in a roasting pan in front of him is the Earth. And you can see labeled the ingredients around them, he's got like krill and birds and trees and dark-skinned people and light-skinned people. And God is adding one last ingredient to the dish. He's adding just a dash, just to pinch, of jerks. And he's thinking to himself, "And just to make things interesting."

I realize this is just a cartoon, but I think Gary Larson was onto something showing that there's really just a pinch of jerks among us on Earth.  And yet, if you ask people, almost everyone will say that jerks are everywhere. You're just constantly encountering them throughout your day.  But I would argue though, that we're making a mistake. We're overestimating the number of jerks that actually exist. It's something that I'm calling The Rampant Asshole Fallacy.  We think there are many more assholes than there actually are.  And I can prove it.  To find out how stay tuned for The Great Ungaslighting.  ​

So last week.  I asked folks to reach out and reintroduce themselves to some people that they might encounter in their day-to-day lives. That. They may have never formally been introduced to, or that they were, and they forgot all about. And just to kind of see how that goes. And I heard from a bunch of people and it sounds like they were pretty good experiences, but I wanted to share an experience that I had this past weekend, it's actually kind of funny.   

So I've got a friend in town. And she's staying in an Airbnb just a couple blocks from my house. And after I drop my son off at school last week, I decided just to stop by and say hi.  So I pulled over up the street and I noticed that it was permit parking on that street, but it was early and I was only going to be there for a few minutes.

So I assumed I was safe.  I went over and to say hi, and just to kind of chat for a little bit. And as we're talking, I notice out of the corner of my eye I can see the little meter vehicle  rolling by up the street and it stops right in front of my car.

I was like, oh shit. So I ran out the front gate and up the street. And as I was running, I noticed there was someone talking to the meter guy for a second. And then he left and I arrived and I was like, oh man,  I'm really sorry. I was only here for a second. I'm just talking to a friend.

 And he was super nice, he said, I haven't started writing at the ticket so I can let you go. But,  next time, just park in the driveway or park around the corner,  where it's not permit parking. And I was like, oh, thank you so much.  And then I realized I kind of recognize this guy and I was like,  don't I know you from somewhere.  And he said, yeah, from the stairs where we work out,  three or four times a week.

And I realized, I see this guy,  he's like the guy that I need to introduce myself to 'cause I see him three mornings a week and we chat a little bit and I never got his name, he never got my name and it's, it's a little weird.  So I figured here's my chance. So I said, Hey, by the way, I'm Craig. Thank you so much for not giving me a ticket.

And he goes, yeah, good to meet you. I'm Pete.  And,  I was like, oh, cool. Yeah, that worked out pretty well.  But what was funny was as I was walking back to my friend's house, just to  say goodbye, I noticed up the street, there was someone kind of yelling.  And I thought, okay, well, this is someone who's having a bad day.

Who's just kind of yelling at the world. And you know, I was going to walk right past this person. I thought,  just  keep your head down, don't really make eye contact. It'll all be fine. And he still yelling  in my direction.  I was like, okay, well, I think I'm going to have to  look up and see what's going on.

And I look up and he's looking right at me.  And he's like, Hey dude.  I just saved you from getting a parking ticket.  And I was like, what are you talking about? He's like, I was the guy running interference with the meter guy. I saved you like 65 bucks.  Remember back at the beginning, when I was running over to stop the meter guy from writing me a ticket, he was talking to somebody. And that was this guy.

Like this guy saw me running over and ran interference in order to delay the meter guy from writing a ticket. And he saved me 65 bucks. And I was like, dude, thank you so much. Like, you know, I was so indebted to this guy.  And, it was a cool way to start the morning., I had two good experiences.  Well,  This week's episode is not about that. This week's episode is about the opposite of that. It's about our interactions with people who are not so nice or generous or helpful.  You know,  Assholes.  So without further ado. Let's get into it. 

We're going to talk a lot on this show about biases that humans have. And how many of them have been exploited by gaslighters for thousands of years? If you took a Psych class in high school or college, you probably learned about the availability heuristic or bias and the saliency bias.  They're closely related concepts and basically mean that we give more mental or emotional weight to things that stand out or come easily to mind,  or feel exceptional in some way.

So for example, we might think that tornadoes are much more dangerous than asthma.  After all, when you see news of a tornado, it's a big deal. You know, there are broad swaths of destruction and houses torn apart, and, you know, you hear the death toll. But with asthma, you might hear some statistics or some information about the risks, but it's not nearly so dramatic a story.  But the data show that every year more than 40 times more people die from asthma than from tornadoes. But it's because tornadoes are such spectacular events that we think they're much more common and much more dangerous.  So today, I want to talk about a specific example of these kinds of biases. And as I mentioned before, I'm calling this The Rampant Asshole Fallacy, or RAF.   Not only do I want to expose this bias so we can realize  when we fall victim to it, but more important, I want to show how the very existence of this bias proves that we humans are, for the most part, in fact, not assholes.

 So here's a story that can  illustrate my point.  Long time ago.  I went to a casino night and fundraiser that was sponsored by the MBA students at the UCLA business school.  First of all, running a casino night with an open bar is a brilliant move before holding a charity auction. Since everyone's getting drunk and running up massive winnings, a funny money. So let's say you've got like $300,000 worth of chips on the table in front of you. A couple of hours later when it comes to bid on this stand-up paddleboard lessons or whatever, you'll be like $500 for that? Sure. $500, that's nothing.

 Leave it to MBA students to come up with a brilliant way to turn the casino night into a very effective fundraiser.

But the funny part is.  In between the casino night and the auction.  There is of course a mad crush at the bar. And there's hundreds of us sort of slowly making our way. For well vodka Cosmo's and Beefeater G&Ts or whatever they were serving.  And I'm standing there.  And the couple of people in front of me shift forward.

So then there's this space that I could easily step into.  But I notice over my left shoulder. There's a woman kind of turned sideways in the crush. And I turned slightly towards her and I gesture for her to go ahead of me. You know, after all, what's it going to cost me five minutes?  But what I hadn't anticipated. Is that. When I turned to my left. That opened up a small space behind me.  And the woman who was standing behind the woman I gestured to.  Saw her chance and she took it. She kind of shoved a couple of people aside, including me and forced her way behind me into the space, closer to the bar, dragging her unwitting boyfriend along behind her.

 And I just said sort of under my breath, but definitely so she could hear it. Hey, we're just trying to live in a society here.  And with that, she turns  locks eyes with me and says, "And how's that working out for ya?"  And I thought, wow. You will go far.  And I'm sure she did.   By the way, if you were that person. Please contact me. You know, it's just my morbid curiosity. To find out, How far you've gone in your career of screwing people over.

But what was most important about that experience is that I remembered it. Clear as day over all these years. Think about that, of all the things that happened that night or even that year, one of the most salient memories I have is of some asshole who just couldn't care less about other people and just butted her way in front of me when I was trying to do something nice for somebody else. 

And if I'm thinking about that story and somebody asked me what I think about humanity in general. You can imagine I'm not going to be too keen on our species. 

So when I started thinking about this podcast, I immediately thought I have to tell that casino night story. And as I was thinking about that event, I remembered something that I'd long since forgotten.  After  she said that to me. Her boyfriend kind of sheepishly shrugged in embarrassment.  And the woman. I had originally offered the space to said, well, thanks for trying.

So my takeaway from this experience for 20 years was the people are all assholes. When in fact. I was being nice. The woman I was being nice to was thankful. And the sheepish boyfriend at least felt bad, even though he didn't really do anything about it.  So if the four people in this little drama, only one is an asshole. So that's a 25% rate of assholedom, which isn't great, but remember these were a bunch of MBAs. So the rate is probably significantly higher there than in the general population.  Um, mostly just kidding about that. Mostly. 

 So we now know how The Rampant Asshole Fallacy works.   We encounter an asshole and the experience is so emotionally powerful that we tend to extrapolate from there and believe that humanity is just teeming with assholes. But remember these biases are powerful because certain experiences are seen as exceptional. They stand out in our minds. And that to me is proof that humans are not in fact assholes. If we were then behaving like an asshole wouldn't stand out. It wouldn't upset us. It would just be seen as normal.

 Another bit of evidence that I think supports the fact that humans are not fundamentally assholes is the fact that we blush we're one of the few species that blush. And it's not so important that we blush so much as that we still blush. So after thousands of generations of evolution, that trait has survived.  And I don't see any way that blushing, or the automatic expression of regret or shame communicating that to other people, could possibly be evolutionarily advantageous in a species full of assholes, it just wouldn't survive as a universal trait. I think it's expressly because we are not assholes that we still blush.  This communication, the sharing of emotions between us has been so important to our survival since the beginning of humanity that this trait that in modern times doesn't particularly seem all that important, has  nevertheless survived all this time.

 So now that we know we're not assholes. What are we going to do about it?  And that brings us to our homework for this week, which is really just to notice when people are doing things that reinforce the Rampant Asshole Fallacy. 

Sometimes, people who are in fact assholes will use their s tatus that they have accumulated. By being assholes to further the Rampant Asshole Fallacy, and they'll do this. to  accumulate more wealth or power or whatever. And well, that's interesting. I'm much more interested in. the times when people inadvertently promote the rampant asshole fallacy.

It's kind of been so established in our psyches that this is true that people just kind of offhandedly say things that promote this bias that we have since discovered is not true. And this happens a lot in books and TV and movies.  One of my favorite examples is from the Woody Allen movie, Hannah and Her Sisters, when the brilliant and curmudgeonly artists played by Max Von Sydow,  talks about this TV show that he had seen about the Holocaust, and he has this point about that famous question, how could it have happened?

 The reason why they can never answer the question,  How could it possibly happen? is that it's the wrong question. Given what people are, the question is, why doesn't it happen more often?

Now that's a great line. But I do think that it promotes the Rampant Asshole Fallacy.  It's not really human nature that led to horrific events like the Holocaust. I'm arguing that it is psychopaths taking advantage and exploiting the goodness of human nature. That allows things like that to happen. 

And this is something we'll talk about in future episodes. When we talk about psychological studies of obedience and things like that. But for now, it's important just to note how easy it is to disparage human nature for a laugh or a thoughtful line or whatever. 

There's another instance of this kind of thing happening in the popular culture that I've noticed recently. And this one. I want to try and do something about.

If anyone can be forgiven for believing that humans are pretty awful, it's probably a professional historian.  After all. They spend most of their time looking at instances where humans have  behaved epically badly. You know, people getting along with each other and being nice to each other, generally, doesn't change the course of history. And, there's one historian in particular Who has reached a level of acclaim and status, almost celebrity, within the popular culture.  That I feel like I need to say something about one instance where she, I believe, promotes the Rampant Asshole Fallacy.  Now you might say, Craig, if you're going to take on a media juggernaut like that you better be careful. I mean, after all, this particular historian has legions of loyal followers.  And they also happen to be heavily armed  with historical facts and nuanced political perspectives.

Okay. In case you haven't guessed already. I'm talking about Heather Cox Richardson, who. I love, let me just say that up front before anybody starts trolling me. I've been a fan for years. I think her work is brilliant. But I just have one small critique that I'm hoping,  as a historian who obviously believes in accuracy, that she might consider removing this one particular line from her dialogue.  And I've heard it a few times. 

I don't know if you've even noticed it because it's a good line.  But after professor Richardson talks about some particularly horrible example of human depravity or whatever it is.  She occasionally says, "Well, humans going to human."  

And that's a great line. It really is. But as we've been discussing, it promotes the Rampant Asshole Fallacy, and I would suggest respectfully, that she change that line. Maybe make it a little more specific,  you could say, 

Oligarchs gonna oligarch or fascists gonna fascists or, and I don't think she would say this because she's too polite to do so. You could say, well, assholes gonna asshole and that would be true.  But humans gonna human. I don't think is true.  I think in those cases, people are actually behaving directly contrary to their human nature, rather than because of their human nature.

So I'm hoping maybe if you folks are listening to this, you could share this message with her and suggest to her that she stop using the phrase, humans gonna human, except when humans are doing things that are genuinely human.  

As a side note,  Don't you think we fans of Heather Cox Richardson, Nita a nickname. You know, kind of like Taylor swift has Swifties and Beyonce has the beehive. You know, we need a name for ourselves.  

I think it's time that we fans of Heather Cox Richardson came up with a name for ourselves. My first thought was maybe the Heather's.  But, you know, if you've seen the movie that's that doesn't quite work. Or. Maybe Coxswains, for you rowing fans out there, but that's also not quite right.  

And then I thought, well, professor Richardson, isn't originally from Maine. But she lives there and she seems to embody much of the spirit. Of the state. So 

I went back. And looked for some famous women in Maine history.  So there is   famous novelist and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe. So maybe the stowaways could be a cool nickname, but probably the best person is Margaret Chase Smith. Who was both a Congresswoman and Senator from Maine in the fifties who in June of 1950 gave a blistering speech called. A declaration of conscience, in which she went after fellow Republican joseph ,McCarthy. Denouncing quote, the reckless abandon in which unproved charges have been hurled from this side of the aisle. Now that kind of independent trailblazer seems to really mirror professor Richardson's spirit and efforts for our country.  So after Margaret Chase Smith, maybe the chasers, the history chasers, the truth chasers, something like that.  I think maybe I'll put up a poll on Instagram and see if we can come to some kind of consensus on a great nickname for all of us  fans of Heather Cox Richardson. And of course, if you've got any suggestions, please send them my way.  You can email me at craig@ungaslighting.com or you can go to the website ungaslighting.com and leave a voicemail.

 Well, that's it for this week's episode of The Great Ungaslighting.   Please follow or subscribe to this podcast, if you haven't already,  share it with anyone you think might be interested in. Please, if you feel like it, leave a review, they're really helpful.   So, thanks everybody. I'll see you next week until then, be kind to yourself cut each other some slack, and as always people, use your damn turn signal.