The Gift of Arrogance

Observation

“In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.”

~Louis Pasteur

I believe that every person has the ability to read people, if they use their eyes. The title of this book is an homage to Gavin De Becker’s book The Gift of Fear, and in that book De Becker speaks of how people are becoming blind to nonverbals and other incredibly important cues to the cognitive and emotional states of others. These things can indicate a person’s intentions, desires, and feelings with regards to the context of the situation. He goes on to discuss how people fail to notice obvious cues until they are in life or death situations. In such grim times, the amygdala fires up, pumps you up with fear and adrenaline, and makes you assess your situation with the utmost clarity. This clarity comes from a person opening their eyes. What people don’t realize is that in all areas of life nonverbal and emotional intelligence is often more important than intellectual intelligence. Open your eyes. You’ll be able to read anybody before you know it.

That being said people do have issues with insight despite having open eyes. To this dilemma i propose two solutions, use critical thought and compassion. I’ll get to the exact qualities needed for these solutions in their own respective chapters. In this chapter we will explore the imperative traits of being unbiased and being aware.

On subject of bias, one must analyze rather than judge. I consider myself a very accepting person. My best friend is a lesbian, one of my oldest friends is black etc. I love being friends with people who have interesting personalities. Race is just a color, sexual orientation is just a preference, and gender is just a slight difference in anatomy.  That being said, I have found myself becoming uncomfortable around big groups of blacks. Unconsciously we are all a bit racist and sexist. I’ve seen this in many other people despite their honest attempts to be less prejudice. Being aware of this unconscious ideation is very necessary to getting better reads on people.

You may ask, “What does it mean to be willing to be unbiased?” This task is very simple, and yet I would say it’s the hardest part of being insightful. You need to go at any observation and fight to stay in a state of cognition rather than a state of pure emotion. Once emotion takes over, we become primarily judgmental. There will be emotions obviously, but these emotions will mirror and complement the emotions of the party you are ultimately attempting to understand. Understand is a key word, as are any words that incorporate a sense of neutrality.

A good example of a lack of willingness to face personal biases can be seen in a recent failed attempt at courtship on my part (Happens even to the best of us). I could not read the girls face for the life of me. In retrospect, I believe she had rather black and white morals, rather than my approach to problem solving which is full of grey area. For example, to solve leadership problems in our youth group, I suggested that a direct and manipulative approach to the problem would be effective, particularly against the younger more impressionable members. This would achieve her goal and make the youth group more successful. She greeted this suggestion with what I now realize was a subtle expression of contempt along with a masked mixture of contempt and confusion in the tone of her voice. These two expressions mixed now give me the impression that she was thinking something along the lines of “What the hell is Tim thinking?” Verbally she responded with, “No, I would rather just step down.” By missing those nonverbals I missed a large amount of the content in her message, and took a connection that originally had mutual dilated pupils (a universal and involuntary physiological indicator of sexual arousal or interest) to a slightly dysfunctional and awkward English table.

Similarly I often hear that people claim that a suicidal person showed no signs of trouble and just killed themselves. I don’t doubt that sometimes that is true, but in my experience people’s cries for help often go unheard. They are written off as annoying, neurotic, or even worse attention seeking. It’s this kind of ignorance and reluctance to read negative cues that contributes to suicide rates. I don’t say this to make people feel bad, but I do want there to be an awareness that ignoring cues due to bias can have serious real life consequences.

In terms of being aware, I would like to point to the guy I worked with in the technical crew at my high school. He was in the same group of friends that I was (albeit they often said they basically treated him as though he was autistic), and it alarmed me to see his near erotomanic behavior with regards to a girl who worked in the paint area. She was a very beautiful girl who was particularly well endowed in the chest area, which I deduced was what attracted him. She hated him with a passion and tried to disregard him at all costs, yet he considered it a possibility that it was just a front for her sexual desire for him. That is a massive red flag for a future sexual predator. I pointed this out to my friends, and they disregarded it as me just disliking him. Despite their reluctance to accept his nature, I kept an eye on him and made sure the girl was never left alone with him. As I watched him, I found that he liked to pace around fantasizing, especially after interactions with the girl. I again brought this up to my friends, and they again falsely attributed it to my dislike of him. Then I decided to do some digging on him. I found that he routinely did socially unacceptable actions and thought himself a ladies man despite the fact that most of my friends that were girls were somewhat repulsed by him. I pointed this out again to crew friends. They again denied it. I gave up on convincing them, but kept a watchful eye on him. It wasn’t until a few weeks later my crew friends began coming around to my point of view on their own. If they had paid attention from the beginning, they would have discovered that someone they had been friends with through middle school could be a potential threat at some point to women near him.

In conclusion, I think it has been made quite clear the value of being mindful of people around you and observant of their behavior. This can do everything from predicting when a person is about to take a swing at you to saving a suicidal person from hurting his or her self.