Today I’m motivated by an online conversation with a colleague to write this. In essence, he’s a successful financial trader by his own one method. Over the last few months, I’ve been sharing different methods, with a well declared intention not to change his.
Over several months I basically get a few stock responses. The themes broadly are justifications of what he’s doing – as if to say I was trying to change what he does. Well NO!! This chap has taught me quite a lot for free – but only one method. In a sense of gratitude, I thought it would be a good idea to show him another way – not a different way. Well yes – it may be different but that does not mean he has to stop what he’s doing and switch to ‘my way’ (and I’ve been totally clear about that repeatedly). So just a few minutes ago we had another one of those online chat conversations. I get more or less the same.
So now I’ve come to a conclusion after so long that he is totally uninterested in ideas that are different to his own. Which is fine – I just wish he would have spelt it out that clearly, like – “I mean no offence. I’m only interested in doing the business in one way which is my way. So I really don’t wish to hear of anything else.” That’s simple, it’s clear and I could not have taken offence about that.
But all this has got me thinking more about the nature of the humans. They are two-faced hypocrites in the vast majority. Some may find that insulting and I couldn’t care less. I give my perceptions of the world and people as I experience these things. I am honest in my opinions which are soundly based on a body of evidence or real experiences. Yes – subject to my perceptions and interpretations.
Some of the things I’ve noticed are as follows:
- People say they like a variety of different views. It all sounds good. Everybody likes to sound open-minded or be seen to be open-minded so they say these things. The reality of these people is quite different (in general of course) i.e. once you really get going with a different opinion, they switch off or become argumentative. I’m not talking about healthy discussion of different perspectives. I’m talking proper argumentative.
- People say they like honesty. This fails miserably once you give them an honest perspective – that doesn’t meet their approval.
- People often say they’re honest and truthful. This is about the biggest lie in the history of mankind. People in general are actually liars.
- People say they like to learn new things. Just don’t tell them about anything that takes more than an hour to learn or requires considerable mental effort.
- People say money isn’t everything but actually money is everything for them. Gross hypocrisy.
- There is a significant proportion of people who claim stupidity. In reality this is just a ruse to gain some personal advantage by playing stupid.
- People say that they like clarity of thinking. Just don’t apply clear thinking to something they think or believe, if it causes a difference of perspective.
- People say that they do not jump to conclusions. What a load of nonsense. They do so ‘all’ the time!
- People say that they’re not mind-readers – except that they’ll tell me what I’m thinking and what I’ll say next.
- People often say that they’re not meaning to be rude or disrespectful, when actually that’s just a preface for rudeness and gross disrespect.
If you’re about to jump to a conclusion that I’m a misanthropist, kindly get a grip. I think there are many good people out there. It’s just that they are in the minority. Not because I dislike the above mentioned two-facedness which affects a majority, means that I dislike the whole of humanity.
The human race has very far to go in their cognitive and behavioural development. I normally hate to hope – but on this occasion I do hope that they get somewhere fast before they self-destruct.
