The Beginning Explanation on Assholes

One day while driving a friend home one night, some dogs began running around the street. It was a fairly busy street, but everyone stopped to let the dogs pass. As we worked to get the dogs off the dangerous road, someone hit his gas and ran one of the dogs over. The other dog began to run around frantically, and become an even worse problem on the road. It was a horrifying sight, and I could do very little to help.

The guy who ran over the dog was an asshole. If we were to tell the story, it would sound like everyone involved was just like him, but the truth was all the other drivers were trying to get the dogs out of the way and to a safe place. No one expected an asshole to appear and ruin the entire situation.

In life there are assholes. It is often that the person is not trying to be one, but circumstances push them to become one. Far worse, we can become assholes, and probably have been at some points in life. This doesn’t negate the fact that the majority of the world, like the majority of drivers in my story, are trying to do the right thing and not be that horrible person.

For starters, I think I need to explain why I am using the term. Believe me, I tried to figure out some kind of academic fluffy words that best describes people in these situations. I even thought about calling them Smegheads from the TV Series Red Dwarf.

Then I remembered the line from Lister about Rimmer. “He is scum, the lowest smeghead whoever smegged a head. The only salute you give him, and this is if you are trying to be really really really really nice, and show him how much you like him is Asshole.”

In other words, I am using the term Asshole, because if I used the term I really want, the paper would be much much longer and full of cuss words. I am cutting it down to asshole as a way to make it shorter, and show some form of decorum to people who think the best solution is killing anything or anyone they dislike or who take advantage of situations without even thinking about who they are hurting.

In this world, there are assholes. We have had Hitlers, Stalins, Osama bin Ladens, and several people just as bad, but who have never really made it to the front pages of history. In life we sometimes accept the fact that there are assholes to the point that this is all we see. If someone disagrees with you, or does something you dislike they must be an asshole, and should be feared. There are very good reasons for this, often times the worst assholes are also good at looking like they care or are kind.

Some of the worst things done have not come from people who wanted evil, and to rule the world, but from how the society looked at it. I see this a lot in intercultural history.

To give an example, at an arcade I worked at for two years we had some couches. They were assigned to specific TV’s and you paid to use the couch, the console, and the nice TV. Sometimes, when the place was sort of empty, customers would grab an extra couch to game with their friends. In their minds this was ok, since no one else was using it, and they would be better off this way. In my mind, they had no right to this couch because they really hadn’t paid for it.

Sometimes I would confront the customers about the issue. Sometimes the customers would confront me back. In my mind, they were being assholes for taking a couch that wasn’t theirs. In their mind, it was open and anyone could grab it.

In truth, to their culture I was being an asshole. In mine, they were stepping way out of line. We were both being assholes, and my insistence that they use my cultural interpretation was making me the bigger one. It’s really hard admitting that as well.

Within those circumstances, we find that I did something wrong, and in fact became a major problem. Did the customer's screw up? That’s a good question, and to be honest its probably best not to think about it too much. If they had been somewhere else, me telling them to stop it would be viewed as polite, and they were being the assholes. It’s a matter of culture and place.

See, the problem isn’t who was the asshole, or anything like that. The question you need to start asking is Why? This gets us to a much better view of circumstances as how they worked, and who helped it along.

As an example, in the play “Daddy’s Dying Whose Got The Will?” one of the characters is a total asshole. Orville mistreats his wife, he yells at everyone, and never seems to stop eating. By the end of the play, his wife leaves him, he loses his entire inheritance, and he becomes a mess. We don’t need to question whether or not he is an asshole, because the play makes sure he is shown in that light constantly.

Instead, when you look at the character and what has been happening in his life, you see what happened. In his case, his father was abusive, and expected women to be a specific way. The culture said that the father should treat the girls kindly, and the boy with harshness. He inherits his own father’s bad habits. Far worse, he was the only son of several children. His sisters henpecked him, and treated him like garbage. For the most part he did as they said. When they told him to marry his girlfriend, he did. He took the job his family told him to, and he stayed close to the family like they wanted him to. In fact, his entire life has been doing what others say, and he resents the entire thing. Near the end, when his wife leaves him, you actually begin to see a needed change, he is miserable, but he is also recognizing where his problems are.

I know all this because I played Orville once, and realized what was happening. By the set of circumstances he was in, he became an Asshole. The way out from it meant actually having to grieve, and work out his problems. My director instead wanted him to bounce back, and be happy at the end. The script wanted the opposite, and I understood why.

Usually when we see an asshole, we assume this person has just been that way their entire life. The reality is that they could be doing how they did it in their culture. Another is that they could be an asshole for that moment of frustration or problems. In fact they may be an asshole simply to get over something even harder.

In Japan it is rude if you don’t slurp your soup. In Tonga, you belch to show thanks for the food. In some points of English history, a person could grab a chamber pot, drop trousers, and continue the conversation they were having at the dinner table. In China, if you eat everything, it means you want more. In Mongolia it is customary to give hot water or whiskey to any visitors. In Germany if you arrive at 5:01 you are late, and you are early if you arrive at 4:59. In Argentina it is expected to have a loud conversation with shouting and hand gestures. In parts of the Middle East you may be greeted by a strong kiss on the lips. In Russia, you don’t say goodbye, you simply finish and leave.

If you did any of these things in the North West US, you would be an asshole. If you were in those countries or eras, and tried things from what you learned in Seattle, you would be an asshole. The properness of how you were raised can be very different from where you are, and what you are accustomed to.

As in the arcade story, you can be an asshole simply because the two cultures are clashing and you haven’t realized it yet. This doesn’t have to be cultures from around the world. When I moved to Washington from Idaho, my easy going single subject mind could not comprehend the Washingtonian concept of speaking quickly and changing the subject often. I also had problems with talking about guns, or about regular Idaho life because much of that was foreign to the people I was talking to.

Many of the people I met had these strange stereotypes of what my life was like only a few hours away. I was asked questions that were very rude. Do not ask an Idahoan if he is a skinhead if he is speaking to you in spanish.

In the same vein, sometimes things simply workout for a person to be an asshole when they are regularly a nice person.The story of Jean Valjean starts with a boy trying to feed his family, and starving to the point that he steals bread. When he is captured, the majority of his life is spent trying to undo that infraction. In fact, even into his older years he has to be careful who he speaks to, because his life is forever branded by that one incident. The entire life is spent in dread because at one time he was hungry enough to rob a store.

We look at the person because of a single incident, and say that their entire life was pointed in this direction. In fact we then go on to say his entire life must be spent atoning for it. At this point, we become the assholes.

For example, many of us have been cut off at traffic, or did something really stupid. The mistake is either an innocent one, or being done spur of the moment. Traffic accidents are rarely caused by someone intentionally trying to kill themselves or someone else. Yet, when we talk about it, our minds look at the assholish move and think the person who did it deserves what they get.

Sometimes we are forced to make decisions that will hurt others. For example, your landlord demands rent, but you don’t have it. The check hasn’t cleared yet, but to the landlord you are an asshole for not giving it right then. In return, if someone does not pay rent for months on end, the landlord actually loses money on the event. As a friend points out, the type of landlord that is nice, and easy with payments, rarely survives many years.

The options given simply do not offer a happy decision. To survive we sometimes must be assholes. We don’t want to be, and for the most part, if we can, we will choose the nicest option given. But that only works if the nicest option is actually given. You didn’t want to hit the cat, but traffic didn’t let you slow down or move out of the way.

The reason why I bring up all of these reasons is to let you in on the big secret. We are all assholes from time to time. We try not to be, but sometimes we have no choice. We accidentally slurp when we aren’t supposed to, or hit a cat, or angrily yell at someone because of stress from something else. We try to say its a momentary thing, but to some onlookers, that is all they know about you. Like Valjean, that is how you will be judged because that is all of the information given.

But you hear about horrible assholes all the time, the NEWS is covered with assholes. Politicians can’t help butt point out an asshole, and how terrible they are. Society seems to be going down a horrible hill, and people are not willing to face the over abundance of assholes in the world.

The problem with this is that assholes are pretty rare. We think there are tons, because thats what we talk about, butt really they are not as common. Like those moments when we do something dumb, the person who does something terrible is rare, and very rarely understood.

For the most part we are afraid of an outlier. For that matter the evidence given to us is not accurate. We are dealing with an empty room with a single loud problem than a room full of problems. Boredom, and how our lives work make it seem worse.

I want to introduce you to the idea of an outlier. In statistical studies it is something that is so far out of the norm we don’t know how to study it. Imagine a waterfall where the water went up. It’s a single occurrence, and no one has any idea how it works. There are tons of theories, and ideas about it, but for the most part, all we know is that the water goes up.

We have a large amount of waterfalls, so many in fact that they are not all documented. We know they work because gravity pulls water down, and thus when it comes to a cliff, it falls. The same works for rain, and anything else we have in our lives.

However, if someone were to read all of the articles about waterfall studies, NEWS reports, and other items on the internet, they would conclude that waterfalls go up. It’s not because the majority are falling up, its because we talk so much about the one that isn’t. The outlier catches our attention, and makes us try to understand the impossible.

This happens a ton in real life. The movie Jaws has you scared of great white sharks. The reality is that even the movie said the deadly shark was rare and not part of the normal actions of that type of shark. In fact, there are so few attacks we could easily report each one.

They are so rare that the first shark attack in a major surfing competition happened a few months before I wrote this essay. 50 years of people going out in areas that sharks frequent, and we have our first case. With a population nearing billions near the ocean, the 200 don’t even come close to even being something to worry about.

Right before 9/11 we were scared to death of sharks. There had been large publicized attacks, and talks about how dangerous sharks really were. When people tallied the numbers on the amount was about normal. The NEWS simply talked about it more. Jay Leno joked after 9/11 that the fear of sharks seemed so dumb now that real problems were happening.

For something to be average, most staticians look for something in the 1 in 2,000 people range. So 1 in 2,000 people with a specific disease should be considered normal. If something is 1 in 4,000 or 5,000 would be rare but should be watched. If there are 1 in 4,000 people in the US with Lyme Disease, we have 87,500, or the population of a mid sized town. 1 in 2,000 would be 175,000 or a small city. If I told you that 175,000 people suffered from Lyme disease you would think it was some kind of disaster, when its barely even noticeable.

We have such large numbers of people that when we deal with outliers it makes small numbers seem big. Or in some cases the rare become difficult to decipher. For example, there were about 100 shark attacks last year. With a billion people near the shore that makes 1 in 10 million. At this rate, if the entire US population was near the ocean and constantly bobbing near the waves, we would have 35 attacks, or the amount of people who die from a bad reaction to a vaccine. Speaking of which, when the bird flu hit the country one year, the estimated bad vaccine reactions, and estimated deaths if they did not vaccinate were about the same. The numbers are very small, but with such a large population it becomes difficult to accept. If one in 10 people in the world are left handed, then it is 700 Million people, or twice the amount of the US.

These numbers can confuse anyone who is not accustomed to them, which is why they get manipulated all the time. If you ever hear that 1 in 5 women are raped each year, it’s actually 1 in 200 for both genders, or 5 in 1000. Going to college is 1.2 times more likely to have be raped. Scary numbers, until you look it up and realize that 6 is 1.2 times 5. Why haven’t you hear these numbers? It’s hard to say, but the records of all crimes in the US have been showing a major downward trend for decades. This is for any type of crime, including shootings, rape, murder, or even jaywalking.

This should be expected since society is actually changing the types of crimes being performed. Instead of everyone speeding, they are downloading a movie or videogame. We are less likely to hear about horse rustling, simply because there are fewer horses, or people that use them on a daily basis. As technology changes our society the crimes change, the assholes get new ways to do things.

With crimes that we regularly report going down, the ones that do happen end up being talked about a lot more. It’s not that these crimes are not heinous, its that they are happening less. In fact some are still a problem. For example 1 in 200 people are raped every year is a very high number and should be worked on. We should be talking about it, and figuring out better ways to make it disappear. However, telling someone that going to college means they will be raped is sort of insane.

The way I imagine it is a big arcade game in an empty room. We can tell where it is, and all sorts of things about it because it is the only one in the room. If we filled the room with games, then it would be difficult to tell which game was which from sound or quick glance. At this time we do have a loud and sort of annoying problem with the one game being really loud in the room, but we are paying attention to it because it is the only one.

Growing a farm today is considered sort of a treat, and has all sorts of special work to do with it. People who have a small patch of vegetables in their yard talk about how much work it takes to keep this amount working and how hard it is. A farmer who deals with plants in the billions has everything down to a system, and the larger the plot of land the more likely he will use automation to get things to work. He can’t move sprinklers to every part of land all the time because there is too much land to do it with, so the sprinkler system is designed to feed at specific times and only set up after planting. The rest of the year it works on its own.

When we discuss things like healthcare or road laws we do not imagine the hundreds of millions of people that use it. That means rare exceptions can be as large as the town you live in. If 1 in 200 people are raped each year, that’s 1.75 million. That is a big whopping number in a much larger population.

I decided to look it up to make sure. The FBI reports that violent crime in 2014 was 1.2 million, with the largest amount being aggravated assaults. Rape was 6.3 percent of those crimes, or approximately 74,000. That’s 1 in 5,000 people. Take a moment to let that all in. Every time I do the research on this, I am shocked at the numbers. As you can see from the above writing, even I expected worse.

What is going on? As the room empties of games, we begin to start noticing the ones left. Not only that, we start to misuse numbers. We hear more about specific assholes than assholes in general.

If someone walked into this room, they would expect that it was what we described when the room was full. That sounds weird, but boredom and lack of knowledge go a long way. Imagine the ghetto of any US city. You know what to expect right? You will be assaulted by just being there right? The answer is no, of course not. It takes a large set of circumstances for you to be shot. Just being in the area or doing something like flashing your brights will not get you killed. There is a higher crime rate, so you do have a higher chance of being shot, but that means you stayed there for a long period of time, and did really stupid things. Hanging out with gangbangers are night is your best chance to be shot. Being their neighbor is the second best. Living three blocks over is likely going to be safe.

Because you have only heard about the room when it was full, you believe that entering into the room, even the noisy part of it, will be the same even though it has emptied quite a bit. But why are so many people talking about it, or reporting about it all the time?

The answer comes pretty easily in boredom and a desire to do something. The Red Guard were trying to mimic the stories their parents told them of the communist revolution. Many protesters today are comparing themselves to protesters from the 1960’s and 1970’s. The problems are less, and the response is less, but the desire for the same is greater. This led to the Red Guard riots of China, and a lot of problems here in the US today.

This leaves us in the problems of 30 years ago tangent. During the 70’s and 80’s rape and other assholish things were rising. During this time, it was rising so much that some said it would be rampant in a few decades. The idea that 1 in 5 people are raped actually came from a paper like that. The fears from that era lived on into today, even though the numbers dropped off and even fell dramatically.

The room is emptied, but our ears are still ringing from the time when it was full.

This essay was an attempt to broach the subject of assholes in the world. It is not meant to be the big explanation of everything. I hoped only to show that assholes exist in the world. That we can be assholes from time to time. We are afraid of assholes because we are being told they are everywhere.

I want to spend three more essays on this subject. The first will be giving out all the information I can find on specific asshole types. The next will be talking about how the asshole works within the world. Finally, we will be talking about why we sort of need assholes, morons, lunatics, and others we tend to push to the side.

The reason for writing all of this is to help people look at the world, and understand how assholes are part of our life. I am not trying to excuse the behavior, but help explain it, and perhaps help out in making the asshole a less of a problem. In other words, I am writing a bunch of papers to help deal with this asshole problem.

You have to write humor with stuff like this, or you start wanting to punch people. Which is the opposite of the goals of this paper.