When I was younger and attracted to the Bad Boys, I wasted a lot of emotional energy trying to explain to them how their more egregious behaviors hurt me. Or trying to fathom why they did certain things so that I could help “heal” them. (Yeah, go ahead. Roll your eyes.)
“Why do you keep lying when you know I’m going to find out?”
“But if you say you’re going to pick me up at 7:00, you should call if you can’t. Leaving me waiting until 8:30 without a word doesn’t make sense.”
(Or in one case where the miscreant was a co-worker as well as a lover) “Why did you say you wrote that ad? You know I wrote it.”
Yeah. BIG waste of time. “You knew … I was a snake before you took me in.”
But I believed in the gospel of “talking things out.” I believed, truly Believed, that all problems between people of goodwill could be solved by coming to understand each other’s point of view and making accommodations on both sides. Of course, that’s not true, even when all parties actually are people of goodwill. No need to point out that in the cases above, I utterly failed to notice that if the guy had had any goodwill in the first place, I wouldn’t been in the situation that prompted my silly pleas and queries.
Well, live and learn. Or so you’d think.
—–
I mentioned yesterday encountering a sleazeball car salesman at what is no doubt an equally sleazy faux “liquidation sale.”
Not a person of goodwill there, either. You know it. I know it. Clearly the best course is not to set foot on that lot again until the vermin have scattered back into the crevasses and crannies from which they emerged. And that’s easy to do because I’m only in the most casual, tentative stages of thinking that one of these days I might want a different vehicle.
Yet there was one car on the lot — an older, high-mileage Toyota RAV4 — that sticks in my mind. It’s one of the only ones I might even come close to affording. I find myself fighting the urge to go back and say, “Look, I’m interested in taking a closer look at that one. But no pressure tactics, okay? I’ll talk straight with you, you talk straight with me. Deal?”
The urge is ridiculous. I have no special desire for an RAV4. It’s not the time for me to be buying, anyhow. If I ever did want to buy another vehicle, there are thousands of them out there, some with honest sellers. The gypsy car sellers conducting the local circus are never going to talk straight to anybody. So why would I even consider re-entering that den of snakes — hoping for non-snaky behavior?
The mad old wish that reasonableness will beget reasonableness — and that somehow, through my own behavior, I can be responsible for Turning the World Reasonable — emerges again.
—–
I don’t claim to understand the impulse. But one thing I know: It’s the same impulse that drives hopeful souls to write letters to their congresscritters, pointing out that such-and-such bill or law violates the Constitution and actually imagining that might change the perpetrator’s mind. (Um, don’t ask me how I know that, okay?)
It’s the same fevered hope that leads people to believe — to truly Believe — that if they can just elect the “right” people to office that government will become clean, honest, fiscally prudent, and self-policing.
It’s the same thing that drives people to attend politicians’ townhall meetings and wait patiently for the opportunity to step up to the mic and explain why Politician X really shouldn’t have voted that way and wouldn’t have voted that way, had he or she possessed all the relevant facts.
It’s the same delusion that, in its extreme stages, prompts people to say things like, “The government is US!” Or “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain!”
It’s the same hope that a snake (and no offense meant to actual serpents, some of whom are quite elegant and useful) will behave unsnakily if we just “do the right thing.”
(Which is, parenthetically, the same impulse that both everyday abusers and politicians use against their victims: “I’m sorry I beat you, but it’s your fault. I wouldn’t do it if you didn’t act that way”; “I’m only obeying the will of my constituents.” Yada yada.)
So what is it? Why do we — and this seems to be an affliction that bedevils some of the sincerest and most wannabe decent folks — keep flinging ourselves in the face of stark, freaking reality? Einstein called it the definition of insanity, to keep doing the same thing while expecting different results. Yet some very sane people (and dare I include myself in that number?) are the worst victims. And when I say victims, I don’t mean of abusive partners, crooked car salesthings, or corrupt (but I repeat myself) politicians. I mean of our own absurd hopes.
Because people like us still possess a shred of humanity. Even though we are cynics and world-weary, the good still left in us still has a wee bit of hope left that there might be some good in others. There usually isn’t.
Remember that the LIE is always sweeter than the reality, as I read somewhere else recently. Now getting to the important thing, another vehicle sometime in the future perhaps. In the past couple of years I’ve purchased a couple of cars that I found via the fanboy forums for this particular year and model of car. These are both mid-90’s cars, one had extremely low mileage with thousands of dollars of after market add-on’s, and the other was basically a new car having had every moving part replaced with a newer better engineered equivalent. Both cost way less than blue book retail. Suggest you check out the forum dedicated to the particular model and vintage of the vehicle you’d like. You’ll find the fan boys and gals combing the Internets for good deals, the fans themselves willing to part with their own pride and joy to a fellow fan. Potential good deals abound, and there’s a fan site for almost every vehicle made anymore. The only downside of course is finding a good deal on the other side of the country, though you’ll at least get a sense of the market price of what you’re looking for.
I’d rather trust and sometimes be wrong than always doubt and right
healthy skepticism comes from pain of prior lies and cheats
cynics, however, can never be open to those few good souls
Remember, the salesmans job is ALWAYS to get the best deal for themself and/or their dealership that they can get. No matter how nice that salesman is, that will always be their bottom line.
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Goes for realtors too. They will always work the best deal for themselves (least work, most commission and kickbacks) first, their seller second, the buyer maybe.
I’ve had much better luck buying a car off an individual-they’re much less likely to lie to you. Cars on lots can come from anywhere-flood specials(the worst,especially if they’ve been under salt water..),”cut cars”(where two cars of the same model-one wrecked in the front, the other from the back, are cut apart and welded together), just plain junkers-anything can wind up on a lot. I agree with Water Lily..there’s enough hope in me that I think most people are decent..but then,certain occupations just attract dirtbags,and you should be very leery when dealing with them.
Matt — I assume (and in some ways even hope) that everybody I deal with is looking for the best deal for him/herself or their company. But how they define best deal and how they go about getting it are another thing!
Your mention of real estate agents reminds me of a perfect example. I worked several times with a woman (a broker) who may not have been the nicest individual to have as a friend, but as an agent she was fantastic because of the imagination, drive, and straightforwardness she brought to every transaction. She could start with an unprepossessing property and envision what it could be. She was very canny about the type of improvements she suggested sellers make. She worked her ass off. She was totally upfront with both buyers and sellers about any problems and drawbacks a property had. She approached every showing with tremendous energy, but without the slightest bit of pressure on anybody.
She was the best — and she got the best deals. An never once did she have to do it by manipulating or deceiving anybody.
I really don’t get the dishonest car salesman thing. Sure, if you’re a traveling carny like the folks here this week (whose vehicles come from a reputable dealership in a town about an hour from here, but who appear to have no other connection with that dealership or any local roots), your “best deal” might be to sucker the marks into spending all you can wring out of them. (Pity, but I can see somebody thinking like that.) But in the long run, doesn’t the best deal mean building a relationship that’ll bring recommendations and return customers?
The hustlers who are here this week remind me of the charming sociopathic Bad Boys of my past. They never needed to treat anybody well (as they must have seen the situation) because when one woman or one client or one friend got disgusted and left, another could be acquired easily. Just turn on the charm and the lies and “make the sale” …
Jake MacGregor — Indeed. If you can manage that, you’ve got a great heart.
The question is why do some of us keep trying even after we’ve realized that the person (or institution) we’re dealing with doesn’t have a good soul?
I don’t know that this helps, but by way of understanding bad behvior, it is rewarded. I’ve seen it far to often with woman to doubt it for a second. An “ex” woman friend was crying on my shoulder yesterday about her lying cheating husband who could reasonably expect any service (and I mean that in the broadest sense of the word) from her on a whim. I treated her well for the short time we were together and she seemed to see my kindness as weakness. She didn’t really appreciate me (or the next guy for that matter) until I left, which is also quite common (My ass must be really fine. Until I’m walking out the door they never seem to care much). And now she’s back with bad boy and complaining about her life. We’ll see if you go back into the snakes lair?
EN — Yes, it’s sad. A lot of us women do reward bad behavior in relationships. (I suppose some men do, too, but I’d be less aware of that.) Your ex sounds as if she gets something out of the drama of her Bad Boy. Or maybe she just views him as a worthwhile problem to solve. Who knows? And yeah, it’s sadly true that a lot of nice guys do get dissed.
As to me going back into the snakes’ lair … nope. In “love” relationships, I went back and back and back like a typical damnfool until I eventually learned that Bad Boy love was (on their part) only a game, and a game with all losers, no winners. In politics, I was only slightly smarter, and as many do, I kept “going back” only because I didn’t realize life was full of alternatives. In business relationships, despite my impulses, I’ve always been smarter than that. But oh my, the impulses are still there.
Just to add — though it’s true that a lot of women do reward Bad Boy behavior, I don’t think many really intend to. They persist in bad relationships (IMHO) for a lot of seemingly good reasons — they think it’s their duty; they believe the guy is really a terrific person underneath his nasty behaviors; they stay because they see themselves as caregivers, as loyal, as good mothers or whatever.
And (also IMHO), by the time somebody, man or woman, has reached adulthood with a fundamental contempt for the needs of other people, in a way it doesn’t matter if the behaviors are rewarded or not. Those sort of people will do what they do, regardless. Because they usually have tons of surface charm, glibness, ability to manipulate, etc., they can just move from person to person. Since the other person is nothing more than a stage prop to them, they don’t really care how many other individuals love and leave them. There’s always another sucker out there.
Humans. We’re strange beasties.
It came out sounding a lot more harsh than intended. It’s just an observation. After all, this company wouldn’t even be in business if there was justice in the world.
Jeez, kill me for my english.
Evil is interesting.
Evil is attractive.
Evil is lazy.
Evil is a stress-reliever.
Evil is enticing.
I once took a class that went into the history of the theatre. The Church had manage to destroy the “entertainment industry” as it was then. But they had a problem getting their parishes interested. So they started putting on plays based on the bible. They had to let the plays be taken over by privatizing them by other people.
Why?
Too many people wanted to play the role of the Devil.
You can control only yourself and the things you have. To control others is like teaching a pig to sing. Its a waste of time and it annoys the pig.
Yes, do let others know that if there are some time constraints, like picking you up at a certain time, you’d prefer that they pick you up at the time arranged or let you know ahead of time so you can make other arrangement, but keep the number of the local taxi service handy. Other stuff, you need to do on an individual basis as everybody’s different.
Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Dead, Vader Says – Galactic Empire Times
CORUSCANT — Obi-Wan Kenobi, the mastermind of some of the most devastating attacks on the Galactic Empire and the most hunted man in the galaxy, was killed in a firefight with Imperial forces near Alderaan, Darth Vader announced on Sunday. … Imperial officials said Kenobi resisted and was cut down by Lord Vader’s own lightsaber. He was later dumped out of an airlock.
There’s a little bit of selfishness, a little bit of self challenging going on when you run into one of those situations……you do still want what originally caught your eye, even tho you discover it’s not real or not as good as you saw it……then the challenge begins, to see if you can still accomplish what you originally thought was going to happen, to see if you can talk sense into a no sense situation……
It never fails, if you are a person who automatically approaches people and situations thinking it’ll be a rational exchange and come from a place of truth or goodness, only to find out that the other one(s) involved never think about goodness or truth – it never fails to remind you that people don’t follow the same paths in life as you do……And yet, you can’t predict which ones will or won’t be that way, so you plunge ahead anyway, like a gambler rolling the dice…..And we all know the odds when gambling – …..
There is no sense in bashing your head against that stubborn wall of trying to change another human being, either intimately or in business……so that leaves the question of “do you change the way you approach people” -therefore your own personality- to fit into a more realistic and cynical view of the world and it’s inhabitants? Or do you continue to honor your way of relating and roll the dice on finding like minded people along the way?…..
The answer is time….not to change what you expect a situation’s outcome to be, or change your way of relating, but to just not waste any amount of time or energy on those obvious losing ones…..You try, you find out it’s “worth,” and you go from there either ahead or away from it/them….
Re Rav4: I have one and it’s great, I love it. But I wouldn’t think it’s for you and your dogs, Claire — not really enough room (even with the back seats removed, as I have done).
~~~~~
Psychologically speaking, I think naturegirl is right.
From a how-we-got-here perspective, isn’t hope cut from the same cloth that keeps repeating history? We’re always sure we can influence… convince others… or alter the course. (It’s what makes politicians so sure they’re right, and never learn from their own mistakes.)
I’m not sure the human brain is designed to recognize mistakes before (or as) we make them, so is unable to stop and reverse our course of action before it occurs; humans always look forward, working on what we’ve built, from the Present to the Future, rather than going back to Square One and re-thinking the problem entirely.
And this is what Hope does — moves us forward, always looking ahead, living in a future that never arrives. For if we were satisfied, we’d quit trying — quit trying to change people, quit looking for the best in them, and quit trying to improve conditions in our lives.
I guess what I’m saying is… our brain is wired to be optimistic.
As a kid, I was raised by my parents and grandparents to believe that right is always right and will always triumph, and that evil is always wrong and will be vanquished in the long run.
Over a relatively long life I have learned that neither is always correct. Matter of fact, it’s more like 50/50.
But I still WANT it to be correct. Just seems . . . um . . . right, somehow. I just don’t bet on it any more.
Grandpa said that “good judgment is usually the result of surviving a lot of bad judgment.” “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” was also a constant theme. He saw no real reason why two pre teen girls couldn’t milk as many cows each morning and night as he did. A little unrealistic, sometimes, but a darn good role model.
We are all some combination of optimist, pessimist, cynic, bad boy/girl – good boy/girl, wimp and tower of strength/ethics…. all together sometimes, and more or less as we face the many situations in which we find ourselves.
In other words, we’re all human beings and, usually, inconsistent even in those things we strive so hard to maintain as desired attributes.
I’ve done my best to cultivate the good – as I see it – as much to crowd out my lesser impulses as to consciously become a better person overall. It’s not easy, and sometimes I goof so badly that I almost can’t help but excuse myself by saying “the devil made me do it.” Maybe so, but that particular devil is part of my humanity. And I think we’d be lesser beings without it.
Another saying comes to mind… “Make no judgments where you have no compassion.” If we were perfect, how would that work? 🙂
I guess I need to add to that…
Seems to me that we try to see the good in people, get snookered and lied to by others so often because we DO see our own humanity and have at least some compassion for the humanity of others.
Where to draw that line, and how to judge… that comes with experience and survival, I think. But each person and each encounter is pretty much unique and I’ve gotten into far more difficulties when I tried to set down hard and fast ‘rules” for trust and acceptance, or forgiveness of wrongs done to me.
So, I decided long ago to do my best to protect myself without becoming hard and unapproachable. So far, it’s working. 🙂
I think there is some kind of good/evil pendulum going on. Some times are good where most people are doing and feeling good, and then there are the other times when people are feeling lousy and scrabbling for whatever they feel they can get.
Its like Yin/Yan. Can’t have one without the other. Otherwise how would you know if something’s good if you can’t appreciate it without knowing the bad?
That’s my take and I’m sticking with it.
I dunno if I can say I approach people or situations with hope, or even assumptions (sometimes)…..I may have my version of the outcome in mind, but that leaves the other side a total mystery so it’s not a complete version…..And I’d like to think I have good people judgement, but I’ve been fooled or surprised far to many times to rely on that all the time…..
But yeah, it would be a tragedy to become hard and unapproachable due to someone elses’ badness (LOL) when other people deserve a completely fresh chance….and ultimately being shut off from people only hurts the one shut off….
What’s really confusing is how to handle a good person who takes that bad direction suddenly….the one bad choice that has the potential to just blow up all kinds of things…..How long do we, or how hard do we, try to talk them out of the mistake they’re about to make & do we even have the right (or obligation) to?…..
“How long do we, or how hard do we, try to talk them out of the mistake they’re about to make & do we even have the right (or obligation) to?…..”
Well, not an _obligation,_ in the sense of being responsible for that person, but certainly it would depend on how close you were, and how much you cared for him or her. And it would (or might) depend on what they were about to do, how serious (or “immoral” from your or their POV) it was, and what the outcome would be.
And then, if you couldn’t convince the person to change his course, if in fact he was determined to proceed in the face of all arguments, you might have to walk away — or be there for him to help pick up the pieces. Again — circumstances would determine your action.
(If a murder or other serious crime was being contemplated, my question is, What “obligation” do you have to tell the potential victim? And would that depend on who the victim was — e.g. if he was a known Bad Guy himself, would you let the murder take place?)
to answer your question “The question is why do some of us keep trying even after we’ve realized that the person (or institution) we’re dealing with doesn’t have a good soul?”
because it isn’t about them, it is about us being the good souls we are … good people simply look through the optic of goodness
i have been screwed, blued & tatoo’d like most, but years later i don’t regret trusting and acting on that trust
the only regret i have about having been screwed and taken advantage of is that i did not have more grace and humor
that is because i made the money back in spades that was stolen, started business after embezeled, but i can’t get back the days. weeks and months i walked around pissed … and that cost me far more than the money or opportunity(s) i lost
easily done, not at all
but now, at age 51, i try to keep these kind of events to bad days instead of bad weeks or months
and, an added benefit to trusting is others intuit that you yourself are trustworthy …
sorry, long answer to short question, Claire
best to the puppies :>)
Re: the Murder situation –
I’m a Chicago girl….snitches get killed faster than the original intended victims do…..Mobster Rule Number Whatever, Chapter 357….Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes had it right: “I know nothing.”…..
Anyone that bent to being bad won’t think twice about what I say or think, at a point like that…..
Bad boys do what they do because it works…females reward it because lets face it; no matter how much a woman will complain that her man spits Copenhagen everywhere and treats his Harley better than her…it’s way more exciting than a fella who plays errand boy in a boring office and comes straight home to do the dishes. In the end, the first guy will move on, because we un-domesticated bachelors have important stuff to do, and Errand Boy may get the girl…but she’ll still dream of Harley Man.
Same basic principle with political types and salesthings too. I seriously think that most people just enjoy on some base level a stranger who looks them right in the eye and tells them that they’re his best customers yet, and that he’s got a deal just for them.
They’re too enthralled with the whole process to even question the deal they got until it’s all over and done with…and so months later you have bitter people complaining about their scumbag car salemen, presidents and ex-lovers.
(To be fair to car salesmen though…that’s just a job for most of them. And not a paticularly great one. I have a relative who has sold cars on and off for longer than I’ve been around…absolutely outstanding guy. But a great salesman as well, I feel bad for his customers…)
Being surprised that a Bad Boy would treat you badly reminds me of the Aesop tale of the Scorpion and the Turtle. Or the river crossing variant http://allaboutfrogs.org/stories/scorpion.html