Makes me appreciate my public school and public university experience all the more.
Best and the Brightest, but Not the Nicest
"During four years at Princeton University and nearly a year at Yale Law School, I have been surrounded by students who dazzle. These are the students for whom application processes were made. They include published novelists, acclaimed musicians and Olympic medalists. They include entrepreneurs, founders of human rights groups and political activists. If they have hobbies such as stamp collecting and belly dancing, by golly, they are the best stamp collectors and belly dancers in America! These youths live a life of superlatives, a life in which being No. 1 is not just an aspiration but the status quo. They can be inspirational, and I am lucky to be able to learn from them. But they are not always nice people.
You know what I mean by 'nice.' I mean the kind of 'nice' that involves showing compassion not merely because membership in community service groups demands it. The kind of 'nice' that involves sharing notes with a student who is sick or lending a textbook to a friend who doesn't have one. The kind of selfless, genuine 'nice' that makes this world a better place -- but won't get you accepted to college.
Of course, top universities accept hundreds of individuals who have demonstrated the highest levels of citizenship. These teenagers have volunteered in more food banks, sponsored more fundraisers and lobbied more officials than any previous generation. They earn, rightfully, the gratitude of their communities and the plethora of honors that come with it. Colleges at the top of U.S. News and World Report's rankings would balk at the notion that these students are anything but the best and the brightest.
I'm not saying different. I'm saying that sometimes some of these students will denounce world hunger but be unfriendly to the homeless. They will debate environmental policy but never offer to take out the trash. They will believe vehemently in many causes but roll their eyes when reminded to be humble, to be generous and to 'do what is right.'
It is these people, though, who often climb America's ladder of success. They rise to the top, partly on their own merits yet also partly on the backs of equally deserving but 'nicer' people who let them steal the spotlight. Before they, or we, know it, they are the politicians and corporate executives subverting the very moral positions they espouse. They are the (frighteningly) many figureheads who purport to be leaders even as they embarrass our country and mar our history books.
Watching the race for the presidency, I cannot help but wonder whether our candidates, with their prestigious degrees and impressive credentials, are nice people. I wonder if, in their trek to the top, they have pushed aside the kind of quietly brilliant altruists who mean what they say and say what they mean."
The world often does reward selfish pricks, with other merits, sadly. Nice guys actually do tend to finish first, often. Warren Buffet is a hell of a nice guy, actually. But there are a lot of self-centered assholes who succeed, as well. And, as Amelia nicely argues in this column, they tend to walk on the backs, manipulate, fuck with, scapegoat and otherwise look out for their own selfish interests at the expense of a lot of these nice folks. All to rationalize why they're such selfish pricks.
Most of us are assholes, at times, in our lives. That's why the only way through is to just forgive ourselves and one another and to stop rationalizing what pricks we all are.
And as Amelia wisely observes, it is all of us assholes that make the world a shitty place, when it is. And the beauty of the scam of those who want to remain pricks is that not a one of them takes responsibility for it. As long they're a prick, that is. Because once they do, they join the ranks of all the nice folks that they take for granted and otherwise fuck with around them.
The trick, really, is for nice people to both call out pricks for their bullshit, to work with them on being nicer folk, to stop rewarding them and otherwise rationalizing their behavior for them, and for people, generally, to start being nicer to one another.
For me, it became an easy call once I became clear about what kind of person I want to spend my life with. I don't like being an asshole. And I despise bitchy women, is the truth, no matter how ambitious they are. In fact, bitchy, ambitious women are generally some of the biggest pricks that the world has to offer.
After Brandi and I split up, I decided, after talking with and dating many such women that I have no interest, anymore, in smart without nice. Smart without nice equals a world of misery and mindless arguments all meant to rationalize why someone remains a shithead rather than owning up.
I can't imagine being married to Hillary Clinton, frankly. Bitchy, smart women are just twice the problem of bitchy, dumb women.
And I'd make my life with a nice, moderately intelligent woman any day of the week over the pricks with female organs who make this world a living hell every bit as much as the pricks with male organs.
Nice people are just better people to hang with. Nice, intelligent people are some of the most quality people in the world to hang with, generally. And pricks of every sort are, generally, over the long haul, unbearable to deal with until they face up to their selfish bullshit.
Hitler was fuckin' brilliant. So was Stalin.
But I wouldn't want my kid to grow up to be them. And I don't want my kids to grow up to be a compromised version of any one of them, either.
Face up to your bullshit, assholes. And when you don't, deal with the consequences.
I've had to. That's how I know.
And if you can't, don't be surprised when people slowly start to figure out that you're just an asshole and that you're not worth making excuses for. Eventually people get tired of your shit.
If you ever get around to reading the Intelligent Investor, you'll get a much clearer idea of why nice guys finish first. And why Warren Buffet made all that money. Smart, arrogant pricks lose a lot of money, as it turns out. Because they're too arrogant to admit what they don't know. And it costs them a lot of money, generally.
Me. I'm looking for a nice girl long before I'm looking for a smart girl or an ambitious girl, anymore. Because nice girls and nice guys are cooler to hang out with, generally. And you can trust that what they have to say is not just about how they can look out for Number 1.
I, personally, couldn't really fall in love any other way. I know because I've tried. It just doesn't work. Because the truth is that I will never trust or respect an asshole or a bitch, no matter how smart, ambitious, or whatever they might be. Because, in my heart, I'll always be thinking, "How did I marry such an bitch?"
And what a miserable fuckin' existence that would be. No matter how many Ivy League credentials you put behind it.
