Let me start off with a confession. Don’t get too excited, no Kardashian-style tapes to be leaked here. (GenZ-ers reading this are wondering “What is a ‘tape’? GenAlpha-ers reading this are wondering, “What is a Kardashian?”).
The confession–okay, I’ve built this up too much here, I need to massively lower everyone’s expectations–my minor, unimportant, deeply-trivial insight about myself that is so minor it isn’t even worthy of the under-rated and awesome word “insight”–is that it’s painfully hard for me to read people. I meet people and I still can’t shake my childhood instinct to just interpret everyone and everything in the most directly, literal way. I still meet people that seem nice and my heart jumps thinking they’re nice people (sometimes yes, often no); I still meet people that seem obnoxious and I write them off, but it only comes out later on that they’re just actually great people who happen to have RBF. It is just hard for me to separate the cover from the book.
And I have this instinct that I’m not alone, that for the 92% of people in the Bay Area, in our religion of cold logic–the 92% in which, as the local joke goes, everyone seems like they’re somewhere on the spectrum (“seems” you say?)–it would be useful if we could have a guide for each person, on how to work with that person. Maybe even how to be friends with that person. Indeed, in my darker moments–or perhaps my lighter moments?–I think forces are at work to make it harder and harder for individuals to “read” other individuals, instead moderating everything through screens, technologies, intermediaries, bureaucrats, turning souls into mere gears.
How do we solve this? Well, solving the long-term pattern of dehumanizing humans is something that we need to discuss in person, over alcohol, far away from technology. But on a smaller scale: I think it would be quite useful if I had a “how to” guide to everyone I met. In fact, this is so useful, that I wrote a whole how to guide book on how to work with me, for myself!
Just imagine this situation. You’re going to work with someone. Or date them. Or you’re going to choose them to be your parent (remember our team member Oscar Wilde’s line in Earnest: “To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”) You’re about to interact in a serious way with someone you don’t know.
Wouldn’t you want to know that he has a passionate intense hatred of bubblegum chewing, so you don’t chew your bubblegum when you’re together and–god forbid–you don’t pop any bubbles?
Wouldn’t you want to know that so-and-so needs to spend the first 10 minutes of a business meeting with someone new really getting to know them as a person first, before diving in? And if you don’t do that, it’s a sure way to make the negotiation go sour?
Wouldn’t you want to know that so-and-so really values framing ideas in philosophical contexts first, then practical contexts second?
And the dating examples of “what I wish I knew” are far far too numerous to even mention here.
A good how-to guide should have various components, and I’ll articulate those in other articles in an upcoming series that I’m deciding to write, as I write this line.
But I want to call out one implication here that is worth mentioning: in a how-to guide on how to work with or be friends with, or more, with someone, what is more important than the positive imperatives are the negative imperatives.
And by that, I mean, it’s less useful to say, “Be clear” — that’s not useful, and people try to be as clear as they can, given their own limitations and their own processing power. But “Don’t chew bubble gum” is actionable, unequivocal, and easy. Saying “be nice” might be useful for dealing with someone, but saying, “Don’t blast your youtube so loudly in the cafe that people six tables over can hear you, because if you do, then the person you’re meeting will slap you and walk out on you” is especially useful, particularly if you love watching my YouTube videos loud.
We could get even deeper here. It’s interesting how, for those who look deeply into the Old Testament, how it articulates that there are 10 core laws to be followed–the famous 10 commandments–but when you read them, the first 5 are positive commandments (do honor those people over there), and the next 5 are negative commandments (don’t covet those people all the way over there!). Follows laws is hard, and changing your behavior is hard, but I’d put forth that: starting by eliminating the negatives is much more powerful, more important, more effective–and much easier as well!–than following the positives. When you meet people, it may be hard to change your personality to match what they need from you, but it’s easier for you to start by minimizing your own characteristics that, in the mind of the person you’re talking to, are the biggest no-no-s.
