Do you have a relative like this?
Many years ago, on Facebook, I added one of my cousins as a friend. At the time, I didn’t realize that he was a bit of a racist, chauvinist, redneck. I didn’t have that much interaction with my cousin growing up, but seeing his posts on Facebook makes me wonder “Really? We’re related?”
The thing that always stuck out to me was in his About Me profile, and I forget which field it was (Religious views? Political views?) where he said “Do what you want to do and if anyone doesn’t like it, f*** ‘em!” Seeing his posts later on, it’s clear that he lives by this mantra.
However, the line of thought that he expressed on his profile is a common meme in American and (to a lesser extent) Canadian society. It permeates our culture and our movies – do what you want to do if you believe in it, even if others disapprove of it. My cousin takes it one step further in that especially if others disapprove of it, continue to do what you want even if it alienates them from you. After all, your personal enjoyment is better than the approval you get from others.
But is it?
Our species evolved to care about our reputation
Humans are a social species. We live with and interact with others, it is the way we evolved. It is not possible to live by yourself and hope to survive for long, or at least live well enough so that you aren’t just scrounging out subsistence living (contrary to what most Hollywood movies teach us, people who live alone by themselves in the woods, away from civilization, do not acquire super powers and ultra-trained martial arts skills).
Because we are a social species, we are forced to interact with and rely on one another. And because of this, other people can choose whether or not to interact with us and rely on us. If they choose not to, that greatly lessens our ability to survive because we’ll spend the bulk of our time trying to scrape out a basic life.
The attitude “Do what you want; alienating others is an acceptable outcome” ignores the fact that if you do alienate others, it will affect your outcome. For you see, others have a weapon to use against you – your reputation. If you get the reputation of someone who cannot be relied upon, who treats others poorly, who does not respect the rights of others, who gets in your face and does not consider others, word gets around. That’s why gossip is so powerful, it is a tool that is used to police the group. Gossip serves as a tool to ensure that others behavior is kept in line because it precedes your reputation; you can’t control what others say behind your back.
And if others behind your back are saying that you are not a reliable individual, or trustworthy individual, or care not about others because “F*** ‘em”, then news of this travels. It affects how others perceive you and if you don’t care, your quality of life degrades.
The theory of mind
Not caring about how others perceive you is flawed. Asperger’s patients can see things logically but have difficulty perceiving events from other people’s points of view. And this all stems from what’s known as the theory of mind.
The theory of mind is the idea that we humans live inside our own worlds but we can extricate ourselves from inside our own heads and predict how others will think from their own points of view. And we can go from there to see what others still will think, and how we will react, and so forth. In other words, the theory of mind is that we have our own minds but that we are not restricted to it; we understand that other people have minds of their own, along with their own sets of judgments and values. This is what separates us humans from other species – we have a theory of mind, and they don’t (at least, as far as we can tell; other species might have a theory of mind but it minor compared to us humans).
The theory of mind is possibly responsible for so much of our species’ development. The reason we have big brains relative to our body size (and the accompanying synapse connections between neurons) is because our species evolved to have to interact with other humans, and the theory of mind is one of these things that evolved. We can’t interact with other humans without thinking that other humans have minds of their own, and that means we have to take others’ subjective opinions into consideration when doing our own actions.
This is one theory about why our species developed large brains.
Tying it all together
So the idea that “you can do whatever you want and if anyone disapproves, f**k ‘em” is fundamentally flawed because it violates the theory of mind. It assumes that others may or may not care, but it doesn’t consider the fact that others may retaliate. It is completely ignorant of that possibility, that there may be consequences to your actions, and that’s why it is wrong.
Even if my cousin’s belief considers the fact that there may be consequences, it still dismisses them as inconsequential. “Whatever others may do, it doesn’t matter and won’t affect me.” This reflects our species’ optimism bias – the belief that things will always go in our favor. It also combines it with the self-serving bias – the belief that the things we do in our own interests are justified (i.e., even if others disapprove, I’m doing the right thing).
Yet as Asperger’s patients show us, not being able to view things from others’ points of view does not result in them being able to get along better in society. It is the opposite, they struggle to get along in society much more than the rest of us.
A regular person inherently understands this. They understand that their actions have consequences and are concerned about their reputation. Only people who are much stronger than their peers (such as dictators and despots) can knowingly get away with it; people with exceptional skills that are in demand (such as Sherlock Holmes); and people like my cousin… except in that case it all eventually catches up.
I’m not entirely sure how my cousin came to be like the way he is. But I do feel bad for him.
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