The Hardest Ask

The problem with wisdom is that, if it doesn't completely confuse us (because we've been looking the other way for so long that a fresh framing leaves us as overwhelmed as newborn babies), it feels so natural—so tuned to body temperature—that we're not at all stricken. It digests so easily that we needn't chew or swallow. It merely metabolizes, vanishing without a trace.

I know a person who has remained a sulky, superior, utterly non-productive adolescent for nearly 70 years. Risking her snarling wrath, I once spoke the words she most needed to hear. They were her missing chunk, like oranges to a scurvied sailor; like a simple key to a seemingly intransigent lock. It's a maxim I've repeated here several times:

Registering stupidity doesn't make you smart; it just means you're observant.

Her reply was "Yeah, of course."

And...cut! Oranges: flippantly tossed overboard. Key: melted in the heat of the lock. Tableau: untouched. The answer blew in the wind, but who clocks a light breeze?

That self-vanishing snippet of breezy nothingness (along with its equally disposable corollaries, below) may be key insights for averting the clash we all feel coming, but I already know the response: "Yeah, of course."

Yet let's continue. Here are the corollaries:

Registering evil doesn't make you good.

Registering authoritarianism doesn't make you democratic

Spotting immorality doesn't make you virtuous.

The hardest ask in all creation is for narcissists to examine themselves first.

Our ancestors toiled and bled to push us, their spoiled children, into a paradise of wealth and comfort, never seeing that a society of narcissistic aristocrats will inherently be doomed.