Jeremy Sherman - Whats Up With A**holes?: How to spot and stop them without becoming one.

Copyright 2021 by Jeremy Sherman All rights reserved.

To future fallibilists who improve upon the ideas herein.

Welcome to this advanced psychoproctology course for beginners! Im Jeremy Sherman, a science researcher and writer enjoying what Ill call my middle-age spread, a research agenda that extends from cradle to grave, from the origins of life to our grave situation today. More on that as we get going.

Proctology, of course, is the scientific diagnosis, treatment and prevention of problems with the anus and rectum. Psychoproctology is therefore the scientific diagnosis, treatment and prevention of problems with assholes, horses asses, jackasses, asshats, buttheads, and people with their heads up their butts.

This book is not potty humor, but an attempt to establish a topic of practical scientific research. Well want to name-call with greater accuracy, which will take a while. To name-call accurately, well want to start with a deep dive into whats going on with such people. Once weve got a better sense of it, well be able to find a more accurate term than asshole.

Besides, the potty humor hamstrings us on one of societys highest priorities: teaching our young not to be assholes. Asshole-prevention should be one of educations highest priorities but here we are, stuck trying to prevent our young from becoming a word we cant use in front of them. Thats like trying to potty-train toddlers if we had nothing but curse words for poop, or like trying to teach children not to steal without mentioning stealing.

Sure, we can tell children not to be or tolerate bullies, but notice where that leaves us: Bullies are often proud to be bullies and it implies that were the wimps who can be bullied. Well be looking for a name that describes whats really going on with assholes, not their power over us.

For now, well need a provisional name for assholes a space holder. From now on, ahole means asshole. Ahole is a nice, poetic stand-in, a hole in which well later plug a better term and, anyway, there is something hole-like about aholes. Like black holes they suck all the light out of interactions.

Once we have a clearer diagnosis of whats going on with these people, well find terms that are as descriptive as possible rather than spit out in anger more descriptive, too, than those terms spit out in anger while pretending to be objectively clinical as we subjectively diagnose anyone we butt heads with as a narcissist, gaslighter or psychopath. Ahole is a different and more encompassing diagnostic than those. Clinical narcissists, gaslighters and psychopaths are usually aholes, but not all aholes are clinically diagnosable narcissists, gaslighters, or psychopaths. Not all aholes are criminals either.

Psychoproctology addresses a common strain of human behavior about which science has been weirdly silent. The term ahole is in increasingly common usage, but researchers have barely begun to work on defining and distinguishing aholes. They have fallen through the crack between psychiatric diagnosis and criminology.

Psychoproctology is a light name for a serious subject. We cant afford to take ourselves too seriously as we do this serious research. History is full of dangerous psychoproctologists who took themselves far more seriously than their thinking warranted, misdiagnosing aholes with catastrophic consequences Hitler, Stalin or Mussolini, for example. We think of them as total aholes but they thought of themselves as the absolute authorities on what distinguishes an ahole. They slaughtered everyone they deemed aholes, and deemed aholes everyone they wanted to slaughter.

Thats why, though we will take psychoproctology research seriously a peculiarly stubborn attempt to think clearly and scientifically about aholes we cant take ourselves too seriously. For all I know, despite 25 years working as a psychoproctologist, I could just be another ahole pretending to have the last word on who is an ahole. Im not exempt from anything in human nature. Being an ahole surely is part of my human potential.

I dont believe one can be an expert on psychoproctology, only a specialist, trying to be very careful in ahole diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. While this will be a thorough, advanced course on psychoproctology,you wont come out a last-word authority on aholes. Calling oneself an expert or authority is taking oneself too seriously in a research area that is too newly identified and too complicated to justify such claims. Psychoproctology isnt rocket science; its far more complicated than that.

Still, it is likely youre already a budding psychoproctologist. Count all the gossip, venting and time spent exposed to dramas with villains and comedy with idiots. Count all the time youve spent with Eric Cartman on South Park or Dwight Schrute on The Office and all the other mindless, heartless ignor-anuses in popular culture. Count all the Marvel movies youve seen with their ahole villains, all the Shakespeare plays, and shows like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad. Its a rare work of fiction that doesnt include at least one ahole.

Think of all the time youve spent mulling over the people holding you back total jerks at the office, insufferable relatives, frustrating partners and exes, 7 annoying friends and ex-friends, and all your ahole opponents in politics. If you think about aholes then youre a budding psychoproctologist. You dont like aholes and you wonder about them a lot.

Even if you shun incivility, gossip, and name-calling youre probably still a budding psychoproctologist. Even if you say no to negativity, youll have spent a lot of time exploring the aholesphere, which makes you a budding psychoproctologist.

But just budding, not yet facing squarely into this area of research. See, I bet if you were asked to give a precise definition of an ahole what distinguishes them from normal, OK, decent people it might be the first time youve ever wondered about it. Like most people, you probably assume you know aholes when you see them, which is itself a problem.

You could come up with examples of aholes easily. Everybody can do that, including the people who you count as aholes and would count you as one right back. But a categorical definition as objective as possible?You probably dont have one yet. Almost no one does. But youll have one by the end of this book. Thats why I call this book an advanced psychoproctology course for beginners.

Not that the categorical definition I suggest will be the last-word objective standard for whos an ahole. Aholes claim the last word a lot. As well discover, aholes are last-wordists. They act as though they get the last word that trumps all other possible words and even trumps reality itself. We call them know-it-alls, right?

Heres the core premise of psychoproctology:

We live in a thriving, colorful and diverse world, with all sorts of people living all sorts of perfectly decent, acceptable lifestyles, even the lifestyles that look weird to you. A god doesnt strike down those who diverge from some straight and narrow. Its absurd to think you could get everyone to conform to the One True Way. It wont happen and if it did it would be non-adaptive and stupid.