Kingwell - Measure Yourself Against the Earth

Me asure

Yourself Against

the Eart h

Essays

Mark Kingwell

Biblioasis

Windsor, Ontario

Copyright Mark Kingwell, 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

first edition

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Kingwell, Mark, 1963-, author

Measure yourself against the earth / Mark Kingwell.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77196-046-5 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-77196-047-2 (ebook)

1. Culture--Philosophy. 2. Popular culture--Philosophy. I. Title.

HM621.K55 2015 306 C2015-903731-X

C2015-903732-8

Edited by Jeet Heer

Copy-edited by Emily Donaldson

Typeset and Designed by Gordon Robertson

Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Biblioasis also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Walking... is how the body measures itself against the earth.

rebecca solnit , Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2000)

For Karen Mulhallen

She all night long her amorous descant sung; Silence was pleasd

milton , Paradise Lost , Book IV

introduction

The Asshole Effect

and the Honeymoon

of Stupidity

Democracy is the honeymoon of stupidity.

ben hecht , Fantazius Mallare (1922)

1. The Asshole Effect

W ho among us has not felt the affront? Macadamia nuts arrive in a bag, not on a dish, and something shrivels in the soul. Are we animals? Did we execute the challenging task of being born insanely wealthy only to eat in-flight snacks from a bag ?! We did not. And that is why, when Korean Air heiress Cho Hyun-ah was confronted by a bag of nuts on a flight out of New York in December of 2014, she grew enraged and forced the plane back to the gate. Cho, the 40-year-old daughter of the airlines chairman, Cho Yang-ho, was charged with offences including assault and obstructing an airline captain in performance of his duties.

In custody since December 30, 2014, Cho has now been convicted and will serve a year in prison. Another executive who tried to cover up the incident will serve eight months. Many observers consider the sentences too light, given the rampant nepotism and privilege enjoyed by second- and third-generation members of South Koreas business elite. If she were considerate to people, if she didnt treat employees like slaves, if she could have controlled her emotion, the chief judge said, this case would not have happened. But consider the deeper truth of the matter: it was not really her fault.

The psychologist Paul Piff has coined a memorable label for the phenomenon: the asshole effect . Piff and his colleagues have shown that there is a reliable correlation, across a range of scenarios, between wealth and inconsiderate behaviour. Wealthy people are more likely to exhibit rudeness in cars, take more than equal shares of available goods, and think they deserve special treatment. Ms. Cho is just a spectacular example of what happens daily at any airport. When the sheer luck of the birthright lottery is converted via psychological magic into a sense of entitlement, expectations of special treatment and a delusional belief that tax reform constitutes class warfare are predictable. Piff confirms experimentally the arguments of philosopher Aaron Jamess 2012 book Assholes: A Theory . Like George W. Bush, some people are born on third base and think they hit a triple.

Thats why Chos trial and sentencing should be seen for what it is: an avoidance ritual, a show trial. Pictured in tears after the sentencing, Cho wrote a forced confession letter in which she said, I know my faults and Im very sorry. This is Galilean recanting for the obscenely plutocentric age. But Chos conviction changes nothing. In fact, it allows the current arrangement to endure under a screen of bogus accountability. Meanwhile, those who complain that the verdict is rooted in resentment are right. Resentment is, after all, the rational response of non-jerks when faced with the over-entitled behaviour of jerks. Its not the rudeness that people hate so much as the assumption that they are allowed to be rude.

This isnt always a function of wealth, just of narcissism and assumed superiority. I know several witless academic egomaniacs who routinely give themselves a free pass to be uncivil. But because wealth is the most obvious marker of status in capitalist societies, it is also the most powerful lever of assholery. It is no coincidence that the depredation of such people occurs most often in cases where they are confronted with the tedium of dealing with service people or, worse, competing with other citizens for the attention of such service people. Eric Schwitzgebel usefully supplements Jamess asshole theory with his own theory of what he prefers to call jerks. Picture the world through the eyes of the jerk, he writes at the beginning of his diverting field study of the type. The line of people in the post office is a mass of unimportant fools; its a felt injustice that you must wait while they bumble with their requests. The flight attendant is not a potentially interesting person with her own cares and struggles but instead the most available face of a corporation that stupidly insists you shut your phone. Custodians and secretaries are lazy complainers who rightly get the scut work. The person who disagrees with you at the staff meeting is an idiot to be shot down. Entering a subway is an exercise in nudging past the dumb schmoes.

Other entitlement show trials were underway in the early months of 2015. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund, was scrambling to salvage the shreds of reputation even as lurid evidence emerged of sex parties and pimping that make his alleged 2011 assault of a Manhattan hotel worker seem like business as usual. (Ken Kalfuss novella Coup de Foudre is a brilliant fictional account of the latter incident, framed as a cringe-making letter of apology. ) And lest we forget, there are worse things than nut rage or even non-fatal sexual assault. Francesco Schettino, disgraced captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, wrecked off the Capri coast in 2012, was convicted of multiple counts of manslaughter. Thirty-two passengers and crew were killed in that debacle and Schettino, who jumped ship, was sentenced to sixteen years in jail.

But while this reckless idiot with traces of cocaine in his hairclearly he does not know what hes doing there, eitherwas entertaining his twenty-five-year-old Moldovan mistress, ordering the pointless and dangerous fly-by to impress her, there was a company, a system, and a set of assumptions all holding him up. His orders, after all, were obeyed. It is a necessary premise of law that individuals are responsible for their actions, and no sane person would have it otherwise. But the root causes of the asshole effect are not, finally, singular. Such people are made, not born. Until we have a more aggressive plan for attacking luck entitlements, condemnation of a few hapless exemplars will remain satisfying but futile. Where to begin?