Maybe I Am

We are all something, I suppose, but what or who?

Photo by Life Time Values on Unsplash

History is full of characters – people who can be described by one word, or at least a specific set of words.

But everybody on the planet can be, and is, described by others, in whatever way those others see them. Personality tests are popular in magazines, by HR departments, and at Internet pages that promise to tell you your IQ or some other characteristic of your personality. And your colleagues, relatives, friends, and everybody else who knows of your existence will sooner or later think about it, and perhaps talk to others about it – what kind of person you are.

Simple words are preferred in such tests, thoughts, and talks. Complex analyses are not convenient for most people, as these would require knowledge, insight, and an open mind – and none of that is typically present. We evaluate others, look for their character or personality, because we have decided upon it already and just want to prove that we are right.

Adolf Hitler was, what, a psychopath? Donald Trump is a malign narcissist, and most tech billionaires are, at the very least, cynisists, according to what people often say on social media.

I think it can be valuable to try to look at yourself from the outside, to identify how others see you. Maybe that can help you shape yourself to become someone more attractive, or maybe it can at least help you behave in a way that either tells clearly who you are, or hide it, depending on your preferences.

It would, of course, be better to surround yourself with people who do not categorize you – who all the time look at you objectively, expect you to be able to think and do anything and everything, so that you are not one particular “kind” of person, but simply a human being with all the treats that such one has.

But then again, we live in the real world, and first of all, you don’t decide yourself who you are surrounded by, at least not fully, and second, they will typically not spend as much thought power on evaluating you that this would take – they will more likely make shortcuts and define you as a type.

But which type do people see you as? And are they right?

The malign narcissist will never accept other people’s judgement of them, as such a type believes that he or she knows better than everybody else – about everything.

That’s a somewhat stereotypical view on narcissism, but it makes me feel that if I don’t want to look like I’m also such one, I’ll have to accept the possibility that other people can be right about me, whatever type label they want to attribute to me.

So, with that open mind that I don’t see in others, maybe I can myself reach an understanding of who I am, or what other people see me as – hinting at this possibly being who I then really am.

This, of course, disregarding the idea that the world is having some level of an integrated life where we all consider who each other are, could be a big illusion, and that nobody is really thinking anything about me unless they have to, forgetting all about me in the meantime.

I am somewhat convinced that almost any social label you can put on people is for the social aspects only. Inside, in a world without other people, almost all of those labels wouldn’t have any relevance. Hence, in a sense, you really are what people consider you to be – as their analysis and opinion is the social interaction that allows for any label to be placed at all.

So, who or what am I?

Maybe I am a malign narcissist

Based on the many claims that Trump is such one, I could try comparing myself with him. Not that I feel very similar to him at all, but there should be some similarities if I would also fit that same label, shouldn’t there?

And, indeed, a trait of Trump is that he apparently doesn’t listen to other people’s opinions about him, and doesn’t accept that he might be wrong about anything. He knows better.

The fact that I can at all start writing such an article like this one, should indicate that I also do not just accept other people’s judgements on who I am. Other articles I have written are somewhat rough on the idea of personality tests used in hiring processes, and on the idea as such that you can group people into a few “personalities”, of which some are suitable for a job while others are not.

Maybe I am questioning those tests because I am like Trump, not accepting that others can know anything about me that I myself don’t know better?

I don’t feel like I think like Trump looks like he is thinking when he claims his beliefs about right and wrong, but I have in my life experienced how people thought that I looked calm, even when I was upset, or uninterested, even when I was paying deep attention. Maybe I can’t judge Trump on what he looks like, if others can’t judge me on what I look like?

Maybe I am a psychopath

I should say that I see a psychopath as someone who clearly enjoys hurting others, which I don’t enjoy.

But I do like to get rid of a mosquito, for instance, or a spider that would otherwise be running around my feet or behind my neck, when I would least expect it. I do not have any deep empathy for such creatures, even though I logically consider them to be potentially intelligent and equipped with a conscience and some kind of soul.

I eat meat. I know, as positively it can be known, that cows, pigs, and other animals we eat, are advanced beings who can enjoy music, social gathering, and many other things that make them almost human. Of course, their different shapes makes it impossible for them to have lives like humans, but that shouldn’t prevent them from being looked at with respect and empathy.

I have been a vegetarian, once, but I am not anymore, mostly because of a massive pressure from my surroundings to be like them instead. But what if I would have ignored their pressure and stayed vegetarian? Making them feel uncomfortable with me, or even feel hurt, by the fact that they weren’t able to “help” me out of the vegetarianism? Could I then, by that act, be seen as less empathetic with them, this way exactly behaving like a psychopath?

Now, instead, my psychotic behavior is directed toward those poor animals. It is difficult to be different than the pack you’re in without being considered insensitive to the common good.

At work, I have several times, in several jobs, experienced outspoken psychopath behavior from my bosses. Unnecessarily evil they were, and they kept punching where they could see it hurt the most.

In such an environment, to develop some level of resilience, a person becomes a bit like the suppressor. Maybe punching others in the same way, or punching back when it seems possible (which is rarely does with a psychopath around). But I can’t deny that I have also shown less sensitive traits at times – until getting out of the misery, typically when the boss did his last, final act of firing me (not always final, though: some of them have actively kept on blocking me from getting a new job elsewhere).

Being the victim of a psychopath is, in some people’s eyes, the result of being a bad person yourself, somehow. Or it is not true at all that someone else behaved like a psychopath toward you; it is rather just a narcissists perception of the world, they think.

I can’t know what is true. What I know is that the world keeps punishing the victims of psychopaths, by never supporting them, never giving them jobs, etc. – maybe for good reasons, as it may be us who are the scum, or just not strong enough to be useful to the world, to fit in.

During a long life, though, I can’t find much evidence of myself being psychotic, even though I know and have seen how empathy is growing – it isn’t necessarily there in large amounts with children or young adults, but can be learned. I have learned it, so, today I have more of it and am further away from being a psychopath. So far away, that I am not one.

Maybe I am an autist

This became a hype a few years ago, after having been looked upon as a defect during many years. There is something attractive for many people in self-identifying as an autist, or even getting a professional diagnose.

Basically, the term is used about people who somehow do not behave exactly like everybody else. But as everybody else do not behave the same as each other either, it is a bit of a mystery to me who some people want to pick out exactly this group of people and call them a type; autists.

Of course, I do not know enough about it. But somehow it is about not being able to handle social relations well, not being outgoing, or even feeling stressed by spending time with others.

I have some of that. To me, though, it is not what some of the job personality tests would like to claim, that I cannot handle large groups of people, or similar. Because, I can. I just need purpose. So speaking to a crowd is not a problem for me. But just standing there, without purpose, in a crowd where everybody pay positive attention to each other but see me as a disturbing element, a breach of harmony, isn’t what I call fun.

It seems to me like many people who wants to see an understanding from their surroundings about not being outgoing, not enjoying the purposeless being a hamster in a flock of mice, seek an autism diagnosis. But, of course, it could be something else.

Autism is also about having strict order in your life. Making lists, counting things, following procedures. A lot of traditional business life made good use of that, but modern ways of interacting in a company, such as agile, constant reorganizations, and new technologies entering almost daily, doesn’t fit that kind of thinking well.

I see the need to be described as an autist as a distress signal, really, more than a need caused by something being special about that person. In fact, most people hate this modern style in business, but we are just more or less able to cope with it.

So, no, even if I like to make lists, I am not an autist. I would prefer to deal with other people with more respect both ways – everybody understanding that the others aren’t enjoying the same things, and that they prefer different setups of the office space, for instance, and the work culture.

In fact, the need for people to call themselves, or others, autists, seems to me to be more of a way of sorting people into those who fit the dominant cultural element in the company, and those who don’t.

Maybe I am an idiot

That old-fashioned use of “idiot” that talks about someone with a low IQ, isn’t the most common anymore. Now it is mostly used as a blaming word for people who decide on things you don’t agree with. Or who are acting in a way you experience as evil.

I feel that people see me in all of those ways, at times. And I find it strange. First of all, I am not evil. I don’t try to hurt others. But I do try to say what I think, and others often don’t want to hear that – because they would prefer me to think something else, or because they just don’t want it to be said, so they can stay in an illusion of everything being a different way.

About the IQ – well, I know from various tests that mine is not low. But I don’t believe in the IQ being important at all, for almost every case in which it is mentioned or used. People can think wrongly about something, even if they have a high IQ, and they can see straight through a problem and find a good solution, even with a low IQ.

There are so many other things that matter. I have noticed, that many people see me as an idiot (with a low IQ), if I ask about something simple. They believe that only people who wouldn’t be able to think out the answer themselves, would ask such a question. Or they see me as unable to think if I express a thought without a conclusion, that is meant to be open and inviting others to bid in with their thoughts. So, being open and communicative is seen as idiotic.

Lots of people don’t agree with me on most of what I say. If I say that all people are valuable, for instance, there will be a large portion of people who change their facial expression into one of despise, sometimes then expressing in words that they don’t think so – and they see me as an idiot, in every way, for thinking like that.

Nevertheless, I feel these days how 99% of the companies where I send a job application consider me to be exactly an idiot who they do not want to hire. In fact, they probably don’t even read my CV. That is partly because of my age: when being 57, you’re an old idiot. Only younger people can be intelligent, and useful. When you apply for a job that is mostly given to younger people, you are an idiot if you think you’ll get it. And if you believe that you still have any value at that age, you are truly an idiot.

So, if most people I get in touch with, see me as an idiot, I just have to conclude that then I am one. That’s the social game: the surroundings decide who you are.

Maybe I just am

Having grown holistic over the years, seeing how everything is connected and how most people make wrong decisions because they look at a too limited part of what matters – not taking everything into account in their decisions – I can say that none of us really are types.

We show behavioral patterns, sure enough, but we do that to fit into the context we are in:

• The outgoing person in one social setting may be less outgoing in another (say, when moving to a different country where they are not accepted as equal, and do not know neither the local language nor the dos and don’ts of the area).

• The one always called an idiot in one company may become the genius of another.

• The one always thinking about themselves, unable to see other people’s views as relevant, may find themselves in a troubled situation once where they depend on the knowledge and skills of others (like, getting ill and depend on doctors to find a way to heal them).

Of course, some character traits tend to be carried with you at first – I have seen how some patients in hospitals behaved very badly, for instance, not being able to understand the needs of neither the other patients nor the staff. They were narcissists, and they stayed narcissists in the new settings that, in fact, confirmed their behavior to be beneficial to them.

But people will change with changing needs.

I have done that, a lot, during my life. While I still carry all of my life with me, in the shape of memories and scars, skills and understandings, it is not all active in the way it was – I do not react the same way now as I did before. Not in all situations. And I adapt to new situations, as far as it goes.

What people seem to believe is that when you are three years old, a personality is being shaped, and that defines your behavior and success for the rest of your life. That is not true. Well, maybe for you, but not for me. And I doubt that it is for anyone, to be honest.

A human being is to some extent like a big, versatile machine where different aspects can adapt to the circumstances. Especially the brain part of it is highly adaptable. Through a long life, it develops many different character elements, dismantle some of them again, replace them with others, and accumulate memories of how this person was, what it learned, and what still puzzles.

Maybe I was a psychopath for a moment once, and maybe I was an idiot, a narcissist, and an autist. But more likely, I was all of it in parallel, and a lot more, just with different aspects of that complex personality showing themselves according to the situations that demanded action, and the experience and skills at the time, leading to selecting one or another way of delivering that action.

Maybe I still am all of that. Or, maybe I just am. A versatile machine who can adapt.