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Clever Repartee

Southern Pessimist
@SouthernPessimist
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When I was a very young man I took the Myers-Briggs personality test which has been discredited since but at the time seemed pretty reasonable. I think I was a P5F3 or something like that. The only thing I remember about the assessment was that I was a total loser but that I had the capacity for unexpected clever observations. So I relished the one good personality trait that could be described. Not long after that, when I was in a study group in medical school, after stating something that I thought was profound and important, the leader of the small group paused and stated emphatically: "SP, no matter what anyone else says about you, you have a firm grasp of the obvious." I think he considered that to be an insult but in fact it became a compliment that I have spent my entire life trying to live up to.

Since I moved to South Florida a few years ago, I find myself getting into conversations about why I now live in Florida instead of the many other fantastic places I have lived. My witty response has often been that the good thing about living in Florida is that no matter where you go there is always someone there who is older and uglier than you are. This is most certainly true but it is needlessly cruel.

The truth is that there are many very old and in some way ugly people everywhere you go in Florida. Many of those people, who make the effort to get out and engage in the world, are very attractive in their own way. These people are defiant in their effort to remain relevant. I celebrate every one of them. There are also many broken people of all ages who struggle at basic functions.

Especially shopping for groceries. I pray for them almost daily as I stand behind them in line.

This post was promoted to the Main Feed at the recommendation of Ricochet's members.

Discussion (31)

  • Lunchbox Gerald@Jose

    Myers-Briggs - I can't count the number of times I took that at the request of employers, education counselors, etc. It seemed plausible at the time, but I've never detected any real benefit from it.

    Southern Pessimist (View Post):

    There are also many broken people of all ages who struggle to function at basic functions.

    Especially shopping for groceries. I pray for them almost daily as I stand behind them in line.

    Are there more of them now? Or am I just paying more attention?

  • John H.@JohnH
    Southern Pessimist (View Post):

    “SP, no matter what anyone else says about you, you have a firm grasp of the obvious.”

    I too would take that as a compliment. And not just the firm-grasp-of-the-obvious part, but the whatever-anyone-else-says part. It would suggest that I am at the center of a great vortex of opinionation, much about me, much of it wrong. Just the idea that I was getting all that secret attention would cheer me!

  • Paul Stinchfield@PaulStinchfield
    ReplyingtoJohn H.

    John H. (View Comment):

    Southern Pessimist (View Post):

    “SP, no matter what anyone else says about you, you have a firm grasp of the obvious.”

    I too would take that as a compliment. And not just the firm-grasp-of-the-obvious part, but the whatever-anyone-else-says part. It would suggest that I am at the center of a great vortex of opinionation, much about me, much of it wrong. Just the idea that I was getting all that secret attention would cheer me!

    I agree: In this degraded age, too few people have even a weak grasp of the obvious.

    "We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."
    --George Orwell

  • Paul Stinchfield@PaulStinchfield

    Does this strike a chord?

    All of these facts are grossly obvious if one's emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also intolerable, and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial. I come back to the astonishing failure of military prediction in the present war. It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.
    --George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism, 1945

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