Picture the world through the eyes of the jerk. The line of people in the post office is a mass of unimportant fools; it’s 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 a dunce* to be shot down. Entering a subway is an exercise in nudging past the dumb schmoes.
We need a theory of jerks. We need such a theory because, first, it can help us achieve a calm, clinical understanding when confronting such a creature in the wild. Imagine the nature-documentary voice-over: ‘Here we see the jerk in his natural environment. Notice how he subtly adjusts his dominance display to the Italian restaurant situation…’ And second – well, I don’t want to say what the second reason is quite yet.
[continue]
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* Instead of "dunce" the original piece uses "idiot". In light of Shelley Tremain's remarks to me about the history of that word, I'm wondering whether I should have avoided it. In my mind, it is exactly the sort of word the jerk is prone to use, and how he is prone to think of people, so there's a conflict here between my desire to capture the worldview of the jerk with phenomenological accuracy and my newly heightened sensitivity to the historical associations of that particular word.
[illustration by Paul Blow]
Your portrait of the jerk, like the portrait of the asshole, sounds so clinical.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine DMS 6 employing that terminology.
Also, I think these traits can be expressed with other conditions in novel ways.
Thanks
So, to combine this with the idea that collective entities can be conscious -- can nations or companies also be jerks and/or sweethearts?
ReplyDeleteArts & Letters Daily directed me to your article, which I thoroughly enjoyed. With regard to the jerk's respectful attitude toward superiors, I prefer your explanation that the jerk is aware of the potential benefits of kissing up.
ReplyDeleteNow, I'm off to explore more of The Splintered Mind.
Hmm, it almost seems to enable a jerkitude itself - the leverage jerk. Sure, maybe the guy pushed for reform (bluntly!), but he's, like, a jerk!
ReplyDeleteA sort of tall poppy syndrome, because it's useful to undermine such a person and have a derogitory moniker to dismantle their accomplishment and take away pieces of it for ones own asset pile (if one can - only needs a chance of being able to do that for it to be worth it).
I mean those suffragettes getting in the way of that horse race! The jerks!
Or alternatively, what is the redemption protocol for a suffragette causing upset? Was it perhaps warranted in the end?
Check all the jerks one has encountered and see if they all ended up somehow undermining ones own assets?
One might argue they were undermining the communities system of equality, not just ones personal assets. But did it feel like that at the time - or did it feel personal?
Yet another of my posts I make at various forums, disrupting the general comraderie and agreement and...bein' a jerk! I wonder if I'll get a redemption protocol?
Thanks for the comments, folks!
ReplyDeletemtraven: Sure, why not? I can think of a candidate or two....
Callan: I agree, and I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the topic for those reasons. The term "jerk" is pretty regularly deployed in ways that are morally counterproductive -- as a jerk move itself, or to condemn people who are rightly being disruptive. So I fear that I'm feeding that. An earlier version of the piece had a stronger "bite-its-own-tail" conclusion -- that attraction to the term "jerk", and writing and reading pieces about it, was itself somewhat problematic. But I decided that was probably wasn't quite right either.
Aww, you're not supposed to agree, Eric! Where's the argument in that!? ;)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, to me it seems that sans any boardgame like structure to manage actions, there's always some ambiguity involved with the accuser that they could use to manouver their own position to an advantage. It's very much a position of power with no check (and all too easy to either declare anyone else inquiring into it a jerk OR the inquirer becomes the new accuser and aquires that power, which solves nothing about the problem)
Fiddley problem! And meanwhile people dart ahead of a pregnant woman to get the free sample off the table she was clearly headed for...the jerks! (still feels good to say!)
Re: paragraphs 3-4, I would have thought that the obvious example for differentiating the older use of "jerk" to mean "fool" would be the title character in Steve Martin's The Jerk (1979). Whatever failings the character might have, he doesn't fall into the new category of "jerk" as you've described it.
ReplyDeleteJordan: Yes, I'm inclined to agree. In retrospect, perhaps I should have used that example. I wasn't sure how much of the readership would be familiar enough with the movie to see that feature of it.
ReplyDeleteDear Eric
ReplyDeleteI am no philosopher and hopefully no jerk; be that as it may, two related objections come to mind about your construct of the "jerk"
First, your theory is guilty of what CBT calls labelling. Even with analytical heft you are reducing someone to a label and if the aim is to help someone be less of a jerk, it remains an open question how it helps
Second, I wonder if calling someone a jerk is akin to calling someone a criminal. Both are antisocial descriptions and both aim to rebuke but I wonder if they merely reify and provide entertainment in the case of the jerk in the public square of the internet or world of philosophy
Also there are tactical jerks and assholes, people who behave that way because of the rules of the games- think of Anderson's code of the street- in the inner city even people who are not street have to act street sometimes to protect themselves- I can imagine professions where people might have to act like assholes, if not jerks- that is to disregard the rights of others when that is the norm
ReplyDeleteHowie: Those are interesting and helpful points. I agree that it's often a bad idea to use the label jerk as a way of reducing someone into a negative social characterization. In fact, a tendency to think of people in such broad, negative social categories is partly constitutive of the psychology of jerkitude on my view!
ReplyDeleteSo the next big step for jerk and asshole theory is to integrate with what is known by sociology and psychology
ReplyDeleteAt the very least relate to Big Five and Dark Triad or Tetrad, try to operationalize
Answer questions like the questions of mine you answered
Sometimes I wonder whether philosophers (some) regard their analysis as more privileged than other related fields.
Assholehood and jerkitude are real things not mere folk psychology and not quite the same thing though overlapping with psychopathy and narcissism et al
A lot of territory to explore.
Plus the Philosophers Beard has extended the analysis of assholes to groups
Howie, I agree about the difference and partial overlap with low Agreeableness, and dark triad traits. As you'll see I do briefly discuss the dark triad in the Aeon piece.
ReplyDelete