Assholes Read online

  Assholes and fully cooperative people simply have very different moral views of what their respective entitlements are. To bring out the difference, compare the point of view of “fully cooperative” people. Fully cooperative people, we may say, see themselves as equals, as having grounds for special treatment only in special circumstances that others will equally enjoy at the appropriate times. Here are several examples.

  On one’s birthday, one expects to receive special indulgences from one’s friends, such as a party, a round of drinks, or a celebratory phone call. Yet all count as equals because everyone is assigned one such day of celebration each year on or around the calendar day of each person’s birth. If you are celebrating my existence now, I will be celebrating your existence at some point during the year.

  The practice of forming a queue will degenerate into a scrum unless people by and large are willing to wait in the line. Yet it would be acceptable for you to cut to the front when you explain that there is a real emergency. You then receive a benefit because others accept a certain burden: if they weren’t waiting in line, there would be no line for you to cut in, and you might not be to able work your way to the front in a scrum. But under exigent circumstances, people of course understand. They will do likewise when an emergency comes up in their lives.

  Two people will have a successful conversation, in which both speak and both are understood, only when each listens while the other talks and each is given a good amount of speaking time. Yet it is fine to interrupt someone speaking in order to make an especially important point, even if one’s excitement to make the point simply gets the best of one. We give each other this privilege, and we are happy to work around occasional interventions, as long as we both feel our conversation is moving along just fine.

  Being someone’s friend requires consistent efforts to think of and present the friend in a good, supportive light. Yet it can be fine to point out a flaw, as gentle teasing or in order to crack a good joke. The joke can come at the friend’s expense if its “price” in discomfiture is low—low enough so that the friend is happy to pay for the sake of a laugh.

  We might generalize from these examples in the following way. In each case, there are both normal expectations and special circumstances in which those expectations are, for certain parties, to be set aside. Those who happen to wind up in the special circumstances are permitted to take special benefits, advantages, or treatment, but not because they are themselves special. All are seen as, at bottom, equals. Each will have days of special privilege, as the occasion (e.g., birthday) arises in the normal course of things. And as long as we each take special advantages for good reasons of the right kinds—there really is a grave emergency—no one will be terribly bothered about how the exact distribution of benefits and burdens falls out. We say, “It will all work out in the end,” not as a prediction about the future (when is “the end”?) but as a vote of confidence: if we really are working together in good faith, accommodating one another for what we can each regard as good reasons of the right sorts, that would in and of itself realize a kind of relationship we could really value, quite aside from the outcomes that fate and circumstance ultimately bring.

  The asshole, by contrast, sees no need to wait for special circumstances to come his way in the normal course of things. The asshole feels entitled to allow himself special advantages as he pleases systematically, across a wide range of social interactions. He cuts in line, and interrupts often, and drives without particular care, and persistently highlights people’s flaws. He rides people with wearing comments—veiled criticisms, insinuating questions, or awkward allusions to topics not normally discussed in polite company. He is often rude or more often borderline nasty. One feels he has just been intrusive or inconsiderate, though one can’t always pinpoint the norm of courtesy he has tread upon. Most important, the asshole gains special advantages from interpersonal relations, not by stroke of continuous luck, but because he regards himself as special. His circumstances are special in each case, in his view, because he is in them. If one is special on one’s birthday, the asshole’s birthday comes every day.

  None of this is to say that the asshole never shows restraint. Some assholes are indeed scrappy, acting unreflectively on any inclination and whim, though with varying degrees of success. The witty and charming asshole, however, will get away with more than a dull asshole can. A quite different stripe of asshole shows “principled” restraint when the advantages come too easily. Taking every last advantage, without at least a slight challenge, may seem beneath him, even undignified. He may, so he says, have better, perhaps nobler things to do with his precious time. The “dignified asshole” will share our displeasure with the scrappy asshole and may even hold a special contempt for his lax and unprincipled ways. Yet the dignified asshole is not so “principled” as to forgo the systematic enjoyment of special advantages; he may simply be especially good at justifying the special advantages he takes in his own eyes, by concocting “principled” rationalizations on the fly.

  To elaborate on a specific example, consider asshole surfers. Surfers usually have to share relatively few waves and generally do so according to rules of right-of-way that are well understood and more or less the same worldwide. When one surfer is “in position” on the most critical part of a wave, for example, other surfers are expected to yield. Lance the surfer, however, has decided that he should have almost any wave he wants. According to Lance, when people see him paddling for a wave, they should realize that he is the regular, that he’s the better—or at least older—surfer, and that this wave is therefore his wave. It is his wave, even if someone is already in position or up and surfing. Lance lumbers to his feet and surfs anyway, as though he is riding the wave alone. When surfers are “burned” in this way, most complain; they say some version of “Hey, man, what the fuck.” When people complain to Lance, he launches into a tirade. “Don’t you dare fucking fuck with me!” If the surfer replies, Lance escalates. “If you want some of this, let’s take it to the beach! Get the fock out of here! Before I get angry.” (If this does not seem plausible, be reassured that Lance can be found in surfing areas worldwide. The police tend not to get involved until violence breaks out.)

  Or consider a quite different area of life, academia. Dominic, a historian, has written some rightly acclaimed books. Having become accustomed to feeling appreciated, he now feels entitled to recognition and is especially prone to feeling slighted when he is not given a lot of attention. He finds it outrageous when his work is not cited, or when he is invited to speak at a conference but not offered the keynote address. None of this leads him to doubt whether his work is of continued importance; he instead concludes that those involved clearly lack judgment. As his prominence declines, instead of becoming increasingly uncertain about his claim to attention, he becomes increasingly concerned about the deteriorating state of his profession. In order to uphold high standards, especially as exemplified in his own work, he regularly writes scathing reviews of recent books, finding little good in them, sparing few terms of abuse, while offering slight evidence of his sweeping criticisms. When books he has trashed become prominent and influential, Dominic takes this as further evidence of falling professional standards.

  Assholes therefore come in quite different styles. In order to account for this, we stipulate that there are many ways of coming to be an asshole, by coming into the appropriate “sense of entitlement.” What is crucial is that the sense of entitlement tells the asshole that he deserves, or is due, or has a right to special advantages. The reasons why he feels he deserves special treatment may be as diverse as the stars. He may be sure that he is the greatest historian, architect, actor, artist, corporate executive, or political leader seen in a long time. He may feel entitled to his position of power and the control over people it enables him to exercise. When people suffer at his hand, this is simply an unfortunate fact of life—for them. He may feel that the nobility of his character, or the worthiness of his favored socia
l cause, gives him legitimate claim to have things go his way, especially when those who present obstacles can be seen as weak, unworthy, or morally corrupt. He may find most people tediously unintelligent or dull, in contrast with his own brilliant mind and manner. He may relate to them as though doing a chore, and even congratulate himself on his heroic success in treating such unworthy people politely. These are all different ways of having the appropriate “sense of entitlement.” If we had a taxonomy of such different entitlement conceptions, we would have a taxonomy of the different species of asshole. (We make a start on that effort in chapters 2 and 3.)

  We should emphasize that one is not an asshole simply for taking oneself to be entitled to certain things. Under the appropriate circumstances, we all have a right to be told the truth, not to be kicked or cheated, or even to receive certain special advantages from cooperative life. And one is not an asshole simply for being mistaken about what one’s entitlements are. We all make such mistakes from time to time. What makes someone an asshole is a special way of being wrong about what one’s entitlements are: the asshole’s “entrenched sense of entitlement” leads him to systematically think or assume that he has special entitlements that, from a moral point of view, he does not have. Again, that distinctive kind of error may come in very different forms. The asshole might invoke a genuine entitlement principle but misapply it to his particular situation. Or he might easily find entitlement rationalizations on the fly for whatever he happens to want at the time. In either case, the crucial feature is that the asshole’s entrenched sense of entitlement produces some such form of moral error in a systematic way. It is in that general way that the asshole treats himself as morally special.

  Of course, we often disagree about what entitlements people do or do not have, especially in political life. That means we will often disagree about who is or is not an asshole. For example, according to Lefty, Bill O’Reilly is an asshole. He is opportunistically exploiting working-class resentment. And according to Righty, O’Reilly is no asshole. He is heroically giving voice to working-class resentment. According to our theory, whether O’Reilly counts as an asshole depends on whether he is in fact entitled to act as he acts. People can disagree about that, given their background views about his social role and its value or disvalue, without disagreeing about what it is to be an asshole generally. So both Lefty and Righty can accept our theory. Lefty can say that O’Reilly is an asshole but happily admit that this wouldn’t be so if Righty were correct that O’Reilly is entitled to do as he does (and vice versa). The same is true of the many examples discussed in chapters 2 and 3. Many won’t agree with the moral diagnoses I offer of those figures. Even so, we can all agree about what the essence of the asshole is.

  TAKING STOCK

  Let us return to the three things we said that any good theory of assholes should explain and take stock of how our theory explains each of them.

  The first is relatively straightforward: we are looking for a stable trait of character. Our theory picks out a stable trait of character because the asshole’s sense of entitlement is “entrenched” in his motivational makeup: the feeling of entitlement does not merely occasionally spring up, like a sudden urge to watch a B movie. Nor is the feeling reoccurring but readily struck down. A person of good conscience might be aware of his own inner asshole and yet often successfully remind himself that his life is of no more importance than anyone else’s, that his own talents and accomplishments are largely a matter of luck, and that he is fortunate to live well and savor the sweetness of people in normal cooperative life. The asshole not only lacks such motivational correctives, his sense of entitlement is “entrenched,” in the sense that he is persistently assured, even upon reflection, that he is quite unlike everyone else. When the world questions his special standing in it, it is the challenge rather than the standing that gives way. The asshole sees no need to defend his special place in the social world, or he easily produces convincing rationalizations and moves on. He may even compliment himself on his resiliency and formidable argumentative powers. If reflection is for most people an important source of moral learning, the asshole puts reflection mainly in the service of assuring himself. This leaves him quite impervious to reform. Even when profound hardships befall him, and there is abundant therapeutic help, he will, in all likelihood, never see reason to change.16

  Let’s turn to the second feature to be explained—that the asshole is not invariably bad in terms of the material costs he imposes upon others. We explain this by defining the “special advantages” the asshole takes in a restricted way. There is nothing wrong in itself with enjoying the benefit of cutting to the front of a line, or of speaking out of turn, or of being freed from certain responsibilities. These actions are not, as such, wrong in the way it is wrong, say, to kill someone for the sake of fast cash. In general, the goods the asshole allows himself to enjoy flow from social practices that are generally beneficial. We ourselves admit that the asshole, too, should share in those sorts of goods, in the right measure and at the right times. The general problem is that the asshole helps himself to more than his share, or acts out of turn, or sloughs off the burdens that must generally be carried if the practices in question are to work. He can do that without doing irreparable harm or committing clear-cut wrongs. One can be a full-fledged asshole in the small.

  This suggests that the asshole is not in any real sense an outlaw. He may well keep within the letter of the law. Nor is he just another cheater, out for a “free ride” on the cooperative efforts of others. The deeper problem is not deliberate exploitation but a kind of willful insensitivity: he sees no reason to address the ambiguities and uncertainties that inevitably arise when people interact. Even “bright-line” rules of cooperation will have exceptions, and cooperative people often have to put a certain amount of work into discerning both the spirit of the law and what is finally acceptable in a particular case. They thus seek clarification, check assumptions, ask permission, or at least take a measure of care in good faith. The asshole, by contrast, sees little need for the work of mutual restraint aimed at benefit for all involved. According to his generalized sense of entitlement, it is only right and natural that the various advantages of social life should flow his way.

  Turn, finally, to our third requirement of explanation: that the asshole is downright upsetting, even outrageous. How could a person who imposes only small or modest costs upon others nevertheless be morally repugnant? Our answer appeals to a crucial aspect of the asshole’s entrenched sense of entitlement: it immunizes him against the complaints of other people. The asshole not only takes special privileges but refuses to listen when people complain. When someone says or conveys (as with a glare) something like “The line starts here,” “It is not your turn,” “What are you trying to say?,” or “Could you, please, let me finish,” the asshole makes no attempt to hear the person out and perhaps delivers a rude retort, such as “Screw you!” He is unwilling to recognize anyone who does express a complaint, never considering that the complaint might be legitimate. So although one may only suffer the small material cost of being cut ahead of in line, or being interrupted, or being talked over, one also suffers a deeper wrong: one’s very status as a moral person goes unrecognized. Immanuel Kant memorably says that respect for the moral law “strikes down” or “humiliates” our sense of “self-conceit.”17 This doesn’t happen for the asshole.

  THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING RECOGNIZED

  We have suggested that the asshole is morally repugnant because, even when the material costs he imposes are small, he fails to recognize others in a fundamental, morally important way. This is the heart and soul of our account of why the asshole is so bothersome, so we should more fully delve into the moral question—before moving on to less weighty concerns.

  Kant would say the asshole suffers from “self-conceit” or “arrogantia.” This is supposed to be something different from mere “self-love,” which might lead to selfishness but isn’t necessarily a corruption
of one’s capacities to reason morally. One can act selfishly, or even be a selfish person, despite one’s better moral judgment, perhaps by ignoring the moral situation or getting oneself not to actively consider it, much as a “jerk” or “schmuck” does. The asshole, by contrast, actively reasons from his sense of special entitlement rather than from an independent understanding of what the moral law requires when, in Kant’s terms, all are regarded equally as “ends in themselves,” as coequal sovereigns in a “Kingdom of Ends.”18

  Here Kant is probably developing Rousseau’s distinction between a person’s natural sense of self-worth (amour de soi-même) and a potentially destructive concern for rank or status as compared to others (amour propre).19 According to Rousseau, healthy self-love does not require comparing oneself to others at all; feeling worthy does not necessarily involve feeling superior to someone. Yet we invariably and rightly do care about how we are regarded by others in our social relationships. If the way of the world is often simply to compete for status, to try to better someone, Rousseau vividly explains how this gives rise to untold personal misery and grave social ills.20 Even so, nothing in the human social condition per se requires status competition. Instead, Rousseau suggests, we can acknowledge each person’s need for status recognition without treating anyone as either better or worse than another; we need only recognize each as fundamentally equal. All can rest content with this solution—except, of course, the asshole. His feelings of amour propre are an unquenchable fire. He won’t settle for mere equality.21