Mental bric-a-brac, March 8, 2025

Hello paid subscribers and those I wish to entice to join you,

Here’s another sampler platter of what’s been on my mind lately. Comments are open to paid subscribers. Thank you to all of you who help pay for Disaffected. It makes more of a difference than you probably know. Kevin (the other half of Disaffected, the producer) and I work to make the show look and sound professional, and that leaves the impression with some that we’re bigger and richer than we are.

We’re not getting rich, I promise you. Disaffected is just one part of both of us trying to make our living as freelancers. We both have multiple side jobs to make ends meet. When you subscribe and support us, you’re literally buying necessary equipment and putting food on our tables. We appreciate it!

Generalizations and abstract thinking

Many have noticed how much difficulty many people have with thinking in terms of averages, and thinking in terms of general statements that are broadly applicable to groups, but not necessarily applicable to each individual within a group.

That’s where my cranky “supply your own not-alls” statements come from. I swear that 20 years ago, there was no social expectation that a person had to caveat every single generalization with a list of exceptions. That’s just not normal.

It tracks with our increasing baseline level of narcissism as a society. We readers demand that posters/authors/writers acknowledge each exception to every general statement, or we get “offended.”

”I’m a gay man and I’ve never been abused!”

“I’m a woman and I’ve never acted that way and no woman I know ever has!”

Etc. Of course, no one, including me, said that every member of this or that group is exactly like the generalization. And I think the offended objectors know this. Because they’re being dishonest: they’re not really asking us for specificity. They’re trying to force a writer or commenter into submission; they want him to perform an act of mea culpa to a person who has no right to be personally offended.

The goal of the demand is not to make sure the writer is being specific and careful. Instead, it is a demand for the writer to never speak in generalizations at all because one person took it personally. It’s egotistical, narcissistic.

A friend shared the following image with me. It discusses this problem. The author of the text below (not my friend) argues that people who object to generalizations are demonstrating lower IQ intelligence.

I’m not sure how true that is. I think it’s probably true for some. But for many others, I suspect it has nothing to do with raw intelligence or the lack of it. Instead, I think. . .