[Industrialblog,
May 4, 2006]
Snap judgments
One of my pet peeves is people who make snap judgments. They hear one or two pieces of information, and snap, make an on-the-spot decision that they're confident in and already begin to defend. Reading some of the blog comments around cyberspace about C. confirms this reflexive thinking.
We sometimes look for facts that fits our preconceived templates, which allows us to rant and bloviate. But this thing really points out what many of us know: It's always a good idea to suspend judgment until you've got a lot of facts, and even then, to make an effort to imagine walking in the other person's shoes.
C. was vilified — absolutely vilified — by total strangers. It never seemed to occur to some people that unless you've taken care of an autistic child for 10 years while trying to care for a severely ill and temporarily unemployed husband who's going through three liver transplants and has saddled you with massive expenses, maybe you don't know what you're talking about.
You can call someone a gold-digger, or you can have a little sophistication and realize that all she was doing was following her divorce lawyer's advice. Shy (or exhausted) people do that, you know. Unfortunately, the lawyer's strategy was so novel (make the grandparents pay) that it made the news. It never occurs that maybe this is a hard case, and hard cases make bad law. Cindy was always a sensitive soul. She killed herself, by the way, on the same day Tucker Carlson had such big laughs at her expense. I'm not saying cause and effect. I don't know the exact timing. I'll suspend judgment.
I don't want to overdo this. C. was a short affair 23 years ago, and it ended badly, and we were out of each other's lives for good, and she was without a doubt perfectly happy that way. She left school after only one semester, so I never really saw her again.
But there's something about those early affairs that stick with you, as we all know. It was a timing thing. It was the first time in my life that I was able to do what I wanted without having to tell anybody what I was doing, who I was doing it with, or where I was going, or when I'd be back. One of our dates was the first time I'd had Chinese food. It was the first time I was offered a drink when meeting my date's father — he drank Manhattans. Generally, just the first time people treated me like an adult, and I got the freedom to act like an adult. I didn't act like an adult, but that takes time and practice, neither of which I had at 18.
FWIW.
We sometimes look for facts that fits our preconceived templates, which allows us to rant and bloviate. But this thing really points out what many of us know: It's always a good idea to suspend judgment until you've got a lot of facts, and even then, to make an effort to imagine walking in the other person's shoes.
C. was vilified — absolutely vilified — by total strangers. It never seemed to occur to some people that unless you've taken care of an autistic child for 10 years while trying to care for a severely ill and temporarily unemployed husband who's going through three liver transplants and has saddled you with massive expenses, maybe you don't know what you're talking about.
You can call someone a gold-digger, or you can have a little sophistication and realize that all she was doing was following her divorce lawyer's advice. Shy (or exhausted) people do that, you know. Unfortunately, the lawyer's strategy was so novel (make the grandparents pay) that it made the news. It never occurs that maybe this is a hard case, and hard cases make bad law. Cindy was always a sensitive soul. She killed herself, by the way, on the same day Tucker Carlson had such big laughs at her expense. I'm not saying cause and effect. I don't know the exact timing. I'll suspend judgment.
I don't want to overdo this. C. was a short affair 23 years ago, and it ended badly, and we were out of each other's lives for good, and she was without a doubt perfectly happy that way. She left school after only one semester, so I never really saw her again.
But there's something about those early affairs that stick with you, as we all know. It was a timing thing. It was the first time in my life that I was able to do what I wanted without having to tell anybody what I was doing, who I was doing it with, or where I was going, or when I'd be back. One of our dates was the first time I'd had Chinese food. It was the first time I was offered a drink when meeting my date's father — he drank Manhattans. Generally, just the first time people treated me like an adult, and I got the freedom to act like an adult. I didn't act like an adult, but that takes time and practice, neither of which I had at 18.
FWIW.
You're generally correct. I do think, though, that there's not much background needed for the question of whether "make the grandparents pay" is a sound moral principle unless there's something really evil going on where the husband took money from his family and gave it to his grandparents, and something like that would be very talked about.
But C. isn't relevant to us. Her divorce is her business, in so far as she and her husband are concerned. It's not something that we all have a right to, except in how it impacts divorce policy.
And that's one of the problem with being in a democracy. In some sense everything becomes everyone's business, because we're all in the business of telling each other how to live (i.e. voting about laws that impact all of us). That's why you see stuff like this, I believe. Everyone has some instinctive sense that everything is their business. No one thinks of it this way, but perhaps we should all pass a law to help or hinder, so we must know. That reinforces the human desire for gossip.
Ah, it's not fair for me to say, I am too upbeat to ever kill myself. Other people can run far darker and closer to the edge at times. Sounds like she was one of those. Still, her life, and her value as a Mom was, I hope, worth more than her image, the mansion and the quarter-mil per year in the grand scheme of things. Pity she didn't see that.
Do you feel called to reach out to those kids? Would that be too weird?
I'll try to visit the grave this weekend (she's in Morristown) and send her folks a card.
Thanks for your thoughts. I'm glad to hear you're upbeat.