Who You’re Taking On?

 

One of the most amusing things one can do is to listen to the way in which the middle class talk about people whom they deem lower than them. One only has to look at the way in which some people started grumbling about the way we moved migrant workers into slightly better conditions during the Covid period or the way in which people started to complain that their lives would turn to s*** if maids were given a day of rest.

As I’ve often said over and over again, being from a well to do family that could afford to send you to school, doesn’t actually make you a superior person. It merely means that you were lucky to be born into a family that could bestow certain things upon you that would put you into a reasonably advantageous place. Yes, if all things are equal, the guy who goes to university usually ends up ahead in terms of the usual signs of material success. However, it still doesn’t mean that the guy with the degree is a better person or even a smarter worker.

People from disadvantaged backgrounds have one crucial advantage over those from nicer backgrounds – namely hunger. The intrinsic lack of opportunities has a way of making people push themselves to create their own opportunities and the experience of having to “claw” your way up often makes you wise in the ways of the world. If you are like me, and hang around “professionals” you’ll find that everyone you meet on a daily basis is intelligent. However, very few are what you might call “wise.”

In my life, I’ve had the privilege of meeting some very smart people with wonderful qualifications. However, I’ve found that whenever, I’ve needed advice on a person’s character, I usually take it from my friends who are what the rest of society calls “down-and-out.” Flesh ball, for example usually gets certain characters right just by looking at their photos. The ex was also pretty darn good at it.

Why do such characters make good judges of character? The answer is simple. We in the professional services often get away with making certain misjudgments. The individuals we deal with may be character deficient but the institutions they represent are not. However, when you work on the streets, you need to learn how to be darn good at reading character. It’s a case of “you’re going to get f***ed anyway, so you need to make sure you deal with someone who will honour his part of the deal and pay.”

Yet, the well educated consistently overlook the fact that the “less educated” they deal with may have certain strengths. One of the saddest examples can be seen in the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson where Mr. Paul proceeded to try and intimidate Mr. Tyson in a pathetic show of “gansta” behavior.

Let’s leave aside the boxing for a moment. Fact remains, young Mr. Paul is a middle-class kid from a nice family. He’s is in boxing for the fun of it and using his genius for publicity to get the fights and get the good paydays. He’s a good career as a YouTube star. His only real experience of “Gansta” life is from YouTube persona.

Mr. Tyson is not the animal in the ring that he used to be. Age seems to have mellowed him. However, the fact remains, the guy grew up in a dysfunctional family in a dysfunctional part of the world and had he not found boxing, he may well have ended up as a corpse from one of the many gang fights from that part of New York.

Put it crudely, the scene is pathetic, where the actual thug laughs at the wanna be thug. More can be seen at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTX-Xn6Olwc

It boils down to this. You got to know who you are taking on. You should, for example, understand that people who have been in fights and have clawed their way up in life, are simply not going to be intimidated by someone who has never really had to fight for anything in life.

I think of a senior professional whose major threat to people was “I’ll block you.” Nobody actually took her seriously. I think another young lady from a developing nation who once broke a bottle when someone with a more imposing physical stature had a disagreement with her. At the end of the day, you have the professional class which talks a lot and complains when people do things outside their perception of the way the world should work. By contrast, there people who refuse to be intimidated and are willing to do what it takes to come out on top.

As I’ve often said to the Padawan – always recognize who you are taking on. Don’t expect them to play by the same rules as you and recognize that situations are dependent on the characters involved.