In Defense of Complaining

My primary hobby is complaining.

— Jay Duplass

I once shared an office with a coworker whose sole contribution to the company was a steady stream of complaints.

He complained eight hours a day. About the management. About the clients. About sports teams, television shows, restaurants, traffic, technology, medicine, politics, the economy and the weather.

No one ever asked him his opinion about anything, nor sought his help, expertise, or companionship at lunch. More often than not, his name was left off the invitation list for team meetings, and he was the last man in the office to learn the latest gossip.

The wry nickname he earned, after only a month on the job, was "Darth Vader."

Stoics—and most other moral philosophers—condemn complaining as depressing and fruitless. So do clerics, coaches, psychotherapists, moms, and motivational speakers.

“Don’t be overheard complaining," Marcus Aurelius said, "not even to yourself.”

But hold on a cotton-pickin' minute.

If I couldn't indulge in complaining, I don't know what I'd do. Probably lose my ability to speak, curl into the fetal position, and begin chewing on my blankie.

For me, complaining functions like hydrogen and oxygen: as a requisite to life.

For me, complaining is a lifestyle.

Surly to bed, surly to rise.

Sure, complaining can be mind-numbing; but it can also be masterful. Just consider these eight delicious gripes:

• Why is “abbreviation” such a long word? — Steven Wright

• Somewhere on this globe, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped. — Sam Levenson

• Santa Claus has the right idea: visit people once a year. — Victor Borge

• History keeps repeating itself. That’s one of the things wrong with history. — Clarence Darrow

• What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance. — Havelock Ellis

• Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity. — Robert J. Hanlon

• I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous: everyone hasn’t met me yet. — Rodney Dangerfield

• I’m not indecisive. Am I indecisive? — Jim Scheibel

Philosopher Kathryn Norlock argues that complaining can be a "duty" when others share your peeve. 

When they do, you become not a bellyacher but a "fellow complainer." Your complaint "extends your vulnerability," offering your fellows an "opportunity for solidarity."

"Complaining helps ameliorate isolation and helps people bond," Norlock says.

But to be an effective complainer, the philosopher insists, you have to practice. 

Practice allows you to distinguish the occasions that call for complaining from the ones that don't. 

Practice, Norlock says, lets your sharpen your "skill at sociality" and "complain excellently."

I like that.

So if you're sick of hearing my complaints, let me remind you: I'm not whining.

I'm practicing.

Best Explanation

In order to learn you must desire to learn, and not be satisfied with what you're already inclined to think.

― Charles S. Peirce

Victimhood and illogic drive many American tragedies, as they drove Nashville Bomber Anthony Quinn Warner to target AT&T on Christmas Day.

Films like "Silkwood," "Erin Brockovich" and "Radium Girls" teach us that all industrialists are avaricious and amoral victimizers, and that to stand up to them—as the Nashville Bomber did—is heroic. 

And conspiracy theorists, knowing illogic is our tragic flaw, teach us that to believe is to know, when it's not.

One conspiracy theory afflicting us now—the one that consumed the Nashville Bomber—holds that the industrialists behind 5G are killing us. Cigarette-makers killed their customers, after all, so why wouldn't AT&T?

Proponents of the theory claim that all wireless radiation is deadly, but that the research which proves it has been willfully ignored. 5G, proponents of the theory say, is the deadliest of all. Once deployed, it will expose people for the first time in history to a steady shower of super-fast millimeter waves, and cause hair-loss, memory-loss, sterility, cancer, neurological disorders, genetic damage, and even structural changes to the human body.

But physicists know a lot about wireless radiation, including millimeter waves. 

Millimeter waves—like all radio waves—carry little energy compared to other forms of radiation, and cannot damage genes or upset metabolisms. Millimeter waves are for all purposes inert, and will travel uninterrupted through human bodies—as well as the rest of the universe. If you want to worry about possible damage to yourself, you're better off worrying about your exposure to light: a single visible-light photon has a trillion times more energy than a millimeter-wave photon.

If the proponents of the 5G conspiracy theory don't strike you as paranoid, consider that some believe 5G, besides causing cancer, is a "Chinese plot" against America; that 5G is of a piece with vaccines, fluoridation, genetically engineered food, and fracking; and that 5G, designed by Bill Gates to reduce the world's population, transmits Covid-19.

The 5G conspiracy theory is an example of flouting what philosophers call inference to the best explanation. 

According to that principle, when faced with a question, you choose the theory that best explains the available data. You don't choose a theory that ignores the data, presupposes other data, adds a bunch of data, or invents data out of whole cloth.

If you're rational, when your kitchen appliances all stop working at once, you infer that a fuse blew in the basement. 

You don't infer—although it's possible—that a secret cabal of Chinese manufacturers has coordinated, to the precise second, the mass failure of your appliances; that the cabal seeks only to victimize American customers; that it's covering up its ability to plan mass, simultaneous product failures from the West; and that Bill Gates must be on the payroll.

When the Lobster Goes Bad

 

Above: Facebook ad for The Hill Store 

You gotta wonder why any sane marketer would discount a $1,200 product by 97%.

Maybe the lobster went bad.

Norma’s, a tony Manhattan brunch spot, is famous for its $2,000 omelette—the world's most expensive, according to Guinness World Records. 

Norma's omlette commands that price because it's larded with fresh lobster, and because "playful extravagance is the whole theme of our menu," according to the restaurant's VP of marketing. 

Were Norma's suddenly to cut the omlette's price by 97%, you'd likely suspect the lobster's gone bad.

Why some marketers are so stupid about pricing eludes me. 

Rock-bottom pricing makes no sense for quality brands. Never ever ever.

Quality brands are about value and trust. Value comes not from price, but from the brand's ability to deliver on its promises; and trust comes from the brand's legacy. 

When a brand trumpets a rock-bottom price, it confuses its customers—both prospective and past.

However, with the goal of driving easy sales, misguided marketers will discount, sometimes deeply.

But a 97% discount? Why not a 100% discount? In other words, a free sample. Now you're talking. Who can resist a free sample?

While not every quality brand's position is "playful extravagance," no quality brand's position is "rock bottom." 

Rock bottom only says the lobster's gone bad.

Pulpits and Poohbahs

While today we would say something's "great" ("GameStop is great!") Ragtime-era folks would say it's "bully" ("GameStop is bully!").

So in 1904, when Rev. Lyman Abbott was invited by then-President Teddy Roosevelt to preview an important speech, Roosevelt confided, "I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit!"

In a chronicle of the meeting, Abbott recalled Roosevelt's words and described his bully pulpit as a license to build Americans' support for reform, while tearing down opposition to it.

Abbott's pubic mention of Roosevelt's words made the term famous overnight.

But today "bully" is a pejorative; and behind today's bully pulpit stands an actual bully—a corrupt conman who's using his platform to promote treason and panic timid supplicants.

However, access to the bully pulpit doesn't in itself turn a bully into a poobah.

The bully must do that to himself.

Poohbah—meaning a "pompous big shot"—was coined in 1895 by Gilbert and Sullivan when they composed The Mikado. 

The two songsters liked the flatulent sound of the word, later claiming it derived from every tin-pot dictator's way of dismissing a new idea by saying "Pooh!" or "Bah!"

Poohbah leapt overnight from the stage into British parlance, but didn't catch on in the US for another 31 years, when A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh first appeared.

Criminal Minds

The heart is deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked: who can know it?

— Jeremiah 17:9

I've so far avoided mention of a close friend's deception, so heinous and unfathomable it defies explanation.

It's been just under two years since I learned that a former coworker, client and colleague had been leading a secret life as a child pornographer, a crime for which he's now serving 10 years in a federal prison; and a crime that will shadow him, no matter what, for the rest of his natural life.

I could readily forgive philandering, bigamy, cross-dressing, a shoe fetish, tax evasion, cat-burglary, drug-trafficking, assassination—even secret membership in the Boogaloo Bois. But the production and interstate distribution of child porn?

Who can know the wicked heart? Not I. 

If you asked me to describe my friend two years ago, I would without hesitation have said he's a quietly devoted family- and businessman, with a passion for thrillers and minor-league baseball; socially and politically mainstream; quick to win over others with charm, praise, and wit; and able to inspire coworkers to excel. It never occurred to me—until I read the DOJ's brutally stark press release—my friend led a separate, secret, criminal life.

A secret life, psychiatrists say, provides a safe haven in which we can explore "who we really are."

Given the magnetic power of compulsions, that's terrifying.