remembering "The Quiet American"

The Grouch Reads; The Grouch fails to read...

Notes on my continuing failure to read Kahneman's new book....

The psychologist says: Look at this picture, and tell me which guy looks more competent.

Me: "Competent"???!!!!*** expletive deleted

Since when are politicians competent? "Competence" seems hardly adequate to describe the complex world of politicians---not only the corruption, but the social background of a society with massive injustice and inequality. To use the word "competent" is to ignore all that--i.e. most of reality, or most of the actual factors influencing the events.

"....I had been examining Pyle's innocent question: 'Are you playing straight?' It belonged to a psychological world of great simplicity, where you talked of Democracy and Honor without the u's as it's spelt on old tombstones, and you meant what your father meant by the words."

--"The Quiet American", 2.2

So, is it that psychologists live in a "psychological world of great simplicity"?----Or, is it that they, condescendingly, imagine their "subjects" do so?

after-thought

I have never been a fan of what one might call "mainstream" USA culture. Spending the better part of thirteen years out of the country has contributed to this, no doubt. But words like "assertive" are not words I use in propria persona, yet the research reported by Kahnemann requires individuals to do so (As in: Imagine x incidents/situations in which you were assertive...)

reply: well, there must be some terms you use to describe yourself! No, not really; there is something distinctly bizarre about the requirement that we self-describe ourselves as, e.g., "go getters", or "team players"---but from what I've read in K's book, it would appear that psychologists rather blindly (or naively) buy into such bizarreness.

My doubts also concern the actual meaning of "assertive". Do USA psychologists imagine it is a good thing, or what? To my ears, it is a word of pop psychology and prone to cliche---something to be avoided by serious thinkers...... unless, perhaps, it might be needed when speaking with the "vulgar"----but, if it's that latter possibility, there is some question in my mind about what this psychological research is really doing. Consider the following;

Can you imagine a situation in which some generic person (not any particular individual who you know) but just some non-specific person would say you were acting assertively?

Answer: No I cannot imagine a generic person. I can only imagine NN and MM, and they have different ideas about who I am and how I act.

Question: What about someone you don't know at all?

Answer: How the hell am I going to predict how someone I've never met before is going to react to what I say or do? Some people might actually think I am being assertive now because I am not simply playing by the rules you lay down, but questioning them, but that does not mean I am being "assertive". That does not justify the claim that such a single term is the best way to describe what I am doing.

Echoic uses are by their nature ironic. For me whenever I speak in this bizarre pop psychological language of "assertiveness" or that favorite term of school teachers "in-/appropriate [behavior]" I am dishonest.........Yet, most jobs I have had involved the requirement that one use such limited language. It is requirements like that which make most jobs a form of slavery or mental/spiritual prostitution.