You Are Pissed, So Am I!

Now what is it that annoys me most? Someone dissing me off or dismissing a comment or view and not giving me a reason for it. You know, this happens especially when debating an issue with a colleague, friend, boss or even for that matter a parent. You have said something and you get this brush off like "you are talking rubbish" or "No! I don't accept that" or " You don't know what you are talking about" or "Doesn't work"!....

You then get this funny feeling that the tone used especailly attempts to emphasie a superiority over you. Like as if what you may have to say is subordinate to the stand taken by the other and because of the superiority you are stopped from countering with a retort.

Then of course you have the patronising kind of attitude that you get. Now whats that you might wonder. Wel, you know the kind where the other person offers a support for your position or stand even before you ask for it!...Well, a worse situation arises when he or she behaves offensively condescendingly towards you. Like he or she is trying to so obviously show that they have to "come down" to your "inferior level" to equalise a situation that might be stalking you or what ever.

What ever it is, dismissing, dissing, patronising or condescending are all very subtle ways of making you feel small and in gratitude to the opposition and yet there is a show of feigned friendship disguised to put you in a subordinated place and yet outwardly you are supposed to be equals or there is concensus in the debate. Except that the concensus is more about conceding to his or her position. And you are supposed to be happy about the whole episode.

Hey, I have been there. Except that maybe it is our culture that stops us from recognising what is happening. But we do concede to our leaders, our bosses, our parents, our elders. We do concede to even our equals, but to the other guy or gal who assumes the superior position, it is just because he or she assumes a given position. I used to hate it when this Singaporean "friend" used to try tell me about professional stuff that I had a qualification for whereas he had none and knew nothing of the law that applied to the situation. Despite me telling him, he tells me I was talking nonsense....that is probably because he had so many things stacked in his head against my credentials. I was firstly Malaysian, then I was Indian, then I was only a teacher. Whereas he was Singaporean, A Chinese and he was in the Corporate world. Therefore, anything to do with companies and the corporate world he must surely be right and I wrong. Lost in the argument at that point, my final appeal was, "o.k. don't believe me, contact any of your friends in Singapore who has the requsite qualifications and also doing the appropriate work to confirm your position before you act". He calls me back 20 minutes or so later to apologise.

Of course I am assuming a number of things there. It is not racist or anything, after all we had been friends for almost 40 years at that point. The point is that patronising ways, and dismissing someone's position without being able to articulate a justification has always been a convenient way to come out tops in a conflict situation. Of course if the other party is still not too happy about it, what may result could be violence or in more respectable society a suit.

Another one that has often been used against me, especially whan I am unhappy with the source of the problem or situation is "you are being emotional"! That immediately rubbishees your displeasure, your arguments and your position. Especially in business, they say that decision making should not involve any emotion. Now, what really constitutes emotion anyway? What is worse is we all know that passion gets more done at work than skill and knowledge. Yet, when its trasgressed, there is often an emotional response. And then you get that "emotion" used against you and you feel so dissed! Its a non-winner.

But honesly, I would want to harness emotion, especially at the work place. Its presence simply means that passion is also present. After all you would not be at the job if you did not have skill and knowledge in the first place.

I just cannot understand why for a long time emotion has been seen to be a bad thing in decision making or for that matter in the march forward through life. But now of course we got such stuff as Emotional Quotient and such. Ihave always thought that emotion is a good thing. In problematic situations especialy I have found emotion squeezing out solutions that in the first instance was not apparent.

And then of course you got all those communal situations, like for instance if you belong to a society or NGO or what ever cause it might be, you often hear of some leaders in there talking about loyalty, team spiritedness, supporting one another and so on to move forward an agenda. Personally, I think all these words are such bull shit employed to contain your mind and actions and behaviour. I know that I am not a team player and I don't expect my colleagues to be team players too. But I expect that we all have a common cause and goals that we will aspire to attain

Ah anyway, so much for letting go some of those things that get me pissed off easily...Maybe now that I got it down here, I might get rid of all this that I have inside me .....We'll see...