Contempt

Contempt is viewing something or someone with the disgust  towards something lesser.  Stupidity, laziness, ignorance, etc. can all inspire contempt as long as you feel you are less stupid, less lazy, less ignorant.  Contempt is easy.  You don't need to work at contempt. If I ask you to think of someone that you hold in contempt I think it almost certain that you can do so almost immediately.  It may be that you have decided that holding people in contempt is simply wrong, I have certainly heard people say that they don't hate anybody (which is close but not quite the same).

There is something about contempt that makes us feel justified about it.  The usual stories we tell ourselves in which we are a noble hero apply, but there's a particular feedback loop that happens with contempt.  We have contempt for those who are substantially below us in the areas that we consider worthy.  We judge ourselves on those factors in comparison to others.  Being around those we find contemptible indicates to us that we are better, which deepens the contempt.  Such a feedback loop can result in the automatic dismissal of anything that person does because they are stupid and don't know what they are talking about.  We find ways to confirm our contempt and ignore the rest.

What does contempt do for us?  Contempt is a negative sensation, based on disgust, disapproval.  Negative thinking is bad for our health and how we feel.  Holding people in contempt is bad for you and makes you feel less happy.  It also is bad for the ability to get things done.  Research shows that the most effective groups say more positive things towards each other, at work the best performing groups had a ration of 5:1 positive statements (good idea, well done, thank you for getting that done, I'm confident that we can get this done, we are a team, I'm proud of us) to negative statements.  Interestingly enough this is also the ratio for the healthiest marriages.  We would be able to get more things done and be happier people if we removed contempt from our lives.

If contempt is bad for us and our groups why does it even exist?  Contempt enforces conformity.  One of the most powerful forms of behavior modification is shame.  Contempt is the expression, or the source of the expression, that a person should feel shame.  In small groups contempt enables extreme social punishment, punishment even to the point of damaging those who hold others in contempt.  Such punishment is a mathematically effective strategy in maximizing individual resources in situations with fixed resources.  In a small tribe where the men are expected to out on a regular basis and hunt, bringing back the kill to share among the tribe, someone who either sponges off the other hunters or doesn't bring back the meat has a short term advantage in terms of resources.  If the community holds such people in contempt it enables the community to withhold resources, shun the person, essentially cut them off from the community.  The community exchanges the loss of resources from hunting, increased suspicion, and lower performance in general for a decreased chance of sponging.

The thing is that in modern societies groups are much larger, large enough to have interacting sub groups.  You may have a work group, a church group, a social group, a group of neighbors.  Each of these groups can provide validation for you as a person, provide you with a sense of worth, provide a reason to reject the sense of shame.  We also have far more opportunities to change groups.  If you are held in contempt by your church, you can go to a different church.  We also have a relatively new sense that freedom matters.  We can tell ourselves that behaving how we want, even when society disapproves of your particular behavior, is a positive thing within the overall society because you are exercising your right to freedom.  Finally we have information about large groups of people with whom we may have almost no interactions.  I will probably never meet a member of a religion that requires women to have a subservient role but I am quite capable of having contempt for every single person in that religion (including the women).

The modern world removes the vast majority of the utility of contempt.  It makes you less healthy, it makes you more stressed, it makes your community less able to get things done.  Just look at the efficiency of Congress now after years and years of negativity towards the opposite group.  It can't get anything done and it has whipped up adequate fervor among the populace that it maybe that two thirds of the populous can find a different third contemptible.  If each side of the aisle took more time complimenting the other and expressing confidence that together they could accomplish great things the whole thing might actually work.

I take less than a half gram of a substance each day.  It has transformed my brain in a serious way, not through any force of my character, not through any positive qualities that I might have.  The problem with my brain was not through any lack of character, and lack of intelligence, any cowardice.  My brain didn't have the right ratio of things to work well.  I am smarter than most people, but not through anything I did.  I am lazier than most people, but not because I want to be lazy, or that I am unwilling to do useful things, it's just that I don't care about a lot of things.  I don't think not caring about some things was a conscious decision in many cases.  It has been shown that people tend to be born liberal or conservative rather than made that way.  A belief in a rational scientific outlook, or a particular religious, mystical outlook is largely a consequence of the culture in which you were raised.  My point is that the qualities that make up what we find contemptible are most probably things that happened to them rather than things that they (and we) decided to have.

It is easy to conjure contempt, it is natural.  In the modern world it is mostly counter-productive.  Do you want to have less contempt?  If so I recommend these steps.  Consciously try to identify positive and negative thoughts and statements that you make.  Try to increase the positive thoughts not through a program but just trying to remember to keep this in your mind.  Tell yourself that you are a better person when you are positive.  Try to look for the positive in people, even if they are stupid, cruel bastards, and tell them that you appreciate those positive qualities.  Remember that people have their own stories in which they and we) are the heroes.  Try to understand those stories.

5:1 good to bad statements.  Think of three good things a day.  It's not the pig's fault it can't fly.