Chopping off the heads of others

"Chopping off the heads of others, to make yourself look taller".

There's always been this sort of 'critic' around. They lack accomplishment themselves, commonly resting on the laurels of their family and community,  and suffer from extreme inferiority complexes. Yet they commonly are arrogant. Their developmental emotional delay, the point where they began to fail to mature, is usually somewhere in early adolescence if not before. They have a childlike quality which can appear as superficially charming. They are equally insinuating. Their principle mode of interaction is passive aggression because they never were a 'winner' and did poorly in sports because they 'didn't like the rules'. They're antiauthoritarian and are sure to criticize anyone who is a leader of men, so long as it is out of their hearing. They are deeply angry, almost fixated in a perpetual pout which they cover up with chamelon smiles. They lack empathy. They're fully involved in filling that God shaped hole inside themselves that Pascal described, with anything but God. They may even talk about God or have participated in religious activities when they were younger with their families but they commonly criticize religion because they are basically lazy and religion requires effort and deeper thinking than 'whatever!"  They are prone to all the addictions as a consquence and are commonly seen in bars, brothels, casinos.  Often they are shopaholics.  They are the hollow men of T.S. Elliott. They are the Puers Eternus or flying boys and girls of Carl Jung.

They are consumed with envy and jealousy. They gossip whenever the opportunity presents. They commonly criticize others defining their worlds with negativity and wonder why they so commonly suffer anxiety and depression. As soon as any conversation becomes difficult for them they flit away in escape with 'whatever' or 'I don't care'. They do care but can't follow 'big people' into the 'big world' so desparage anything they don't understand without effort or learning.  They are the dilletantes.  They have delusions of grandeur and suffer extreme grandiosity but do their best at concealing it to infiltrate social groups where they can use people for their own ends. They are takers and consumers. They consume people lacking the capacity for truly cooperative behaviour.  Unable to follow they can't lead.

Not uncommonly the men have a woman who mothers them, herself  incapable of adult love or staying in a loveless relationship for the sake of her children. Developmentally they have commonly been mother's boys but the women they choose eventually give up on having an adult relationship with them and if they themselves have children begin to simply see their spouse as another child. Women in contrast are the 'daddy's girls' of older men though these days there are equal numbers of 'boytoys' for the older ladies, couples who are desperate for acceptance.  Yet there's always a sense among adults at parties that somehow the 'child' in the room on some friends arm isn't being 'entertained' and the host or hostess wishes they'd arranged to bring rattles or something to keep this 'bodies' occupied.   Thankfully these 'boytoys' and 'girltoys' have cell phones to play with and occasionally adults can actually have a conversation without disturbing their bubble heads.

They don't develop depth like other family men who participate in church, charity clubs and community but rather "play" with their own children in a frenzied twisted way which eventually shows itself as the raging soccer dads and parents who 'need' their children to satisfy their unfulfilled longing for accomplishment.

They can't admit their own cowardice. They often have dropped out of school before college or early in college unable to complete the work or compete with others because they cannot face their own inadequacy lacking the character to stay through tough times.  They often don't keep jobs beyond how they serve them so that their presence in the long run is often a loss for the companies given the training and investment involved.  They are the same in intimate relationships commonly 'cheating' and rarely maintaining long term relationships unless to a long suffering parental type, older partner, or someone with wealth who they are feeding off.

They want everything to be easy and if it's not easy then they criticize and reject it. While they want anyone with lesser education to 'respect' them and 'admire' their high school or college certificate they are utterly disrespectful of those above them because they know they themseves failed to progress. What they can't have they destroy. Sayings like 'you know thermometers have degrees and you know where we stick them' is a source of much humor among these arrogant toffers. They are full of resentments and quickly become nasty with a person who they once said they liked. Their world is commonly black and white, those who they believe are allies and those who they believe are not, or simply those they can use and those they cannot.

If they have money it is not the product of intellectual or physical work but a gift or a 'win' or a product of an earlier time before they did drugs or became intoxicated with themselves.  They commonly have had many opportunities, often have come from superficially successful parents but got caught up in the party and expected someone always to rescue them.  They commonly are very bitter as their lives go on and others surpass them.

If there is someone in their workplace or community who is admired they will 'backstab' that person relentlessly. These people are the great 'critics' of the accomplishments of others. Whenever someone says something about a star, an athlete, the garage a neighbour built, the university degree a person achieved, the first man on the moon, they will be sure to offer a snide, belittling or distracting comment. When children want attention of the mother these are the fathers who compete. Women of this variety are the party girls and princesses who are concerned about 'whose in and whose out' and their 'social standing' long after high school or sororiety days are over. If any serious conversation occurs they will flaunt themselves sexually to bring the conversation down to their level and around to them. Men do the same in a different way, often flexing muscles and talking about sports.These women control conversation with their sex whereas the men control conversation with their 'short fuses' and 'threat'.

Thoreau described these sort as 'living lives of quiet desperation' because they exhude such cowardice afraid of learning, afraid of participating in the higher culture and the community goals, afraid of real progress and critical of everything, but wanting everyone to admire them and becoming very angry or resentful if anyone who is 'real' is present.

They lie and steal and cheat because they lack conscience and are terrified that anyone would know them for who they really are. Today they often mouth the words of pop psychology to appear 'sensitive' but their actions are all purely self serving. They lack any generosity. What they give to their family they expect back in old age. What they give to anyone is an 'investment'. They belittle charity and only see things in terms of how they serve themselves never as to how they can benefit their children, family or community. If they want something it is 'good' and if they don't want something it is 'bad'.

They are ignorant. They see anyone's taste in music or fashion or sports other than their own as ridiculous. If they like roast beef then pork eaters are inferior. Their 'measure' of all of those about them is based on their own stupidity. They lack a measuring stick beyond their own limitations. They are the people who laughed at Columbus and told everyone a man couldn't be flown to the moon. They are the perpetual party poopers. They burst the ballon of fantasy and creativity. If a woman makes a child a birthday cake and the child loves it they will come in and snicker and make fun of the cake or even criticize the mother for 'wasting' resources and time. Meanwhile their activities no matter how banal are always explained as somehow terribly important. They always have promises and grand schemes and are waiting for the 'deal' to end all deals.

E. E. Cummings called them 'thosepeople', as an irony above their capacity for understanding. They are parasitic and can't stand their own aloneness but must feed on others. Vampire movies are made about these people who 'suck the energy from rooms' while appearing 'energetic'. They are the 'soul suckers' and the 'heartless'.  Today we more often consider them 'sick' and hope that one day they will get the help they need and stop hurting others in their immaturity.

They are the critics whose criticism is always 'destructive' and not 'constructive' and given not as something useful but as a distraction to deceptively obtain the limelight,   They always endeavour to 'chop the heads off others, to make themselves look taller".





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