How do you deal with arrogant, know it alls, in the real world and online?
- Thread starter Nickidan
- Start date
By remembering that THEY have the problem (arrogance, the delusion of knowing it all, etc), NOT you; and by realizing that what they are saying/doing, is an expression of emotional disturbance/imbalance on their part-its not YOUR problem, how they are-its THEIR problem. So, you must be emotionally detached when forced to deal with such unfotunates, and not make an investment (of your energy) in THEIR imbalance!
Yanel
Well-known member
Very true but what if...what most of the people know is everything there is to know in this world? How do you resist not answering with anger to all the existing systems and people and opinions? I'm learning control right now. I rarely show any anger but there is a hell inside me that doesn't sleep. I don't even think it ever will. Thanks for answering but in reality sometimes silence feels like denying what and who you are. Raped by the world, as I call it.
Birch Dragon
Well-known member
Ok, but to be careful about is, and present another side...
Humility has to go both ways. Sometimes other people really do know more than us about some things, maybe even many things. Particularly if we are young. And we shouldn't forget that if we see somebody else as an "Arrogant Know It All" that's a judgment we're making on them, through our eyes. That's our interpretation of this person. It's not "the truth" about them. They aren't objectively, intrinsically "know it alls."
Maybe, sometimes, the Know It All has something of merit to say that we can take with us, and leave the rest of it behind...
Humility has to go both ways. Sometimes other people really do know more than us about some things, maybe even many things. Particularly if we are young. And we shouldn't forget that if we see somebody else as an "Arrogant Know It All" that's a judgment we're making on them, through our eyes. That's our interpretation of this person. It's not "the truth" about them. They aren't objectively, intrinsically "know it alls."
Maybe, sometimes, the Know It All has something of merit to say that we can take with us, and leave the rest of it behind...
"Following Ankara's traditions ....."
just kidding Dr. Farr....So I would say that "following": Buddhism, people of wisdom as Nisagardata, William Blake, Carl Jung and so many others, the teachings of Seth, Bashar, Elan and so many others, probably even Mayan astrology, the roots of the Human Design Theory, last but not least Neptune, this world is an illusion, only a reflection of our inner self.
So to answer our friend's question (they say) when we deal with arrogant people we deal with the reflection of our own arrogance which we have to fix somehow. Not a walk in a park though to fix hidden issues....
A guy introduced himself : " I am God " , so he was asked how come he thinks he's God. He replied: " When I'll leave I'll take you all with me"
With love,
GOD
ashriia
Well-known member
While i believe this in part, and something like this sounds like the manifestation of a natal chart opposition.
I also think arrogant people might be brought into your life for other reasons...for instance, a lesson in how to assert yourself more. or a lesson in witnessing what you don't ever want to become and to show you a road you might be going down. or to bring awareness to your own values and needs in the type of company you keep so that you have a better idea of what you really want in your relations.
I see your point and I understand that a lot of people who know more than me (and vice versa) and I know its a judgement, its just the arrogance that grinds my gears. If someone was humble with their knowledge and opinions I will listen, respect and admire them. But if the person is arrogant and obnoxious it oftentimes makes me frustrated, pissed and causes me to distance myself from that person. That doesn't mean I will ignore them or cast them off immediately. Or that they don't have anything of value to say. It just that it makes it harder to want to take anything from them or even listen to what they have to say. By the way my judgement is based on my truth not theirs. To be blunt and truthful, I don't care about their truth because mine will always be of higher value to me.
The_Saturnian
Well-known member
I just show them just as much friendship and love in return. It works wonders. The guilt conscience comes out in the majority of us, because every heart will crumble and melt at some stage.
Birch Dragon
Well-known member
Hi Nickidian,
Nice thoughts.
Annoyingly, I have two responses, just to keep the puzzle pieces up in the air...
First, when you say it's just the person's arrogance that grinds your gears, it's actually our judgements about another person's arrogance that I'm trying to suggest we should be humble about. I mean, I understand that every now and then you're going to run into somebody who's just an out-and-out jerk, but I actually suspect that's rarer than we think - an easy judgment like that is a rare luxury. More often it's a mis-match of norms, expectations and perceptions.
Individuals are shaped far more powerfully (I'd say primarily) by the social norms they're exposed to in life than most of us realize (if you live, like I do, in a Western country where the social norms impress upon us the idea that we are all self-made individuals). Sometimes what we read as arrogance is to the other person the right way to act. For example, I'm not American but have lived in this country for quite a while now. The culture I came from values deference and humble self-presentation, and comparatively America values self-promotion. To my way of thinking, aggressive self promotion. So to my eyes, everybody in the US looks arrogant - and clueless to it! Are they actually, intrinsically, arrogant people - or do I have to be aware of different standards and ways of being compared to my own? As another example, you wrote:
In my industry (academia) it's the exact opposite. To come off as humble with our knowledge and opinions is a death sentence. Pomposity IS our currency! By the way, I absolutely hate it. But I know the people I deal with daily aren't actually arrogant. They're actually quite the opposite. Always worried they won't be taken seriously - maybe even lacking in confidence - and so they have to cultivate this pomposity because it's the industry standard. It's the norm and the expectation.
A second thought: sometimes people aren't being arrogant, but they really do just know more than us, have more life experience in this area, etc. and they don't really need our response/ affirmation, etc. Sometimes people - especially older people, or people with degrees who have toiled hard for decades to become genuine world experts in a particular field of knowledge, or long-experienced astrologers - have earned that right. And that can look to us, through our eyes, like "arrogance."
Again, I realize this doesn't cover everybody. There are people out there who are just straight up jerks. But again, I think that's rare.
So I suppose, I realize just now as I type this, I'm actually trying to express an answer to your question. "How do we deal with arrogant types?" At least part of that answer, I'm trying to suggest, is to take an empathetic look at where there arrogance is coming from, and ask whether it's really strait up "arrogance" - is it really just a stain in their human character? - or is it something to do with how we read and evaluate what they're doing? I'm sure for many people we think of as arrogant they'd be hurt and surprised to find you think they're arrogant.
Again, not all the time. But probably more often than we think.
That said, to end this post I'm going to turn around and be an arrogant know-it-all.
That's a quick road to an isolating and psychologically painful life of solipsism, my friend.
And I say I'm being a "know-it-all" here because I'm using the word "solipsism" that I assume isn't familiar to a lot of people. But I am trying to communicate an idea and that word best encapsulates it, so if it's unfamiliar please do look it up...
(See... That sounds arrogant, but from my perspective I'm just trying to be helpful...)
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I want to make another point to your quote that I already responded to and show the other side.
Judgement is not necessarily a bad thing, and humble is not necessarily a good thing.
Some of the word, Judgement definitions and meanings include:
: an opinion or decision that is based on careful thought
: the act or process of forming an opinion or making a decision after careful thought : the act of judging something or someone
: the ability to make good decisions about what should be done
: the ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions.
: a misfortune or calamity viewed as a divine punishment
I bolded some of those definitions of judgments, I did this because judgement doesn’t mean casting something off in an arrogant, un-humble way. It means among other things to form an opinion after a careful thought, and the ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions. When I was referring to arrogant know it ally people it was not me not being humble; but me observing someone’s behavior and actions and forming an opinion. When I wrote this question I was thinking both about people I have known in the real world and in my life and people that I met/come across online. Peoples that have demonstrated to me arrogant behavior, I put a label (a marker) on my judgment of the person’s behavior, not the person themselves.
Some of the word, Humble definitions and meanings include:
not proud or arrogant; modest: to be humble although successful.
: having a feeling of insignificance, inferiority, subservience, etc.
: low in rank, importance, status, quality, etc.; lowly:
: courteously respectful:
: low in height, level, etc.; small in size
: having or showing a modest or low estimate of one's own importance.
: of low social, administrative, or political rank.
: lower (someone) in dignity or importance.
Again I bolded some of the definitions to the word Humble, and there are some definitions that stand out to me. One being having a feeling of insignificance, inferiority, subservience, etc. and : low in rank, importance, status, quality, etc.; lowly:[/B]. Humble according to these definitions is being lower and feeling lower and inferior to someone based on personal feelings and your role and sense of value in society. Humble here is not so noble and admired thing as you make it out to be. My point is there are both good and bad things in these words and their definitions.
Hi Nickidian,
Nice thoughts.
Annoyingly, I have two responses, just to keep the puzzle pieces up in the air...
First, when you say it's just the person's arrogance that grinds your gears, it's actually our judgements about another person's arrogance that I'm trying to suggest we should be humble about. I mean, I understand that every now and then you're going to run into somebody who's just an out-and-out jerk, but I actually suspect that's rarer than we think - an easy judgment like that is a rare luxury. More often it's a mis-match of norms, expectations and perceptions.
My Response: I should be humble about my judgement of someone’s arrogance. This is what I read from your words. Does this mean I must lower the importance of my judgement? Virtually reduce, decrease my judgement, a judgement made from careful observation. What for? Awareness of social norms?
Individuals are shaped far more powerfully (I'd say primarily) by the social norms they're exposed to in life than most of us realize (if you live, like I do, in a Western country where the social norms impress upon us the idea that we are all self-made individuals). Sometimes what we read as arrogance is to the other person the right way to act. For example, I'm not American but have lived in this country for quite a while now. The culture I came from values deference and humble self-presentation, and comparatively America values self-promotion. To my way of thinking, aggressive self promotion. So to my eyes, everybody in the US looks arrogant - and clueless to it! Are they actually, intrinsically, arrogant people - or do I have to be aware of different standards and ways of being compared to my own? As another example, you wrote:
In my industry (academia) it's the exact opposite. To come off as humble with our knowledge and opinions is a death sentence. Pomposity IS our currency! By the way, I absolutely hate it. But I know the people I deal with daily aren't actually arrogant. They're actually quite the opposite. Always worried they won't be taken seriously - maybe even lacking in confidence - and so they have to cultivate this pomposity because it's the industry standard. It's the norm and the expectation.
My Response: I don’t know anything about the academic world. Even so, to my understanding you must act pompous (arrogant) to be taken seriously. So in your profession you must be something you are not, virtually hate and are opposed to. Ok
A second thought: sometimes people aren't being arrogant, but they really do just know more than us, have more life experience in this area, etc. and they don't really need our response/ affirmation, etc. Sometimes people - especially older people, or people with degrees who have toiled hard for decades to become genuine world experts in a particular field of knowledge, or long-experienced astrologers - have earned that right. And that can look to us, through our eyes, like "arrogance."
My Response: This statement doesn’t really sound humble. I get that people can "know more" than us, have more life experience. But why don’t they need our response/affirmation. Because they know a lot and are comfortable enough in their knowledge that they can’t possibly be arrogant. If that is the case what is the point in being humble, the good humble definition, is courteously respectful. They know enough to not need input or an address back from someone. That sounds arrogant actually. A humble, courteously respectful person can always benefit from others responses.
So because someone is older and have a bunch of degrees in one particular subject they have the right to what? To know more than us on one particular subject? To be humble? To be arrogant?. This statement is confusing. I don’t think knowledge is measureable like that. I don’t think someone can know more than someone else. They can know about a lot of things (by just the fact they have been around longer and have more years/experiences on earth) and be educated. But education, degrees doesn’t make someone automatically intelligent and more knowledgeable than someone else. There are going to be things that this person doesn’t know or understand that the next one will know more about. It’s arrogant to assume that they have earned a right to not hear responses from people that know “less” then them.
Again, I realize this doesn't cover everybody. There are people out there who are just straight up jerks. But again, I think that's rare.
So I suppose, I realize just now as I type this, I'm actually trying to express an answer to your question. "How do we deal with arrogant types?" At least part of that answer, I'm trying to suggest, is to take an empathetic look at where there arrogance is coming from, and ask whether it's really strait up "arrogance" - is it really just a stain in their human character? - or is it something to do with how we read and evaluate what they're doing? I'm sure for many people we think of as arrogant they'd be hurt and surprised to find you think they're arrogant.
My Response: This is reasonable. Even so, oftentimes especially online we don’t have access to taking a look at where someone’s arrogance is coming from. We have our own careful judgements to rely on, and this is often based on various evidence of writings/responses by this person that we have concluded to be arrogant.
Again, not all the time. But probably more often than we think.
That said, to end this post I'm going to turn around and be an arrogant know-it-all.
That's a quick road to an isolating and psychologically painful life of solipsism, my friend.
And I say I'm being a "know-it-all" here because I'm using the word "solipsism" that I assume isn't familiar to a lot of people. But I am trying to communicate an idea and that word best encapsulates it, so if it's unfamiliar please do look it up...
(See... That sounds arrogant, but from my perspective I'm just trying to be helpful...)
My Response: You really do sounds like an academic.
Jesse Booth
Well-known member
I find that my favorite, though maybe not my safest, method for dealing with arrogant jerks(once I'm absolutely certain they're full of sh*t, that is) is to mirror back their "vibes" with an equal amount of arrogance, then throw in a good heap of condescention and ridicule. As I have a well-aspected Mercury for my moon ruler, the ridicule part comes especially easily. I don't discuise it, either. If you aren't quite sure if I just insulted you, I didn't. Like most Sag-ascendents, I have all the subtlety of an atom bomb.
Although this coping mechanism has caused some big complications with social life, I find that the benefit is well worth it; my Capricornian stellium can result in some pretty vengeful emotions, and I prefer not to give those emotions the opportunity to develop.
Yanel, you said:
Raped by the world? Look on the bright side, at least you got laid! All joking aside, I feel like you need an outlet for that insomniac inner hell as soon as possible. I'd like to get an opportunity to look at your chart, and see if I can pinpoint the best choice for your rage outlet. For me it's mockery, as I previously described, but everyone's different. A description of exactly what you're upset about would also help. Just send me a private message contining the specified requirements at your earliest convenience. This goes for everyone on the forum. I could use the experience with chart readings, and I love to help others work out their problems. Confidentiality from other forum members is guaranteed, though the NSA is much harder to safeguard against so please don't discuss any thoughts of assassination or genocide with me.
Although this coping mechanism has caused some big complications with social life, I find that the benefit is well worth it; my Capricornian stellium can result in some pretty vengeful emotions, and I prefer not to give those emotions the opportunity to develop.
Yanel, you said:
Raped by the world? Look on the bright side, at least you got laid! All joking aside, I feel like you need an outlet for that insomniac inner hell as soon as possible. I'd like to get an opportunity to look at your chart, and see if I can pinpoint the best choice for your rage outlet. For me it's mockery, as I previously described, but everyone's different. A description of exactly what you're upset about would also help. Just send me a private message contining the specified requirements at your earliest convenience. This goes for everyone on the forum. I could use the experience with chart readings, and I love to help others work out their problems. Confidentiality from other forum members is guaranteed, though the NSA is much harder to safeguard against so please don't discuss any thoughts of assassination or genocide with me.
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junoisuppose
Well-known member
So to deal with anyone who has annoyed me I like the buddhist approach - if you're getting angry with someone for something they did to you then you are giving them power. There is a story of 2 monks who have been wrongly held in captivity for many years before being released. They meet again many years later and the first one says to the second "Have you forgiven your captors yet?", "No." the second one says, "Well," says the first, "I guess they've still got you in prison then, haven't they?" Instead of hating them or feeling angry towards them, try to forgive them, try to see them in a larger context than just your disagreement with them - they are a son or daughter or father or sister etc who has people who love and appreciate them, they do some good things in the world that benefit other people somewhere and they are a human being who basically only wants to be happy, even if they are currently doing things that other people feel unhappy about that is because they are misguided and don't yet know how to behave any better. If you do this you'll feel better.
Having said that people do annoy me sometimes, and it takes me a few days to calm down, so the first thing I have to do is avoid them until I calm down.
I wrote in my reply to one of your other posts that NVC is very effective at getting to the root of disagreements and diffusing conflict, so that is another thing to try.
And also with particular regard to people who are 'know it alls' Birch Dragon said some people do know more and academics deliberately take this tone because it is part of the accepted way that they communicate and test their peer's findings, but outside of academia I would suggest that even people who do know more than us don't act arrogantly and try to put us down unless they have such a low opinion of themselves that they have to try to prove to themselves that they are superior to to other people. Of course this is a flawed way of gaining self-esteem since there will always be someone smarter or someone who knows more about somethings than you do, but they don't realise that at the time and they don't know a better way to make themselves feel OK. It is them that is seriously hurting, it is nothing to do with you, you are just the person that has the misfortune to be in their line of fire at this moment in time. Remember that.
Also regarding 'know it alls' you might hear their words and think 'that person thinks they know everything and thinks they know more than me and they don't think I'm worth of listening to' but all of that is just a projection - you don't actually know what they are thinking, they may have a number of other things going through their head. When we think people are dismissing us it is usually because we feel a little incompetent and we suspect that we are not worth listening to. True this could be the result of being put down in the past. But perhaps it helps when faced with someone we think of as a 'know it all' to remember that in all probability we are just projecting that they are thinking that about us because we are feeling unsure of ourselves.
Having said that people do annoy me sometimes, and it takes me a few days to calm down, so the first thing I have to do is avoid them until I calm down.
I wrote in my reply to one of your other posts that NVC is very effective at getting to the root of disagreements and diffusing conflict, so that is another thing to try.
And also with particular regard to people who are 'know it alls' Birch Dragon said some people do know more and academics deliberately take this tone because it is part of the accepted way that they communicate and test their peer's findings, but outside of academia I would suggest that even people who do know more than us don't act arrogantly and try to put us down unless they have such a low opinion of themselves that they have to try to prove to themselves that they are superior to to other people. Of course this is a flawed way of gaining self-esteem since there will always be someone smarter or someone who knows more about somethings than you do, but they don't realise that at the time and they don't know a better way to make themselves feel OK. It is them that is seriously hurting, it is nothing to do with you, you are just the person that has the misfortune to be in their line of fire at this moment in time. Remember that.
Also regarding 'know it alls' you might hear their words and think 'that person thinks they know everything and thinks they know more than me and they don't think I'm worth of listening to' but all of that is just a projection - you don't actually know what they are thinking, they may have a number of other things going through their head. When we think people are dismissing us it is usually because we feel a little incompetent and we suspect that we are not worth listening to. True this could be the result of being put down in the past. But perhaps it helps when faced with someone we think of as a 'know it all' to remember that in all probability we are just projecting that they are thinking that about us because we are feeling unsure of ourselves.
I really like Jesse Booth method (except for the ridicule part). But I don't actually see myself doing that. I'm too nice to do all that
junoisuppose I can't really do the Buddhist method. I can move on but if some1 did something to me, my friends or family, I don't want any type of relationship with them. I won't forgive them, I will simply move on. If I do see them I will just fart on them and move on
The method I have been doing is ignoring them (while in the back of mind, I am rolling my eyes). My Venus in Pisces want to understand them, and try to see the best in them. And to be nice and be happy. My moon in Scorpio is like I hate you and stop talking to me. More importantly is my mars in Aquarius which is like I don't care about human problems, cuss I'm off to save humanity from humanity (in an British accent).
You know all I can really do is sit on the floor in a dark room and eat cake.
junoisuppose I can't really do the Buddhist method. I can move on but if some1 did something to me, my friends or family, I don't want any type of relationship with them. I won't forgive them, I will simply move on. If I do see them I will just fart on them and move on
The method I have been doing is ignoring them (while in the back of mind, I am rolling my eyes). My Venus in Pisces want to understand them, and try to see the best in them. And to be nice and be happy. My moon in Scorpio is like I hate you and stop talking to me. More importantly is my mars in Aquarius which is like I don't care about human problems, cuss I'm off to save humanity from humanity (in an British accent).
You know all I can really do is sit on the floor in a dark room and eat cake.
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