Realising Unexpected Superiority and Inferiority Issues
Recently I discovered that I was secretly holding people as superior or inferior in my mind. This realisation really hit me unexpectedly as I was going through the process of deepening my understanding of how everyone is awesome.
The thing that stunned me most was that I was holding people both as being equal and not equal at the same time.
In my mind I was putting people at different levels in different categories. Then depending on which category I felt was prominent about I judged the person.
The Many Sliders of Classification – Examining the Thought Process
The mind works by segregating, grouping and contrasting. Whenever you see, meet or hear about someone your mind wants to organise the data so you can make yes and no decisions.
I was discovering that everyone is equally awesome through moment to moment observations of direct interactions with people. So while I was interacting with people I always looked at and treated them (to the best of my ability) as equal.
What I realised was that my awareness of my mind was not so sharp when there was a level of indirection involved.
When my friends would tell me stories about their friends my mind would try to put together an idea of what they were like with the purpose being to be able to better understand the communication at hand.
Mistake #1: You cannot know another person from what you hear about them, don’t even try guessing
In trying to imagine this person my mind would project traits and habits of my friend onto them. From this point it would be using a few select categories to evaluate the person.
My mind was most concerned with whether they would be a good match with who I am. How do they value other people? What is their view of spirituality/personal development? What activities do they enjoy?
Within my mind I would place them on a slider bar in each category, in which there would be a marker with my own belief. If they rated higher then where I held myself then I felt inferior, conversely if I felt they were focused on unimportant things or wrong ideas than I would secretly feel superior.
As an example, if others appeared to be exerting more effort in personal development I would feel inferior, if they seem to be focused purely on worldly goals I would feel superior.
Mistake #2: The mind is made of categories and it can only hold a few categories in attention at any time. Consequently any decision made in the mind will only be based upon a small subset of elements and judgment will be made on an incomplete basis.
What you can also see from this is that in judging my friends friends my own judgments about my immediate friends were brought to light. Which were offcourse also based upon selective judgment.
Mistake #3: Just because we are all different does not mean we are not equal.
Discover for Yourself
Sit yourself down somewhere, relax your mind and pick any person.
Project an image of them into your mind, wait and watch.
The mind is much like the internet, it loves to link to related places.
With your chosen person in your mind keep your relaxed attention on them. Soon either a thought, emotion or image will appear within you.
Let this new element sit with you, observe it. In no time another related element will appear and so on you follow the chain as deep as you want to go.
Everything you see is related in someway to this person.
To begin with if you are not used to this sort of attention your mind can jump to unrelated things, if you are watching attentively then in your heart you will know if you are on topic or not. If you have shifted off the person then bring your attention back to them and start over.
Repeat this with people you know very well and those who you barely know personally. Particularly interesting is to try this with people you only know through internet forums or blog/blog comments. Chances are if you are like me you will see things about yourself which are so unexpected that it will feel like a slap in the face.
Things to Remember
- Always listen to your heart(intuition), it knows correct action even when your mind should not even be allowed to guess with the information at hand.
- The mind and the external world differentiates between people. Humans are humans, we are all the same.
Have you unexpectedly caught yourself thinking inferior or superior?
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November 10th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Ironically enough, I was reading something almost about this very same topic in Barnes and Noble last night, in a psychology-based book. We all label people based on our first impressions of them (e.g., what are they wearing? their beliefs? their looks? their voice? how they type in an e-mail?). Once that label is set in our minds, almost nothing can change it. Everything that person does will now be filtered through that label, and we’ll disregard any information that contradicts our view. (It’s called the “diagnosis bias”.)
Of course, purposeful conscious thought can change that – just look at what you described in your own post! To get past those labels, we gotta start looking at other people objectively – even if it is a bit hard at first
November 10th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
ad #1: It is mostly even hard to know another person even if you meet them face to face.
ad #2: Of course our view and impressions are always compiled just on a small subset. Even if you do take everything you know and feel into consideration – there remain still things you simply don’t get aware of because it is simply impossible to get all facts. This is not a mistake, it is a fact in life.
ad #3: To see the persons as equal is again taking just a few aspects into consideration. Eg: Yes, everybody has two ears and a nose. – Oh no, I remember my grandfather got operated at the ear and there remained only one. – So neither this can be said in general. Another example: Everybody wants to be loved. – I am sure there is somewhere a psychopatic that completely disconnected with the world outside so that one doesn’t love nobody and either hasn’t the need to be loved any more.
@Matt:
> We all label people based on our first impressions of them
And in reality there is nothing wrong with it. We also label RSS feeds, web links, contacts, documents – whatever. I think we do it because it is useful. Some people are computer specialists, some are good partners for philosophical discussions and others might be the best if you want to have a romantic dinner or night
– Nobody can be equally good in everything and as everybody else.
> Once that label is set in our minds, almost nothing can change it.
This indeed often is a disadvantage of labeling but – as you write also – it is not impossible. I know it from my own experience several times in my life when I wanted something to change or was about to change and from outside people continuously labeled me with the old tags. But sometimes when you are about to change you have to put your foot down and “stake your claim”.
November 11th, 2008 at 2:01 am
Very interesting observations you’ve made. I’m wondering myself too about how my mind works in the categorizing of people. I’d be interested to monitor my thoughts for a period and see what I can come up with. Thanks for the suggestion. Excellent idea!
November 11th, 2008 at 2:28 am
But don’t forget that it is better to look at the others to discover them instead of always focusing on yourself.
November 11th, 2008 at 4:47 am
Awesome article, Jarrod. Respect to you for your self-honest and self-awareness.
It seems like every judgment we concoct, no matter how justified or valid it may seem, it’s still just something we’re making up and it has no fundamental truth to determine the worthiness of anyone. As you said, we’re only looking at one little part of who they’re appearing to be from our perspective, not the entirety of who they truly are.
November 11th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
@Matt: I think it is very cool how just by observing ourselves we can come to conclusions that psychologists have had to do rigorous research to discover. We are our own gold mine.
@Martin: Thanks for the additions Martin. Interesting point about seeing equality by only thinking of certain elements, a very fair point. I believe you can take out the mind from the equation and then equality is all there is, or rather, there is no equality or inequality.
November 11th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
@Evelyn: Any time, ideas are cheap.
@Ariel: As you said ‘every’ judgment is at fault (depending on your perspective offcourse
). Agreed.
November 11th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
And another addition – which might be very controversial: What if it is “true” feeling superior or inferior in relation to other people (always keeping in mind that we are talking of narrowed views of the world and other people).
Just to give an example: I met people who suffered and were not willing either to quit their suffering – they prefered to continue suffer instead of going to search for the causes and change. – Is it so wrong if I feel superior in relation to such people regarding personal development?
I think the point is, not to label a person GENERALLY “stupid” just because in SOME aspects of life you got further as them at this time (”at this time” because 5 years later things could be totally different).
November 13th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
I think I can relate with an analogy. I just started learning japanese and in the classes I quite simply suck. But there is nothing ‘wrong’ with me sucking it is just we I am at.
The point here is that everyone has different rankings in regards to their skill levels at things. It doesn’t matter if it is japanese, self-improvement or good-looks. These are all skills that we have either invested or not invested time into developing (consciously or unconsciously).
So yes we are superior or inferior compared to other people for skills but I don’t think there is much value (if any) in thinking about people like this. The main exception to this seems to be in regards to utilising humans as a resource and determining remuneration for time.
November 13th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
While I really do not want to judge people in general I do not see it so important to avoid partial comparison of skills. Why is it so bad if I notice that I suck at a particular skill and somebody else is superior? – Actually such a comparison is needed if I want to determine the specialists of a particular skill so that I can choose a good teacher or decide from whom I want to learn what.
There is always something you can learn from any person so general declaration of people as inferior is the thing to avoid.