If there is but one word that describes all those who live among us it is this:  Judge.  We love to judge.  We love it so much we do it a thousand times every day.  We judge ourselves as well as others, and we come out on top every time.  And that is because we don’t use the same standard in both instances.  When we judge the actions of others, we compare them to our highest principles.  Nearly everyone fails that test of purity.  But when we judge our own actions, we compare them to the worst acts ever committed by anyone.  And in that comparison, we come away looking like a saint, and someone deserving of the best this life has to offer.   Now think of the consequences of that huge gap between perceptions of self and perceptions of others.  With this incredible tool of discernment, life boils down to these two questions:  “How can I do anything wrong?”  And “Where did all these ogres and heathens come from?”  

Well, in order to avoid having to carry a portable guillotine around for weeding out the herd, we can observe our superiority complex at work in more practical ways.  For starters, we are very poor listeners.  And why not?  That miserable soul standing there talking to us has nothing to tell us that is accurate or reliable, so we have a humane way of dealing with his or her shortcomings—we don’t pay any attention to what they have to say.  But reverse the situation and we will throw a tantrum if that little moron doesn’t pay attention to us.  Now, it is not my contention this these two disparate points of view are the sole cause of all the world’s problems, but they probably rank up there in the top one or two percent.   

Let’s take a brief walk through the pages of life with this duality prism showing us the way and see if it has any real merit in explaining human behavior. Let’s ask the next person we meet “Are you a good singer?  His answer will be “Yes, of course. Why would you ask such a silly question?”  In his opinion he has the voice of an angel.  But we all know from watching and listening to that TV program, American Idol, that he and 99 percent of all like him are a bunch of screeching hoot owls who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket if they had a team of bucket carriers following them. This same observation holds true across those 20 or 30 other countries dumb enough to pick up on and follow the Idol format and use is as a screening test in their pointless quests for talent.  That’s observational win #1 for us.  

Enter any building that houses a large assemblage of members.  We know in advance it has a pecking order structure that resembles a pyramid.  The President or CEO is on top, and all of his or her underlings descend outward and downward toward a black hole to oblivion.  All those underlings know that everyone above them in the pyramid is a dufus, especially the one at the top, while theirs is the lone voice of sanity and coherency within the structure.  Wouldn’t my thesis explain most of the back stabbings going on?  And who would win in this game, the stabbers or the stabbees?  The turnover rate would tell the tale.  We know from the Peter Principle about all those underlings seeking to move up in search of their level of incompetency, but their numbers are being overcome by those being forced out the exits because of their excess number of stab wounds.  That’s another observational win for us.  

Let’s now test my thesis on the sacred state of marriage.  Do we get married out of love for someone else, or because we love ourselves?  If we loved someone else we would want to do things for them, overlook their flaws, and accentuate their positive virtues.  Even when making love we would seek to lift them up in ecstasy, not us.  It would be a lot about them, and little about us.  But, there we go again.  At best this state of being lasts until the honeymoon is over.  After that all those flaws come rushing at us like bees fleeing their hives.  We start swatting and swearing, giving less, and taking more.  In the end we are two combatants playing king or queen of the hill.  Even the divorce court judge feels so superior to those who enter his or her domain, the most often heard pronouncements coming from the bench is “If I hear one more outburst, I will have this courtroom cleared!.”  Not all marriages end up in divorce court, so this prolific con game does not cause them all to crumble.  But then again, some people are masochists and love the abuse; others are so abused they can’t find their way to the court house.  Let’s take an 80 percent observational win for divorce.  

But let’s say that you are the hiring officer for a large company.  And you want to bring as much integrity to the procedures as you can muster.  You have a large stack of applications for several key positions in the company.  You want to sift and sort and separate the chaff from the wheat.  How would you go about your task?  Just take my advice and do the following: 

1. First, every applicant who says he or she is qualified for the position is lying.  Shred their applications and burn them.
2. Second, every applicant who states “This application is stupid and so is the idiot that prepared it” is exceedingly well qualified.  Hire him or her on the spot.
3. Last, go home knowing you did something good today.