James Altucher Is A Hero
The other night I stopped by Pete’s Tavern for the monthly “Food for Thought” gathering. These monthly dinners are usually attended by a very bright group of people. I used to make it to FfT far more often. Now I rarely attend, and always regret my absence.
I’m not sure everyone else regrets my absence. I tend to be a little impatient when I’m listening to someone else talk about something that I imagine I know a lot about. People who are trying to flatter me sometimes refer to my behavior on these occassions as brash or incisive. But they’re just being polite: I’m sure they usually just think I’m rude, pushy and hogging up too much of the evening with my blather.
The awareness of my own habitual conversational dominance is one of the things that keeps me away. I know that I won’t wait my turn, that I’ll interrupt people, that I’ll speak far more than I should, and that I will attempt to more or less take over the evening with my own opinions. And then I’ll regret doing all those things, wish I never even showed up, and hope everyone forgets how I acted. I often realize how I must be coming off and try to sneak out early, just to cut myself off from acting up further. I’m sure this only makes things worse: I rush in late, talk too much, then leave before the thing is over.
I imagine everyone is thinking: “Does he show up just to hear himself talk? Couldn’t he do that alone at home, like in the shower or something?”
Also, I think I’m really missing out by talking too much and leaving early. These are very bright people. I would probably learn a lot if I could teach myself to be a better listener.
The end result is that I wind up wracked with regret. Better to avoid this whole thing by not showing up at all.
(The only exception is when I’m the featured speaker, so it’s okay that I dominate the conversation. The problem with this, however, is that it leaves people with the impression that I’m really arrogant and only show up when it’s about me. That’s not it at all. I just can’t bear the internal emotional consequences of my own predictable misbehavior so I avoid the occasions to misbehave.)
Anyway, here I’ve gone on and talked about myself for too long again. The subject of this post wasn’t supposed to be me at all. It’s James Altucher, who was the featured speaker of the evening. James was speaking about the high price of college. Literally. College is just too expensive to make it worthwhile. Too many people emerge as debt slaves, which is bad for them personally and bad for American society and our economy.
Arguing against college education is always a sure-fire way to provoke people. We’re conditioned to think that education is the solution to almost any social or economic problem imaginable. Even when we think an educational program is “failing” what we usually really mean is that a different or reformed educational program would work. It’s very hard to grasp the idea that education isn’t the solution, it’s part of the problem.
James was absolutely heroic at the dinner. Very few of the attendees agreed with him, and almost none of those who disagreed with him from the outset had anything like the kind of open-mindedness on the subject that would allow then to be persuaded. Watching James do verbal combat–it definitely became combative–was awe-inspiring.
I was particularly moved because it was a column James wrote years ago that helped me learn how to articulate my own opinions about the problems with college. I had always worried that perhaps this was just another one of my odd-ball, cranky, anarchistic, contrarian, punk-rock, morally dyslexic notions about the world. The intelligence and rationality James brought to the subject made me not only more confident in my views, it showed me a way to present the case against college without sounding like a nut.
I tried to weigh in with aid to James’ side during the dinner when ever I could. Probably a bit too much, actually. As is my habit. But James didn’t really need help. He was knocking down the responses to his point with ease. I couldn’t help but admire the courage it took to face down a room of people who increasingly grew angry about the subject because all of their cherished opinions about it were being so adroitly refuted.
I had to sneak out early because the two girls I had brought with me were hungry but we arrived at Pete’s too late to eat dinner. Also, I knew I’d start talking to much. So it was better to go when I had the chance.
Now I feel terrible about that. Here’s how the night ended, according to James:
The main thing is, these people didn’t like me very much. I felt like I had upset the religion of America so I was an apostate. I left at the end and very few said goodbye to me. They were all talking and joking amongst each other and Claudia and I slinked out of there. I don’t like being disliked. I shouldn’t care but I do. This is what I get for going out at night. I bet if I had brought candy to the event and given some to everyone then I would’ve been liked a little better. Just like I did every day in 8th grade.
But it’s my fault. I felt like I didn’t make my point well enough. I thought I was going to state my case and everyone would applaud and agree with me and maybe there would even be a trophy with my name on it. And then we’d all eat dinner and tell stories about how bad college was.
The thing is, I actually spent the rest of the night telling a few friends I met up with later that night about how great James was. Maybe he didn’t get everyone to agree with him. But that wasn’t because he wasn’t good enough at making his argument. It’s because they weren’t good enough at listening to and understanding his argument.
Sometimes, James, the point isn’t to win over everyone. It’s to tell the truth, give aid and comfort to your allies, and to maybe plant a seed of skepticism about the conventional wisdom in the mind of someone who might be able to think freely. More than sometimes, actually. Most times.