You REALLY Don’t Get It

I’ve met people who believe that they are really good at “reading” others. This means they can assume from speaking to and observing someone for a period of time (usually short periods) what their inner psyche reveals about themselves. People actually believe that they posses sufficient knowledge to do this and be correct about it which just baffles me. One of the many reasons I decided to major in psychology was because no matter how hard I tried to understand people on my own I always seemed to fall short, I could never really put my finger on what made someone who they are. In general – that is the question that psychologists have tried to answer and are still trying to answer. What makes people behave the way they do? I guess I took it for granted the idea that people are fascinating, ever changing and evolving beings who are all UNIQUE in their own ways. There are so many things that people hide about themselves and don’t tell others and I suppose these aforementioned pseudo-psychologists believe they somehow have the ability to just know things about people when that is ridiculous and impossible to do if you don't know someone very well. Humans are clever and they have so many ways in which they can protect and shape the way others perceive them. Being able to understand who someone is and where they are coming from is not as easy as people think it is, there is never one set definition of a person. Nothing in this world is black and white; I really thought this was an obvious observation.

If you want to truly deduce how intelligent someone is, just ask this person how they feel about any issue that doesn’t have an answer; the more certainty they express, the less sense they have. This is because certainty only comes from dogma. – Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas