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Rocking The Boat

Don't expect me to conform. I'm not like you.

I've been called recalcitrant. If I seem that way, it's because I won't do anything that can't be examined. I never act without rationale because knowing why I'm doing something is an important part of knowing what I'm doing. If I don't know why I'm doing something, I probably won't do it very well. So I ask questions, and people don't like that.

"Because I said so" and "Because that's just what is done" aren't reasons to do anything.  I can't accept them because they contain nothing to accept. They aren't persuasive because, pragmatically, they're defective in that they're circular. People don't like phrases like that either. They don't like thinkers. I've learned that simply thinking about directives looks to many like bucking directives.

I find it difficult to accept that anyone does whatever they're told without thinking specifically because they believe that thinking about what they're told is tantamount to non-compliance.  But there must be people like that. Empirical evidence suggests that there are a great many.  My a priori suspicion, on the contrary, is that people in general do question the orders they're given but seldom arrive at good answers, and that their bad reactions to my questioning orders evince embarrassment that they don't tend to think as productively as I do.  We're told to do X. Others and I wonder why we should do X, but I ask better questions and the others feel intimidated.

I have to think very hard about things to understand them, and I can't act on anything I don't fully understand. Because I'm much worse than most at predicting people, acting without understanding is like blindly swallowing a handful of loose pills. So I've had to develop good epistemology. My thinking muscles had to get strong. Others haven't had to think as much. They've been able to rely on intuition because their neuroanatomy was conducive to their grasping complex social concepts that way. So, because I have to, I ask questions about things that other people accept without consideration, and said people see my questions as a threat to their intellects.

But this feels self-congratulatory. I don't actually think that I'm smarter than anyone else. A third explanation emerges: I am other, and the things that make me other are difficult to describe, especially for people who aren't good at describing things. So bad reactions happen reflexively.  Rejecting me is intuitive.  The world is determined to defend itself against me. My mere existence is difficult enough to tolerate; when I speak, any strained tolerance snaps.  Imagine if the pollen that made you sneeze also asked you why you make the decisions that you make. All your body wants to do is push the pollen as far away as possible; listening to the pollen wax philosophical is out of the question. Engaging with me entails an expensive commitment of attention. I don't blame anyone for wanting to avoid it.

I don't conform. It's not that I don't want to. It's that my conformity circuits don't work. I'm unable to trust my intuition, so I have to doubt. I have to question everything if I hope to understand anything. I'm not a boat rocker. I actually like rules, and I need them in order to do a good job. But I also need clear explanations, and that's a lot to ask. If I rock the boat, it's usually because I don't fit into it. The boat, more often than not, is simply too small for me.

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