Dissing Dismissive Attitudes

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There is a feeling I've been curiously entertaining that has to do with the expression "dismissive attitude". I don't seem all that sure I know if and when I might display such a trait, but I sure have experienced it from others. Dismissive attitudes are not all bad nor intended to get some standardized reaction from those in the know.

I've never spent much or probably any time around aristocratic people. I don't know if they know what being born with royal blood actually means. It might not mean very much at all if you don't have the disposable cash to live on easy street. If you still have the old family silver you can be a blue-blood though.

It's a real medical condition brought about by consuming incremental amounts of the element silver, usually by making tea in silver teapots and drinking such tea out of silver tea cups. If you do that long enough, eventually your skin will take on a bluish colour. My ex-sister in law, the veterinarian, claims as many people do, that feeding her children colloid silver prevents a lot of bacteria problems and wards of the common cold.

As a trained actor (not a gifted actor, but a rather carelessly schooled one), if by some miracle I were allowed to audition for the role of an aristocratic person, I would probably attempt to display a dismissive attitude toward underlings.

There is a good chance I'd get the part. I have before. In fact, that's kinda how I was type-cast as a performer and thus discouraged from seeking a professional career. I got cast in authority roles like old country fathers and/or cops or heavies like Al Capone or even Hitler.

Learning that I was pretty much type-cast was a deep learning for me. It seems to have taken a special kind of person to get me to see and accept this very disturbing information. The Headmaster of the Drama and Speech school compassionately proved up to the job, but it took seven years off and on for him to do it.

When I finally did "get it", I immediately knew what that meant. It meant I wasn't gonna be able to make a living as a professional actor. I had no idea the world saw me in such a limited way. I usually got great reviews when I played those heavy roles, and only so-so reviews for my light-hearted roles.

I appeared to do best of all when there was just me on the stage. There was nobody else there for me to be dismissive toward and thus incur the wrath of an empathetic audience. In my own mind I'm a solo act because I don't have to be responsible for letting someone else's conscience be my guide but the audience. I don't mind taking my chances with them at all.

Watching that video of the experiment with how social class causes people to react sympathetically or not reminded me of how I eventually learned by my own bootstraps that most everybody I've ever encountered takes advantage if they can.

When I was a homeless bum, even other homeless bums acted dismissively toward me. I was always alone, so whatever reactions I might have to having my inferiority proven to me by the lowest of the low, I learned to live with it. I suspect that was the point of the "go ye therefore" instruction.

To speculate further, I was taught that the Southern states that became the Confederacy considered themselves to be an agrarian aristocratic society, and it was this aristocratic society that acted as a bond that made these states a confederacy.

Maybe the War Between The States pretty much happened for the same reasons the Mormons had such a catastrophic encounter with the federal government over multiple wives instead of slavery. Brigham Young and his crowd had the audacity to think they could make their own laws and sit in judgment of the population of Utah as they willed.

That's clearly the same reason there was a Civil War, and the same reason Texas is still a Republic. People want sayso over home and hearth, and they act willing to fight to the death to make it so. I probably hold an unpopular attitude in this regard, but I think these events were necessary for the good of the whole.

I hate being the victim, but I understand the need for the laws of eminent domain. At times the individual has to suffer for the public good. It can be abused. It IS abused. But, "If you wanna make an omelet you gotta crack some eggs." I honestly never dreamed a four-lane freeway would ever be built around the north side of Wilmington, N.C. Now that quaint, moderate-sized seaport can become another pot-holed New York City with rats the size of a donkey.
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