SPIRDs are not hard to spot, mostly because they tend to carry a spotlight to shine on themselves. It is the truly smart people who are more difficult to notice, at least right away. They neither shout down
nor try to diffuse an adversary’s argument by turning off their mike. To do otherwise might keep them from actually learning a new piece of information, something someone with SPIRD is incapable of.
Probably the most deadly consequence of SPIRD is that it keeps us from admitting that we’ve made a mistake; a fear of letting anyone know we’re not perfect. Despite the trepidation of revealing you may not be so smart, SPIRD denies the carrier from becoming smarter. For it is in most any mistake, misstep or failure that we find an opportunity to learn. So as with Brooks’s "Broadcast News" character, the burden of being the smartest person in the room is not about smarts, it’s about an
unwillingness or an inability to learn. And like second-hand smoke, the damage done is not only to the person with the cigarette in their mouth, but to those who don’t realize that the poison that spews from the SPIRD-affected can effect those who breathe it in, without question. Need any more proof that it is a vast and flourishing epidemic. Take a look at talk radio’s ratings.
Psychologist Howard Dansky has written that "face-saving from those who say 'I may be wrong' is only so that they might appear that they do not actually think the other person is a total
nonentity ignoramus. But the intellectually self-absorbed aren't thinking of anyone else and don't seem to be concerned that they may come off as a fraud if they have it wrong. The total absorption
with the self; egotism takes that to the extreme of being a sociopath who is able to place responsibility for any wrong on something outside of himself, never himself."
It is ultimately important to understand that you need not be a celebrity, politician or a talk show host to suffer from SPIRD. It effects everyone. Even the parent of a teenager. There is no known cure, but you can prevent it from affecting you and your loved ones. Turn off the TV, same with the radio and when face to face with someone who will not let you get in a word edgewise, leave the room immediately. As Dansky, reminds us of SPIRDs, "you can never actually win an argument with these types. You can only hope to do your best to make them irrelevant."
Above all, don’t pretend to know everything or be something you're not. It’s downright draining.
Then take two Vonneguts and call me in the morning.
Steve Young is the author of Great Failures of the Extremely Successful (www.greatfailure.com)
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