In Praise of Eccentricity

In recent weeks, I have been vexed by distinct, if brief, moments of discomfort about the roughly one thousand books in my possession. While escorting a plumber and an Internet technician into my apartment, I wondered if my books—arranged on bookshelves and in neat piles on tables and on the floor according to my own peculiar plans—caused my visitors to think of me as an eccentric. This may seem a bit paranoid, but over the years, my personal library, to put it mildly, has not gone unnoticed by roommates, romantic partners, and the rare guest I have welcomed into my home. Guests have not infrequently expressed alarm in a faux tone of admiration, as if I keep a wild animal as a pet, while roommates and the two romantic partners with whom I have shared an apartment have invariably lamented a feeling of clutter, the egghead personality that a library projects, and, of course, the effort involved in moving those books into the apartment. In short, when in the company of others, my books often make me feel like an anomaly or a burden.

It is possible, perhaps likely, that my recent guests gave it little thought. Plumbers and technicians presumably are accustomed to encountering many varieties of eccentricity based on the interior design of homes they enter, or the variety of personal collections they observe in those homes. For plumbers and technicians, eccentricity may, in fact, be the norm! Indeed, I recall my grandmother’s odd collection of frog figurines arranged along shelves in her apartment, as well as a cloth hung on a rack in her bathroom with a phrase stitched into it that said, “don’t mistake endurance for hospitality.” What a plumber or technician might have thought! Similarly, for all manner of eccentricity to which many of us lay claim and which we worry will be perceived as shortcomings.

But as for books, let’s face it. I hear all the time about how Americans are reading fewer books. We live in a digital world of computers, smartphones, and artificial intelligence in which, in my experience, it is not common to find libraries in homes. Even when I was engaged to a writer several years ago—a journalist who worked at Gallup, which conducted the poll cited directly above showing that Americans read fewer books—my large collection of books was a cause of friction in our relationship. She preferred to adorn our apartment with a minimalist arrangement of furniture and plenty of space to welcome guests who would not be distracted by an abundance of books.

As a writer, she certainly respected the craft, but she did not like being surrounded by books in the home, especially books on philosophy, history, and literature to which I am partial in part because they explore or indulge the kind of eccentricities of human intellect and experience that provoked her discomfort with irreverence and disrupted her deep-seated desire for social harmony. There was, however, one book in my collection that she loved. How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie. It agreed seamlessly with her extroverted personality and her talent in making connections with people. But it was precisely her choice of this book that illuminated key differences of personality—she gravitated naturally toward the mainstream, while my proclivities were toward eccentricity—that led inevitably to our (amicable) separation.

For as long as I can remember, Carnegie’s book is the one book in my library that makes me cringe. It is a distinction that no other book in my collection shares. There are, of course, books I do not love, books I do not agree with, and books that fail to inspire. But no other book in my collection provokes such antipathy that I feel like my very life, liberty, and happiness are being threatened.  

Not literally, of course. But figuratively, the book feels like a direct assault on who I am and who I want to be. Here is a book premised on the idea that I should want to win friends rather than make friends, and influence people rather than let them be. The implication seems to be that we should treat people as means rather than ends, as sheep to be herded for our own purposes. Friends are to be regarded as prizes to be won rather than as people whose unique company and companionship we enjoy for their own sake. More ominously, the recommendations that one finds in the book implicitly render any eccentricity of character that might put us at odds with social conventions as deformities to be shunned—or at least modified so as to mollify the sensibilities of a generic audience—if we are to have any hope of feeling at home in the world.

A Culture of Conformity

When Carnegie was writing in the 1930s, there was a certain irony in prescribing how to calibrate the self for public acclaim during a century when the search for the self—acknowledging that the concept of the self is contested—was at a premium. But it was also not entirely ironic coming only a decade before the Frankfurt School authors Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno authored their famous critique of The Culture Industry and the “false consciousness” that comes with a culture of commodification. This essay was written as an “excursus,” or chapter, in their flagship book Dialectic of Enlightenment, a work concerned with understanding how fascism was able to rise in an age of Enlightenment. As they wrote, “in the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant.”

The Dialectic was published in 1947, in the wake of a decade-long economic Depression, the rise of fascism and authoritarianism, a world war, and the Holocaust. Amid these world-historical disasters, the Dialectic saw a Western world in distress, rife with domination and oppression. The authors also observed a ruthless conformity enforced by bourgeois culture, bureaucratic and corporatist workplaces, and the nationalist ideologies of European fascism, all of which subdued and even crushed any Enlightenment-inspired aspirations for liberation and personal sovereignty. Whether one was under the thumb of a fascist state or a corporatist bureaucracy, there was a powerful impulse to acquiesce to rules of engagement that set the norms for socially acceptable behavior and thus set the terms for how to live comfortably and achieve success. In the guise of a promise of economic prosperity and social stability, the culture of conformity served to uphold myths of collective identity that frowned upon idiosyncrasy, peculiarity, and eccentricity—those kinks in the armor of a ruling class. Just think of how the prosperous 1950s masked a culture of internalized coercion among women, minorities, and even the white working-class as they acclimated to a heavy and stifling dose of suburban, middle-class norms.

As Karl Marx once quipped, “[t]he ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.” The most fundamental, and somewhat counterintuitive, insight of the Dialectic was that reason, supposedly a contemplative faculty that should enable a critique of the ruling class, was itself an instrument of domination. Reason, they argued, had been reduced to a faculty of calculation. It was merely the intellectual ability to solve problems; to determine the best way to achieve an objective; to figure out how to get things done in the world. Reason was utilitarian, a praxis of discerning the means necessary to achieve our ends. Reason as speculative thinking about the validity of the world we live in, about the nature and desirability of our ends, or about one’s place in the world, was relegated to metaphysics, which was trivial at best, silly at worst.

In succumbing to the supremacy of instrumentalized reason, we forgot that an essential part of the Enlightenment mission was a search for the essence of reason itself. What, exactly, is reason? Where does it lead us? Are the ends we pursue rational? Is the content of what we think and do, the myths that we believe in, reasonable? Are the projects that we pursue worthy of our attention? “The present crisis of reason,” Horkheimer wrote in Eclipse of Reason, “consists fundamentally in the fact that at a certain point thinking either became incapable of conceiving such objectivity at all or began to negate it as a delusion.” It was like believing in God because you want to get to heaven without ever thinking deeply about the meaning of God and the nature of faith. Or like the apostle Peter denying Jesus three times because it was not prudent (rational) to be associated with an eccentric whose ideas challenged the authority of the ruling class in Roman Judea.

For Dale Carnegie and his readers, gaining the skill of “winning friends” was apparently worth more than thinking about the meaning, and art, of friendship as an end-in-itself. Just as the elevation of instrumental reason undermined and even replaced the cultivation and exercise of “objective” reason (speculative thinking about the intrinsic value of our ends), Carnegie’s pursuit of self-aggrandizement by way of public acclaim encapsulated the culture of conformity, which itself inspired a search for the self that galvanized a good deal of 20th century philosophy and psychology.

The Authoritarian Personality

The problem has not gone away, and Carnegie’s book seems even more pertinent in a digital 21st century in which, as author Patricia Martin writes in her book Will the Future Like You?, we no longer spend as much time searching for the self as we do performing the self to online audiences that traverse the local communities in which we were once bound. But the principle is still the same. If we care about advancing our prospects, we should learn to make ourselves appealing to others rather than learn to make peace with the self with which nature and fate have endowed us. To feel better inside, we must persuade other people to feel better about us.

Unfortunately, as Adorno was especially keen to point out, there is a strong authoritarian bent that takes shape in a culture of strict conformity. As we harness public opinion in our attempt to convince other people to like us, we implicitly strive to hold them in the proverbial palm of our hands. We effectively enforce conformity by elevating the status of the median voter, which depends crucially on the ability to perceive the current of public opinion, lay a claim to it, and play upon it like a pied piper. For the authoritarian personality, the self becomes a means rather than an end, a vessel for channeling the spirit of a prevailing Geist, to be harnessed in the pursuit of self-aggrandizement at the expense of self-fulfillment. In attempting to amass a following, deviations from the norm are unhelpful. Eccentricity is no friend of the authoritarian personality.

This was no trivial concern for a man who resists the subordination of his habits of mind and body to the strictures of social pieties. I do not want to sophomorically claim a right to be gratuitously inconsiderate or impolite. Instead, I want to assert a spirit of independence that insists on the duty to respect the daimon and integrity of one’s soul. I espouse the courage of conviction that eludes us when we succumb to the fear of gaucherie. When I used to wear a collared shirt to track practice in college—not a fancy shirt, just a worn-down shirt that had a collar on it—one of my teammates did not miss an opportunity to note the eccentricity and have a good laugh about it. I suppose humor is an effective way to win the affections of people and bring them into your orbit, but it certainly felt like my teammate was laughing at me rather than with me. It did not bother me though. I was indifferent to his jest because I reveled in the audacity of a stylistic breach.

Eccentricity has been a fixture in my life. Whenever some Rosencrantz or Guildenstern should seek to probe my “cause of distemper,” or why I often project an aura of unapproachability (or as Hamlet would say, “bar the door upon [my] own liberty” by denying “[my] griefs to [my] friend”), I seethed like Hamlet to think that I should be “easier to be played on than a pipe.” While Hamlet decided “to put an antic disposition on” as a contrivance to pry out the secret of the king’s crime against his father, my own antics were a recalcitrant, if oblique, display of the “heart of my [own] mystery” that even I might not fully grasp. To accede to the conventional wisdom of an esteemed court politician like Polonius, a passive and pragmatic mother, or a conniving king would be to let myself be bullied by the subtle machinations of charismatic, or otherwise compelling, personalities. It would not be in the spirit of an unapologetic eccentric.

Character Versus Charisma

To be fair, How to Win Friends and Influence People is one of the best-selling books of all-time. I do not pretend to be an expert on what drives mass appeal, but it is not difficult to guess why a book written in simple, straightforward prose that promises to instruct its reader on how to become popular and well-liked can, with the assistance of an established reputation and a competent promotional effort, appeal to a large audience. As Carnegie attests in his book, he started off his career by teaching people the art of public speaking, but gradually discovered that people “needed still more training in the fine art of getting along with people in everyday business and social contacts.” For many professions, he wrote, research had decisively shown that personality and leadership accounted for professional success far more than technical skills. John D. Rockefeller supposedly claimed that “the ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee.”

It is certainly not a novel insight that winning the hearts and minds of our fellow man can breed success. Apparently, Carnegie was good at it in his own professional sales career. He found a formula that worked and people flocked to him to learn his secret sauce. One of the most basic principles, he claimed, is to realize that the key to winning over other people is to learn not what you want, but what other people want. You may like strawberries, but a fish likes worms, so if you want to catch fish, use worms, not strawberries. Similarly, one must show an interest in other people. Among the ways to do this is to know their first names. The former Postmaster General of the United States Jim Farley, for example, claimed to know the first names of 50,000 people. Another trick is to smile like Charles Schwab, who apparently said that “his smile had been worth a million dollars.” Yet another gimmick is to tell the inattentive clerk behind a counter that he has a fine head of hair.

It is precisely this insistence on catering to an audience—so unashamedly proclaimed—that I have found so offensive. It was completely anathema to my own way of thinking about how to live—with oneself and within society. The very idea that I should buy a book for the sole purpose of learning how to win friends and influence people was like a sacrilege. I do not deny that personal magnetism counts for something in life. I also agree that it is rather trite to espouse the incorrigibly contrarian and insolent spirit of a Thersites in the Greek camp. And it can certainly be uplifting when many people like what you have to offer. After all, human beings are social creatures. Human connectivity matters.

But there is a difference between charisma and character. Oscar Wilde once quipped that to be popular one must be a mediocrity. It may seem paradoxical to suggest that mediocrity describes the success of men like Dale Carnegie, a man who wrote one of the best-selling books of all time, or of many of the people who came under the tutelage of Carnegie, learned his secret sauce, and went on to enjoy successful professional careers spurred on by their newfound abilities in the art of leadership and public speaking. But the problem with charisma—or the ability to be fully in sync with what other people want—is that it runs a severe risk of depriving one’s own character of the personal attention necessary to cultivate a healthy, intact, and, dare I say, eccentric self.

I have had a soft spot for eccentrics throughout my life: panhandlers on a median strip who seem to be talking to themselves or to spirits in the air; the character named Milton in the movie Office Space who is fiercely possessive of his stapler; Bob Dylan’s evasive antics throughout his career; and so on. There is something about eccentricity that strikes me as inherently authentic in the spirit of a Socratic defense of truth and virtue regardless of public opinion. It is not to say that eccentricity necessarily causes authenticity or vice versa. But there is something in the way of an eccentric that, by definition, does not seek the approval of public opinion, or to avoid social censure, as the fundamental concern of his own happiness. For the eccentric, there is even something degrading to the soul in feeling too desperate a need for the smile and nod of approval.

Admittedly, I do not rule out the possibility that, at least to some degree, I am projecting my own history. I would adamantly deny that I am a lunatic or an outcast, though some people who know me well might be inclined to suggest that I enjoy an unhealthy dose of solitude and reclusiveness. I have often felt out of place in life. Put me in any social situation, and I was on the outside, looking in. It was inconceivable to me that I might feel as if I belonged, or at least that I might feel a measure of comfort, in the center of a social gathering. I have been plagued, or perhaps blessed, with the instincts of one who invariably feels more at ease hovering at, or outside, the margins. If I came to the attention of others, I felt inadequate, even discombobulated, motivated to find a way of deflecting attention elsewhere. Even if I felt gratified by the praise of others, I automatically would try to give off the impression that I had not heard the praise. I would carry on with the conversation, or the affair at hand, without giving a hint of recognition, acknowledgement, or appreciation. To bask in the glow of praise was to be in a condition of deep discomfort.

Eccentricity and Civilization: Concluding Remarks

This lack of belonging was a source of anxiety in my youth. When young, we desire social recognition and esteem. The self does not yet stand on a secure foundation when the opinions of other people exert such a strong impression on a young mind susceptible to the influence of peers. Naturally, I wrestled with an unease that stems from the insecurity that I did not belong, at an age when the young ego yearns for some sense of inclusion and esteem in his community.

This alienation is surely not unique. Children’s literature is replete with stories about kids lacking self-esteem, coming to terms with their struggles against social exile as part of a journey of self-discovery. It is perhaps a universal feature of the human condition that we buckle under the gaze of others. No matter the degree of extroversion or dandyism that befits a bon vivant who (supposedly) loves being the “life of the party,” one detects hints that even such boisterous personalities nonetheless worry, at least upon the moment of their introduction into a social affair, that they may not be well-received. They may even feel exhaustion from the weight of a reputation for conviviality that precedes them. Nevertheless, there does seem to be a difference between basic human insecurity that is familiar to everyone, and the anxiety that plagues an aloof personality that feels congenitally unskilled in the art of winning commendation from one’s peers.

Whatever the case, I submit that there is also an intrigue that we all feel in the presence of eccentricity—e.g. a crowd watching Robin Williams do a street performance in New York City before he became famous, or the “Naked Cowboy” stringing his guitar in Times Square—stems from a sense we all acquire during various stages our lives that we are out of tune with prevailing mores. There is a rebellious streak native to all of us even if we are only vaguely aware of it. We can feel acute pleasure at the flouting of convention. We can find humor in the ways that eccentric behavior breaks free of the boredom we suffer as we conform robotically to what is expected of us. 

How else to account for the fondness we feel for the buffoonery of The Three Stooges? Or the irreverence of George Carlin when he mercilessly lampoons the sacred cows of religion and politics? Or the slapstick antics of Kramer on the hit 1990s sitcom Seinfeld? I submit that humor delivers because eccentricity delivers. More seriously, I also submit that the nature of civilization itself depends on eccentricity. What would Western civilization be without the rise of Christianity? It certainly would not be what it is. And for that, we must hold responsible, at least in part, the teachings of Jesus that were once deemed dangerously eccentric. The authoritarian personality does not like the eccentric, and that is to be expected for all of us who care about the sovereignty of the self, as well as the freedom and progress of the human spirit. Let us proclaim it far and wide, to my ex-fiancé and to the acolytes of Dale Carnegie and to all those who remain deeply anchored in the mainstream, that eccentricity should be honored as a true testament of the human spirit!

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