Teavlogging: "Arrogant"

[packbat]

Decided to take advantage of my smartphone stand and make a vlog this morning.

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So, um, I've been thinking about, like, the way I approach language, 'cause I feel like it makes me say some things that, like, use words in a way that people don't usually? Just because... just because, like, I end up getting attached to these archaic or formal usages. And, like, an example of this, I think, is "arrogate".

So, you know the word "arrogant". The word "arrogant" basically means... well, I'm gonna assume you know what it means, because honestly, I'm not sure it means that. Uh, the thing is: "arrogant"'s an insult, right? You think someone's a total jerk - like, snobby and snotty, and they're not listening to anybody, and they're just doing their own thing, and... if you ever saw the BBC Sherlock - the Steven... the Moffat one, not, like, any of the earlier ones, but, like, the Moffat Sherlock? Like, god, that guy's so arrogant. It's infuriating. Uh, but... so the thing is: a lot of insults are basically where society keeps its prejudices? Like, there's so many ablest terms that are insults, and, like, people talk about... when they want to say that someone isn't paying attention - isn't, like, acknowledging the reality that is there for them to observe - they'll call that person blind. And your eyes are not the only way you observe? Blind people are just as perceptive or oblivious as anyone else. It makes blindness out like it's a character flaw, as opposed to a physiological condition. So, I wanted to ask myself: "Okay, this is an insult. I kind of... like I'm used to it, but what does it mean?"

So... so I was looking at, like, the etymology of "arrogant", and - this was a while ago, so don't remember all the details - but it has to do with, like, rank. In society. And stuff. A person is arrogant if they get above their place, it's actually - like, if you go all the way back, you get into, like, "you are asking something you do not have permission to ask" as part of the history of the word "arrogant". And that's how I got into the idea of "arrogating" as a word that I use, and just spontaneously use under circumstances, because it's like... to say someone is arrogating some position? Is to say that that position? Requires some thing for you to deserve. And then when you say this person is arrogating a position - or you don't say it, you just kind of assume it, usually? - like, someone'll be like, "How... how dare you question my decisions. You don't know what you're talking about." Like, that is a person saying, "I am worthy of this position; I am worthy of having an opinion; and you are not." And honestly, that kind of person is the kind of person we call arrogant, ironically. But, like, the arrogant that their... their arrogance is not that they are claiming a position that they don't have a right to, their arrogance is that they're throwing everybody else out. It's kind of an inverse, actually.

But, um, yeah. Like, I think arrogant... it's... I mean the place where it does kind of still work is with... people who don't have a clue what they're talking about? Like, you get a lot of... y'get a lot of people in, like, STEM fields who... they spent their entire career where the humanities was a joke. It was a punchline. It was "oh, this person? You know, communications majors. You know what communication majors are like." Folding Ideas? Dan Olson? Communications major? Brilliant guy? No, you don't know what communications majors are like, if you're sitting in the mechanical engineering lounge with a bunch of mechanical engineers who's never studied communications. They... they don't have a clue. They're just making assumptions because communication majors don't have as much math training as they do. It's a problem. I mean, it goes the other way, too - like, there are all kinds of literature people who are like, "Oh ... you don't understand any of the joy of life because you spend your time looking at the amazing physical world and all its wonder and glory and not reading books about dead white guys." Basically, the moral of the story is that there's a lot of misunderstanding and, like... misinterpretation. But anyway, this misunderstanding/misinterpretation leads to arrogance when you're looking at someone else's field. You're like, "This person doesn't know what they're talking about because they're not one of us. They're not... they don't know math, therefore they can't have anything important to say about public policy." Which is... *eyerolls* yeah. That's... that's a case where I would say the word arrogance... sort of fits? Because it's it's... you are assuming that you have a competency that you don't; you're assuming that you have, a... you assuming that you have some kind of value, your opinion on this matter has some kind of value that it doesn't, because you don't know what you're talking about.

But, like, I think, honestly... thinking about it in a hierarchical way also kind of makes you notice, like, like, when people are talking about arrogance, you have to ask "what hierarchy are they defining by their feelings around arrogance?"

Trying to arrange for the camera but I don't think there's a good way, so I'm just gonna... I got this tip from a friend of mine? So with green tea, and I was using some gunpowder green tea, you want to have the water that you pour into the pot at significantly below boiling. (I forget what the temperature is, like 170 [Fahrenheit] or something.) And I don't have a teapot with, like, a thermostat in it? So I can't just hit the green tea button and get my tea to the right temperature. But I was talking about how, like, I'm trying to figure out a way to do this? And my friend was like: "Add cold water. To the boiling water." And I found the ratio of 1 liter of boiling water - and it's only one liter because, like, that's the bottom measurement on this kettle - one liter boiling water to 400 milliliters of tap water works pretty well for me. And then I let it brew for not-very-long... - *puts lid on* I'm going to take this lid off again in a second - I let brew for not-very-long because if you brew the tea for too long, you get a lot of tannin flavor? And while I like tannin, there's something very special about a green tea that doesn't have much tannin, because it ends up being really sweet. Like, green tea: apparently it's the only tea where people rarely add stuff to it. It doesn't need sugar or milk or honey or lemon. Like, people just drink green tea as it comes out of the leaves, just straight... the liquid... I think they call it the liquor? That is produced by the steeping of the leaves.

Anyway, I, uh - this is kind of an experimental format and don't know where I'm going here; I just wanted to talk about... sometimes I use language in a weird way, and sometimes it's a little confusing? But I just... like, I learn stuff. And when I can put ideas into a context? When I can be like, "You know what? This... this thought of... this word, which previously in my life was just an insult - an insult that had a vague idea of what it meant, but an insult - fits into a kind of model of how you understand the world? And there are things that you can say as a response to that." So, yeah. Um. If you want to watch a completely different kind of breaking down of a very similar word, Kyle Kallgren did a video about "pretentious" - concept of pretentious - and I don't agree with all of it, but it was incredibly informative.

Anyway, I'm gonna drink my tea.