I have to confess to being a lifelong “denier.” At a very tender age, I recognized that pretty much every authority figure I interacted with was deeply flawed. When you’re a critical thinker, your curiosity being countered with “ours is not to question why, ours is just to do and die” or “do as I say, not as I do,” will not satisfy your intellect.
I noticed, once I hit middle school, how popularity was baked into the hierarchy of the school system. The teachers fawned over the most popular kids. This was even more obvious in high school, where popular kids become de facto celebrities in their little ponds. Thus, it was only natural that I would eventually write a book like Bullyocracy: How the Social Hierarchy Enables Bullies to Rule Schools, Workplaces, and Society at Large. Researching all those sad stories reinforced my earliest negative impressions of teachers and school administrators. I was never a bullied child, but I don’t know how any of those tragic victims of bullying and a system that refuses to hold bullies accountable, could help but become School Deniers. I was certainly an early School Denier myself. Sure, lack of ambition contributed as well, but that’s the primary reason I didn’t apply to a genuine four year college. I denied the value of “education.”
As I drifted aimlessly at a dead end blue collar job, I relished in my unsuccessful status. I wore it as some kind of twisted badge of honor. I bonded with the truly diverse cast of characters, toiling in obscurity in the basement of a huge hospital system. I quickly contracted Supervisor Denial. Management Denial. Director Denial. Administrator Denial. They hadn’t invented the term “CEO” yet, or I would perhaps have been the Patient Zero for CEO Denial. I complained incessantly, and showed absolutely no respect for any of my “superiors.” I rightfully objected to the term “superior.” So because someone is a higher “grade” than me, and makes more money, he is “superior” in some sense? When some supervisory figure told me to tuck my shirt in, I’d roll my eyes, tuck it in briefly, then tuck it out again when he was out