Sometimes, I think I know what a word means. I trudge along fat, dumb, and happy using the word according to the dictionary in my head until… I actually look up the word. Then I realize I have not been using quite right.
The word that got me writing this post is iconoclast. I kind of use to refer to the people I run across that in a higher and mightier way disagree with the majority view on specific set of topics. I use the word for people who simply want to make people uncomfortable with a particular mainstream view or lifestyle they have without any other objective than a to confirm their feeling of superiority and having some keener insight to life. You may know about the kind of people I am talking about. People that enjoy and thrive from making others uncomfortable, upset, and, even better, mad. A simpler definition of how I use the word may “contrarian asshole.”
What is the actual definition?
Per dictionary.com:
[1] a person who attacks cherished beliefs, traditional institutions, etc., as being based on error or superstition.
[2] a breaker or destroyer of images, especially those set up for religious veneration.
Asking the internet for examples of iconoclasts, it responded with Walt Disney, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and Dick Fosbury. This only served to confuse me. Disney was an iconoclast of animation. I found him to be a creative innovator. M. L. King and Rosa Parks were more visionary and brave change agents. And Fosbury? He was the creator of the Fosbury Flop style of high jumping that was revolutionary at the time and totally the norm now. All of these iconoclasts did indeed challenge the traditional beliefs and traditions. They did so in a way of making things better and moving society or their professions forward.
Notice that the definition includes the word “attacks.” The way I use the word iconoclast focuses more on those that focus more on attacking with offering no positive alternative. Most of the folks I know of this ilk are Armenian. I have met some world class characters like this. I am always amazed by their incessant need to kick the stools out from under the rest of us, laugh, and continue disparaging without ever proposing any alternative.
Do Armenians have proportionally more curmudgeonly contrarian assholes than other ethnicity? It may well be. I don’t think so. We are a small ethnicity. Being an active Armenian has us interacting with, basically, everyone in the community. That means every socio-economic group, every profession, every level of education, and personality trait. It is harder to cut out, or just ignore, these negative iconoclasts from our lives. They are just there. All the time being contrarian asshole iconoclasts. The only way to avoid them is to leave the fold. Many do just that.
I don’t really care for these iconoclasts. I find them just as irritating as others do. Sometimes I want to argue with them knowing no argument would ever change their mind or make them stop. At other times, I want to punch them in the face. But yet with the theoretical increased patience and wisdom that comes with maturity, I pay more heed to their attacks and try to conjure up alternatives even if they can’t.
Bottom line? I cannot imagine being Armenian without these iconoclasts, these contrarian assholes. They spice up and add color to our lives and give us something to talk, and of course complain, about. In the true spirit of being Armenian, I would say that we do not proportionately have more of these iconoclasts, but know that our Armenian contrarian assholes are the way better than those of any other racial or ethnic group.
It feels good to be #1.
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