This wisdom oriented intelligence, together with his high quality integrity, was an asset to Collin, but also a liability as Collin had previously demonstrated to the group. When belittlers get to know that a fine looking, well charactered person is also wisely intelligent and possessed of integrity, they turn on him all the more. Belittlers in the academic field especially are perturbed by these characteristics and react with unfriendliness to say the least.
Collin continued to reflect on the matter: then of course, in the business world, there are belittlers aplenty also. When they see a fine person, they see dollar signs. They almost invariably think that a person like us must be rich, and must have had special opportunities and privileges in order to be as we are.
In many cases, it is a matter of culture rather than economics. For example, if many of our more shabby belittlers would stop spending money excessively on smoking, drinking and so-called junk food, and spend more on healthy foods, their countenance would be much improved. Moreover, they would still be money in. With it they could buy sensible, yet inexpensive clothes with some style and color, instead of baggy T-shirts and trousers which they wear till they are falling off them. Then with personal body cleanliness and tidiness, they too could have a good public physical image. If they don’t want to do that, it is their decision, but they have no right to come down on those of us who do, and only some of them do come down on us. Actually there is no need. Collin thought deeply and sincerely to himself: I have never yet met a functional person, no matter how homely, who couldn’t look pleasantly presentable in public if they had the desire to do so.
Strangely though, only a minority of our belittlers come from the shabby side of society, he continued to reflect. Most of them by far, come from well dressed, financially secure middle, and upper middle class society; people who may have much more materially than we have; people who have much going for them, but are ruled by undisciplined pride and the ensuing envy, hatred, and hostility. They cover this waywardness by making the excuse for themselves that we are privileged and therefore should be despised. It is an attitude many of them have inherited from the past, and even though they themselves may be big shots now, to use the term they like to use on us, they still practice this malady. That too is a cultural problem. So in business they will bleed every last dollar they can from us, and when they can and get away with it, will treat us shabbily in return both in the products they give and in their personal attitude towards us. Yes, fine people have to beware, or we will end up financially broke in no time at all.
All of this had been borne out by the life stories of the support group participants. By Collin telling his story after he had heard the stories of all the others, he had been able to shed much light on the reasons and tactics of the whole gruesome phenomena.
Collin’s story was one of not only childhood sibling rivalry gone awry, not only of belittling outside the home environment in the tender adolescent years, but much more emphatically of vicious belittling in adult life out in society as he tried to make a place for himself and his family.
His problems were compounded when he went to psychiatrists for consultation. They couldn’t even conceive of his problem and labeled him as almost hopelessly paranoid. Thank heavens, in later consultations, his problem was seen to be fatigue from having to work under too much stress in adult life, caused by difficult people. He was relieved to be freed from the paranoia label.
A more mentally cruel story than Collin’s has seldom evolved in a free society. But in the semester just beginning he would tell an even more cruel story that has evolved in the free society of Terraprima, a part of that North American land to the south of the lands of Secundaterra and Lower Secundaterra where Collin’s story had taken place.
The lands Secundaterra and Lower Secundaterra, or second lands, the authors Latin names for a portion of eastern North America are made up of an area approximately two thousand miles from the east to the west of it, and with a population of about fifteen million. Terraprima, or first land, a portion of the land south of the border of the Secundaterras is smaller geographically, but more densely populated.
Quilibet (a Latin name meaning any) University, is based on the writers experience with a support group at a university in the core of one of Secundaterra’s major cities. The metropolitan area of the city had a population in the seven figure category, and therefore offered a wide social experience in a varied society.
Collin still refers to the land south of the border as Terraprima, even though he presently sees it in many ways as Terraprima fallen. His story still to come, of a friend who went to live in Terraprima, will illustrate his view on that.
Some members of the group had wondered at the end of the last semester whether or not they might be able to fare better in the Terraprima society. Collin promised to tell them this semester the story of a fine friend who had gone there believing that might be so. Then they could make up their own minds. It was this story Collin was here to begin this evening, if it was still okay with Dr. Eldren the psychiatrist, and Owen Winslow facilitator of the group on behalf of the Student Guidance Department of Quilibet University. Collin was strongly hoping that with Dr. Eldren’s help, he could somehow find a way to bring this grave social problem, which robs society of many of its most promising people, out into full view. As it is now many belittlers operate quite openly because they know nothing will be done about it. For the most part, only the perpetrators and the victims are aware it is going on.
Besides Collin’s story there had been first that of Leo Aidan, a fine looking, well charactered intelligent young man from a well cultured family. His father is a highly respected judge in the area in which they live. Leo had been picked on - discriminated against - as a ‘big shot’s’ son, a motivation belittlers like to use on the surface. But as his story unfolded Collin was able to discern and point out that Leo’s two brothers were not similarly abused to any extent. It would take Leo a long time, with the help of Collin and the support group, to realize and openly and objectively acknowledge, without fear of seeming vain and conceited, that he was picked on, not because of whose son he was, but because of who he himself was. He was simply a fine looking, well charactered, smart person who stood out distinctively among other people. Being such a person as that, he is fair and constant game for envious belittlers. As Leo told his story we could see how belittlers affected his whole life, including his present efforts in furthering his education.
Then there was Donna Coyne, a fine smart young lady with an air of gracious modesty about her. She and Leo, since meeting at the support group, had become personal friends and were dating.
They would make a fine modest and distinctive couple together, and it looks like that may become permanently so, thought Collin. He knew, however, that life will not be at all easy for two such lovely people together. Belittlers will see to that. One great plus for them is they will be able to understand each others plight and therefore cope with it more effectively.
There is the other lady of the group, Gilda Emerson. Collin reflected on how she stood in sharp contrast to Donna Coyne, yet both were ladies indeed in their own right. Unlike Donna, Gilda was not modest in her distinctiveness. She was quite naturally sophisticated and confident with some good academic accomplishments to support it, and yet totally unpretentious. She dressed well, but would stand out among others no matter what she wore. Her lovely complexion and total appearance would assure that. But obviously she was a woman of high quality taste and decorum. Both of these women and Leo Aidan, all three, had the good fortune of having solid and supportive parents.
Gilda’s story shows another classic example of neither sibling rivalry nor the bias of parents having any bearing on her problems in adult life. Both of these aspects were absent from her childhood. One thing was lacking. The parents of all three knew little or nothing about what such lovely daughters and a fine son had to put up with from the numerous belittlers out in the world in which as young adults they had to make their way. Collin for years had longed to do something about such lack