Solipsism in the workplace
A colleague asked me to e-mail him a scanned copy of some hand-written notes that I had taken down during a discussion about a 'self-hedging yen loan' structure. At the end of the notes (and in reference to a particular consideration about the structure), I had written: [Solipsistic?]
He e-mailed me back to thank me for sending the scanned copy of the notes, and pithily added that he didn't think he was being solipsistic when expressing his view on that aspect of the structure.
I had to let him know that I had written it down because he'd used the word in conversation and I didn't actually know what it meant! I have since looked it up, broadly it means "to be of the view that one's own perceptions are the only things that can be known with certainty".
How this can (a) be applied to the taxation aspects of a loan idea, and (b) be taken as a slight, are personally quite hard to fathom.
Is it just basic animal instinct to expect to have to defend oneself on all occasions? Put another way, was it in-built for my colleague to assume [Solipsistic?] was a critical attack on him? Maybe - reducing it to a 'natural selection' theory basis, an animal suspicious of attack at all times seems more likely to survive than one who naturally assumes everything and everyone is benign.
4 comments:
Dictionary.com defines solipsism as “egoistic self-absorption”.
If you had written on the bottom “I think you are egotistical and self absorbed” you could hardly expect him to take it as a complement.
That definition seems to be a misrepresentation - take a look at the Wikipedia entry for solipsism, where it is presented as an entire academic school of thought, not a narcissistic / arrogant personality defect.
It's true that if my colleague is a subscriber to dictionary.com, then it is wholly understandable for him to take offence.
I don't know him that well, though (and he's quite senior), so I'm too scared to ask him what he took the word to mean...
i have to admit i favour dictionary.com over wikipedia when looking up the meaning of words themselves - adjectives, for example, rarely have entries in the latter.
nice blog by the way! keep up the good work.
I think this is all too high brow. Get pissed, throw mud'n'gravel at his windows at 2am and shout "whose solipowhatsit now, yer' furren' cun...?" before running away.
(cough)
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