Scott Adams has died

> Shouldn't we reject these people entirely?

Probably, but humanity doesn't seem to have the luxury of rejecting anything in total, and I'm not convinced the attempts are working.

When Scott was rejected he was immediately given a platform by Fox news. Our current regime was rejected quite thoroughly across a number of platforms (the Republican primary, Twitter, Congress, etc.) but here we stand.

Adams seemed to me to have made a career out of a 'smartest guy in the room' schtick. Someone is always too smart to go along with the norms, such as Dogbert. They see through to what the normies can not. In 'The Religion Wars' there's explicitly 'The Smartest Guy In the World'. It's a version of a Mary Sue.

The problems come when the author believes this about themselves. They probably are smart, and Adams' work is enjoyed because he cleverly recognizes and points out stuff that resonates with people. When this is strongly reinforced, too much, too long, I think it's really unhealthy for some people. Adams seemed to need to show that his thought could not be constrained by convention. He got strong, addictive attention for this. He wanted to be thought of as smart, rather than good.

I think the antidote, or at least a protective, to this is being surrounded by people who impress you more than you impress yourself.

[Edit: removed a couple of examples of other smart people to avoid stimulating their fans and haters]

> He was certain it was due to DEI (in the 80s!)

Why wouldn’t it have been that in that decade? The concept of DEI (whether or not it was specifically called as such) has been around at least far back as the 1980s. I think it actually goes back even to the 1960s.

Thank you for sharing that. I cannot fathom what it must feel like to write one’s own post-humous press-release.

I respect the work of Scott Adams as one of the greatest cartoonists of my lifetime, and I wish his family and friends the strength to move forward and to keep the good memories of him in their hearts and thoughts until they hopefully meet again. Everyone we lose to cancer is a tragedy.

My very limited personal memories of him are not the one of a kind person, though.

He might have had just a very bad day, but I had to endure this guy on a six-hour flight in the early 2000s, and after he insulted basically everyone from Hispanic people to people of colour and even shushed the lady behind us when she said she can’t listen to his bullshit anymore, I took a deep breath, looked him in the eyes, and told him I fought in two wars, and the only thing that happens if you keep hate for your "enemies" in your heart is that it will eat you from the inside. Let it go.

I wished him the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be changed, and the wisdom to know the one from the other.

He laughed right in my face and told me I don’t get it and that he is going to die of old age. He was for sure a fighter and stubborn of his own views.

But in the end, he died at a young age, with hate-fuelled cancer inside his prostate and bones suffering from the same mental condition millions of people on the Internet do day by day.

People are disturbed not by things but by their view of things. And People already knew 1846 years ago it is how it is.

Marcus Aurelius started each day telling himself: ‘I shall meet with meddling, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, and unsociable people.’

Nothing has changed but the Theater.

People now decide to be disturbed by their view of things over the internet, things that will not matter in their whole lifetime for them personally in real life, and Scott Adams is unfortunately the perfect example.

He was disturbed by his view, that half of people of colour in the US were ungrateful and "anti-white", tho he lived to the age of 68 without ever being harmed by a single black person in his life, as far as I know.

The death of Scott Adams is many things at once. A tragedy, a warning, and a foreshadowing of what happens if you cannot accept the world as it is and just be happy with what you got.

Life is precious. Don’t throw it away keeping hate in your heart and enemies in your head, trying to change how the world works or what our species is, a bunch of assholes all sharing the same fate.

Deal with it or die miserably like Scott. You have a choice here. Choose your friends, enemies and fights wisely is all the advise I can give anyone.