I have to admit it: I’m a contrarian. It’s who I am. Dorothy Parker once said, “The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.” Me too—one needs to be sharp for contrarianism.
I started early. In college, I was a charter member of the Poachers Society. We would threaten to bite alligators off the Lacoste shirts that seemingly everyone else was wearing. I may have no fashion sense, but I got good at figuring when something was overdone, “so in that it’s out.” Or even better, seeing the future coming and sensing what was “so out that it’s in.” I declared that disco was dead the first time I heard it. I was right . . . though a bit early, an important lesson.
Many think contrarians are skeptics. Or curmudgeons. Or just crusty. I often get tweet-bombed after many of this column’s rants, sometimes with an image from “The Simpsons” showing a newspaper headline: “Old Man Yells at Cloud.” Au contraire, we are more like nonconformists, leaning against prevailing moods. And no question, Twitter really is a cesspool of snark, though it’s useful as a Parkerian tongue-sharpener.
Being contrarian isn’t about playing devil’s advocate. The devil is too doctrinaire. It isn’t about being cynical either, though a dose of both surely helps. It’s more about seeing things a bit different, like Apple’s old “Think Different” ads.
At an airport recently, I saw a woman wearing a T-shirt that read, “ ‘Nah.’ Rosa Parks 1955.” I want one.
Don’t think contrarians are stuck in the mud. We know that change is constant and that progress happens via surprises that should come as no surprise. This is where most good things happen. Richard Feynman, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics, once said, “There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made.”
It takes work.
