Larrys, Moes, and Curlys

[mmcirvin]

Patrick Nielsen Hayden linked to a quote from The Rev. Ivan Stang's political typology of humans:

There are three kinds of people -- I call them Larrys, Curlys, and Moes. The Larrys don't even know that there are three types; if they're told, it's an abstraction, because they cannot imagine anything beyond Larry-ness. The Curlys know about it, and recognize the pecking order, but find ways of living with it cheerfully...for they are the imaginative, creative ones. The Moes not only know about it, but exploit and perpetuate it.

The naive, pleasant believers of all kinds are Larrys -- ineffectual, well-meaning do-gooders destined always to be victims, often without once guessing their status. Like sheep, they don't want to hear the unpleasant legends about "the slaughterhouse"; they trust the strange two-legged beings who feed them. The artists, unsung scientific geniuses, political writers, and earnest disciples of the stranger cults are Curlys -- engaging, original, accident-prone but full of life, intuitively aware of the Moe forces plotting against them and trying to fight back. They can never defeat the Moes, however, without BECOMING Moes, which is impossible for a true Curly.

The Moes, then, are the fanatics, the ranters, the cult gurus, the Uri Gellers AND the Debunkers; they are the Resistance Leaders and the Ruling Class Bankers. They hate each other, but only because they want to control ALL the Larrys and Curlys themselves....Larrys and Curlys die in wars started by rival Moes -- the Larrys willingly, the Curlys with great regret.

I think this is rather wonderful—cynical but actually not as cynical as the people who leave out the Curlys.

I would add, in fact, that Moes really don't understand Curlys, believing them to be either Larrys or failed Moes. (Why, they think, would anyone with such evident intelligence not be a Moe?) The existence of Curlys fills out-of-power Moes with rage, because the Curlys are never doing enough to fight the in-power Moes. And in Curly-unfriendly political times, Curlys are often wracked with angst over whether they should really turn into Moes, though they never will.

Comments

[bottlroktt.livejournal.com]

brilliant.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

If not entirely complete. For instance, one could deduce from this that all Moes are exactly the same, which isn't true. Constitutional government is basically a way that a bunch of slightly-less-rabid Moes attempt, with varying degrees of success, to keep future Moes in check by pitting them against one another. Some Moes even partake of Curly nature, which unfortunately leads to their getting clonked over the head a lot.

[bottlroktt.livejournal.com]

or leads to promoting overhyped personal digital music players, in the case of Mr. Jobs.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Whereas the Woz was pure Curly.

[cpr94.livejournal.com]

In other words, there are three types of people: those who don't even recognize problems, those who acknowledge problems but live with them, and those who cynically use and manipulate the problems.

So there's nobody who's actually solving the problems? What? That system says that Uri Geller (who is a fraud) is actually the same thing as the people who are trying to expose him for a fraud? Debunkers aren't trying to perpetuate ignorance for their own benefit; they're trying to educate for everyone's benefit.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I think of it as more that to solve political-type problems that require power, you have to be the kind of person who is motivated to get and keep power. Which is not to say that such people are necessarily evil, but that there are risks involved in trusting them implicitly.

Stang's more of a cynic than I am, though.

I thought the bit about "debunkers" was a bit over the line. But there's a bit of truth to it--I'm generally fond of the organized skeptic movement, but it tends to attract these monomaniacal sorts who see themselves as carrying the standard of Reason, Technology, Freedom and the Future against a stupid public, and this Moe-ish attitude drives them to occasionally slip over the edge into judging the truth of statements by these tribal markers. That's how, for instance, Robert Sheaffer, who is great when he's talking about UFOs, ended up saying stupid things about how feminists don't care about Muslim oppression of women, and how Penn Jillette took professional shill Steven Milloy as an authority on secondhand smoke. God knows I've fallen into this kind of trap myself, and it was usually when I was thinking too much about the need to fix the world.

[graydon.livejournal.com]

This seems like one of those divisions-of-people (such as perhaps myers-briggs) that helps a person feel good about themselves by telling them that they're in a particularly desirable camp: of course, we all wish to be the thoughtful and creative curly, neither a mindless sheep nor a calculating sociopath.

I mean, it's the only one of the categories described using positive words!

[spendocrat.livejournal.com]

Similarly (but not really), there is The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (http://members.cox.net/ggathome2/EvalRun/ArticlesLogic/HumanStupidity.Basics1.html).