Quickly despised
“How to make yourself despised quickly. A man who speaks a great deal, and speaks quickly, soon sinks exceedingly low in our estimation, even when he speaks rationally—not only to the extent that he annoys us personally, but far lower. For we conjecture how great a burden he has already proved to many other people, and we thus add to the discomfort which he causes us all the contempt which we presume he has caused to others.” -Nietzsche (Daybreak )
This has always been one of my favorite lines in Nietzsche, for a few reasons. It takes a basic daily occurrence—like encountering a noisy person in public—and finds some kind of philosophical poetry in it; but, of course, with a twist of sharpness and darkness. It’s also an example of how he builds a kind of solidarity of negativity—he is writing against the noisy obnoxious person in the aphorism, but for his own people. Notice his use of “our” and “we.” It is simultaneously exclusive—strenuously dividing off the obnoxious person into some unsavory territory—but also inclusive, but opening up Nietzsche’s world to those like him. It is hopeless—we are plagued and overrun by these obnoxious people after all, more and more every day!—but also hopeful, because there’s a throughline of wanting to ease the burden of this obnoxious man on the (few) good people in the world. It will always be a losing battle, but it’s a battle we must fight nonetheless…
It’s an attractive thought experiment…but also a bit of a dangerous one. It’s hard to turn it off…When you’re around the city and accosted by an obnoxious person speaking loudly, quickly, endlessly…you aren’t just annoyed for yourself, but you’re annoyed on behalf of all the people who have been annoyed by this person throughout their life. You are suffering in a magnified way—you are both filled with contempt (for the annoyer) and compassion (for those that have been annoyed). A very dialectical state of being.