As you might have guessed from the title, I’m a bit of a curmudgeon. Just ask my wife as she rolls her eyes. You can even ask her when she’s not rolling her eyes. She’s very flexible that way.
I believe curmudgeons are badly maligned and stereotyped as bad-tempered, difficult, cantankerous people. We endure horrible names like grouch, sourpuss, and crankypants. (Although, maybe those folks legitimately have issues with my trousers; I don’t know.) However, no other minority would tolerate such abuse.
While it’s true we can be cranky, tetchy, or grumpy, it is not the core of our existence. We curmudgeons are social servants whose currency is truth. Now, I don’t claim we have any claim to absolute or eternal truth. The heart of curmudgeonry is contrarian truth, which is often perceived as complaint. Perhaps it is.
However, our purpose is to challenge conventional wisdom, because true wisdom is rarely conventional. The boy who reported the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes was a curmudgeon. Our curmudgeonly truth may pertain to things large or small, from the state of the world to small, self-deluding things people do, like drinking “diet” soda or believing in “clean” coal.
Our opponents are those who go by the moniker “they.” You know what they say. Why are we in an eternal battle with them, the unnamed, ubiquitous, and unsupported purveyors of conventional wisdom whose bandwagon everyone feels quite comfortable riding?
Because they told us the Earth was flat, and a million other dubious things worth questioning. They are vendors of hypocrisy, who try to tamp down criticism by demanding political correctness.
So maybe, there’s more to curmudgeons than you thought, eh?
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