From Bukowski‘s essay Looking Back at the Big One in the book Portions From A Wine-Stained Notebook:
..in many creative minds, there is the natural urge to see the other side. And a desire to sometimes stand with the other side just for the hell of it. Because the first side has been there so long, so steady, and seems so worn….In an attempt to get beyond Good and Evil (if such do exist), the balance sometimes wavers and one goes to Evil (saying it might be there) because it seems more interesting — especially when your own countrymen just blithely accept to follow what they are told is Good (and never doubting it). Generally, there is a tendency in intelligent men not to believe what most of the masses believe, and most of the time this puts them right near target; other times it gets their asses burned, especially in the political arena where the winners dictate which side is right….a Loser has never won a War Crimes Tribunal yet.
When I was young if I noticed everyone was on one side of an issue… no, that’s not it… when I noticed that people didn’t even realize there was another side to an issue, I would tend go as far to the other side as possible to achieve some kind of balance, like the jumping guy in this figure:
It is a natural thing. When you see everyone just accepting what they are told without giving it critical thought, it can be very frustrating. You want to yell and scream “what’s wrong with you people?!?!” And to try and get their attention, you say the most radical thing possible. But..as I have gotten older (hopefully more mature), I realized that this is not the right approach. I have learned to resist the urge to rebel just for the sake of shaking things up. Now, I try to stand on the platform where truth is, regardless of whether it is close to where the masses are standing or not. Not only does being provocative for the sake of shaking things up tend to not persuade those on the other side, it can even make them feel more confident in their beliefs as their single opponent does not have the force of truth behind him.
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