[Rant] Not a Good Fit

I am a contrary SOB. Not impolitiely so, but I instinctively adopt, or at least consider, a contrary position in most situations.  I do not know whether this is learned or innate behavior, but it is strong in me.  Few things are more gratifying to me than pulling against the crowd only to be found later to be correct.  I am reminded of Bill James, the founder of baseball sabermetrics.  When his statistical based theories finally went mainstream after decades of ridicule, he said (paraphrasing), "It's a great feeling being proven right when everyone said you were wrong.  I hope to have that feeling again someday."

Although being right when the world is wrong is a great pleasure, there is a lesser but very real sense of gratification in being an outsider in and of itself.  But, as addressed in this insgihtful essay by Steve Lagerfeld, there are more shades of gray here. He observes that outgroups from MAGAs to Resisters, from Deniers to Greens, from Deadheads to Goths, all cherish there countercultural status.  I would add that even the most dominant cultural force of our era, progressivism (small p), still positions itself as an outside force struggling against some mainstream strawman.  Yet:

There is not much that is truly contrarian in any of this. Real contrarians don't run in crowds....A contrarian is by definition someone with a singular idea who stands against the crowd. He or she takes a risk....For the most part in the West today, their risk is social: They risk the disapproval of the crowd-of their friends, family, colleagues, community, and society. They might simply face unspoken disapproval, or they might be shunned and ostracized or burned at the stake of Twitter. Some face criticism and censure or social or professional excommunication. They risk their status and prestige. Some risk losing their jobs.

Risk is the metric by which contrarians are measured. The greater the risk, the more contrarian they are. Another way of saying this is that it takes courage to be a contrarian. They are a rare but widely dispersed breed. There are intellectual contrarians, such as Christopher Hitchens and Camille Paglia, as well as artistic, scientific, and political ones. Entrepreneurs, from Elon Musk to the most obscure startup boss, are contrarians because they pursue singular ideas, as are some investors, although the risks they face are less social than financial. Whistleblowers are contrarians, as are countless unknown others who fight against the odds in bureaucracies and other settings.

I find this interesting both intellectually and personally. 

I have written before about coalitional instinct -- the urge to form groups for power and protection. This is a primal drive in humans and we get a nice hit of dopamine when we join, form, or even just show support for our coalitions.  One of the best ways to demonstrate support for your coalition is to show allegiance even when there is a cost.  Costly support is a strong signal of loyalty so the dopamine flows.  For a group that is positioned as outside or in opposition to the mainstream there is the risk of social sanction against its members thus a high cost of showing support.  This explains why almost every group with an agenda positions itself as outsiders fighting the mainstream, it makes for more powerful shows of loyalty and more cleanly differentiates those who can be trusted from those who are less committed. There is no such thing as a non-conformist coalition. 

But what of the true contrarians?  This passage could come directly from my biography:

The contrarian's great temptation is moral vanity, and what a sweet one it is. I am contrarian by birth and temperament and not a joiner.... For some of us, there is nothing like the joy of being a pariah. There is no better place to be than on the wrong side, scorned, hated, and despised by people about whom you have exactly the same feelings. I'm right and they're wrong. Their scorn is an intoxicating indicator of my own rightness and moral superiority. The sensation is physical, like what I imagine people get from extreme sports. But it's a pleasure I strive mightily to deny myself. Over the years, I've learned that its costs are high, and that I'm not as smart as I think I am. Even when I'm right, my impulses can lead to bad things. I've gone from thinking of my instinctive desire to be a minority of one as a distinguishing trait to thinking of it as something more like Asperger's syndrome-a disability that can in rare circumstances be an advantage.

This could pretty much describe my personal development over the past 20 years.  What is mechanism that creates this urge in me?  Absent coalitional instinct, what is evolutionary source of my own Dopamine hit for being a true contrarian?  I'm sure it exists.  It is probably tied in with introversion in some respect.  I just don't have an idea of what it is.  Or is it a disability as he suggests; a negative trait that is only survivable thanks to the tolerance of civilization. Is it one of those traits that has a value to the species, provided it surfaces only in a small minority?

When we celebrate rebels we are not really celebrating rebels.  We are celebrating groups that we admire and positioning them as rebels to make our celebrations more valuable.  We rarely celebrate real contrarians, nor should we.  If we did we would rob them of their contrarianism.  True contrarianism is not something to aspire to.  I can verify that even if you are not in the public eye and you can hide your instincts well enough (I'm really good at it), it is not worth it unless you have an honest compulsion towards pariah-hood.  You will end up missing out on some very key experiences of humanity if you can't keep your contrary instincts in check.