Your personal trainer at the gym is never going to be this honest with you. Your professors and teachers are never going to be this honest with you. Your priest, pastor or Buddhist councillor is never going to be this honest with you. Your therapist? No chance. But I will.
Here's a reply I sent to someone who's in the 90% of people who are some combination of stupid and malign.
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(1) Nobody is reading these emails.
(2) I have zero intellectual respect for you.
(3) I think you're a coward.
(4) I think you're immoral.
(5) I think you're an idiot.
(6) There are many ways to set up an email account: with my setup, it is quite easy to receive emails without reading them, and without seeing their content (in any way) before deleting them. If you keep sending email to this account, you should know: nobody is reading it. Nobody is even seeing it before it goes into the garbage.
(7) You want my respect? Earn it.
You want my patience, you want my interest? Earn it.
(8) Think about the next five years: think about the work you'd have to do —in the next five years— to be an intellectual on my level. Think about the quality of writing you'd need (and the depth of research and understanding your writing would have to reflect) for me to be excited to receive a message from you, and then interested in speaking to you via Skype (etc.), or just engaging in further correspondence with you.
Realize this: I despise you for all the right reasons. It really doesn't matter if you despise yourself or not: you can have as much or as little self-esteem as you like —because it's something you apportion to yourself. The question is, simply, are you going to do the intellectual work or not.
You never have. You never will.
Or maybe I'm wrong. Go ahead. Prove me wrong.
You've got five years. Maybe.
E.M.
