Quite a few years ago I was reading a book by Wayne Dyer and he said that someone who labels another in a negative way that the insult really applied to its source and not its object. He was saying that the insult had nothing to do with labeling someone “a dick”.
Is Wayne Dyer right?
We can find out by asking the question, can a person be a dick? To answer that question, we need to know what a dick is.
Here’s my take on dicks. A dick is a person who is attached to an idea. In the case of a dick, it is a person who “uses” separation and hatred to define his own self. He is saying that I am right and you are wrong. Of course we all do this, but what makes a dick a dick is that his real purpose is to cause pain in you and delight in their own group identity. Hence we get the case of the agonizingly humiliated black person debased by racists, the poor white woman made a butt of ugly jokes, and countless other examples. I am reminded of a photograph I saw showing a group if Nazi German soldiers beside themselves in laughter as they light the beard of a pious Jew on fire.
But it is a lot more than what meets the eye.Ultimately, it is a continuum that begins with the experience of “I am”, the bedrock and foundation of existence. This is the one irrefutable element of our lives. We are all start as “I am”.
Nearly all of us “think” they know who they are. They think “I am _______.” This blank is always a thought. But we are not a thought … we just think we are a thought. The dick personality is just one kind of thought/identity among many possible thoughts. The question what is a dick quickly morphs into the far more profound question, “Who am I?”, especially if we come to understand that we might not be a thought. If we are not a thought then what am I?
The quality of identity as belief always begins with the Wound.
The Wound happens (in the first year of our lives). The Wound is the source of self-condemnation. From that point forward, “I am” is no longer sufficient. It is, itself, a quality that isn’t acceptable … it needs more. How this happens requires reading my book Liberation from the Lie.* It is a rather complex topic, the kind of topic that people who “think” themselves as spiritual would prefer to avoid.
Once we are wounded, we will need to be something more than merely “I am”. The need for more will come in two forms. One, we need an identity that will attract attention to itself and we will need possessions that will reflect our ability to manipulate and exploit our environment. The Wound is a complex topic and it is explored in depth in my book,
Everyone is wounded, but very few realize it. We are blinded to our own Wound through the very belief we are compelled to adopt to cover over the pain of the Wound, the realization of our innate adequacy. In this way, the core belief is that I am a thought. Because of the Wound, “I am” is insufficient, I must be more. So I begin attaching myself to thoughts and beliefs. I become a man, an American, a sexy guy, an expert, a member of a religion, someone everyone likes, a tough guy, etc.
It’s fine to have a male body and it’s fine to be an American and it’s fine to be an expert. They are all qualities that arise in life. But we never need to “be” any of these qualities. We never need to attach ourselves with any identification. Our immersion with our array of false identities blocks the experience of “I am” as perfectly adequate. These other qualities come and go. Just like the weather which takes the form of sunny or cloudy, cold or warm, wet or dry, our bodies and our lives take on the qualities of softness and toughness, sexiness and blandness, expertise and ignorance, loving and hating, and all the rest.
What does all of this have to do with understanding what it means to be a dick?
A dick is someone very sure of themselves, but in a way that is especially abrasive. A dick knows better than anyone else. In our culture a strongly self-assured person is often admired, but a dick is more than just self-assured. A dick will spew contempt and separation as their first and most important message. Their superiority comes before any other content. They are compelled to spew hate, because their hate has another side. It is nearly always aligned with broadly accepted, if contemptible, social norms (more about this below).
A dick is a deeply wounded person. The Wound, is understood by the very young person as evidence of their inadequacy. In the clearest language, it translates as, “As I am, I am not lovable.” It is that belief that gives birth to all the false-identities we see in life. It is a continuum from mildly attached beliefs to intensely attached beliefs. For most of us the Wound evolves to create identities that are designed to attract love and affection and respect. Thus we get the tough guy, the sexy one, the expert, the successful one, the loner, the spiritual person, and we get the dick.
We are none of these identities and it is that realization that Buddhists call Nirvana and those in the non-dual community call non-duality. We see through all of them and we return to the primal realization of “I am”. We see that each and every identity is just a passing state and experience. They do not define who we are. They are constructs of our primal Wound event. When this is seen clearly and passionately, we, eventually, become free of their stickiness.
What makes them sticky? It is our belief that it is only through our identities that we will attract the love, affection, attention, and respect that we need to feel good about ourselves. This is the “Lie” that is referred to in the title of my book. When we see through our identities, we realize that “I am” is infinitely more expansive and beautiful than any passing identity. But what makes it truly compelling is that it becomes an obvious truth. Belief becomes irrelevant.
A dick, or any other fiercely attached identity, is the expression of desperate belief. Their Wound expresses itself through the vessel of hatred. All identities are separative. The “Pleaser” thinks they are better at pleasing others. They set themselves apart through their identity belief. The “Expert” is more expert than others, etc. The dick also believes he is superior and their superiority is expressed as hatred. Dick Cheney really is a dick. As are people like Newt Gingrich. Their smugness is just a mask for their hatred.
This also explains why so many gurus and teachers are also dicks. They use the sanctity projected by themselves on themselves as well as the sanctity projected on themselves by devoted followers to obtain the love and respect that they so desperately need to feel powerful. If you read Liberation, you will see that the Wound is linked with powerlessness and the fear-based identities we create and wear like masks are often designed to obtain the power we believe we lack.
A dick is just one form of Fear-Self. It is how the Wound expresses itself as a personality in the world. It starts with “as I am, I am inadequate” so I will show the world that I am adequate through my use of force expressed through how I relate to other people. But a dick is a little more than that. A dick will typically align themselves with a group with shared values; usually hatred. And they will express their hatred in many ways; homophobia, anti-semitism, anti-intellectual, anti-black, anti-communitarian, anti-muslim, anti-women. They draw sharp lines of distinction between good people (themselves) and bad people (everyone else). A good woman will be a woman who acknowledges patriarchy. A good black will be someone who embraces white nativist values, opposed to those of their community. For the most part, Republicans are dicks because they define themselves through their allegiance to separation and hate as opposed to inclusion and connection.
Dickishness and patriarchy are very closely aligned. Although it might sound absurd to many readers, this is really a complicated subject, because it eventually embraces the whole of our human story.
So we’re left with one really important question. Can a dick unpick himself? The answer is a resounding “yes” with caveats. Stay tuned. The unpicking recipe comes later this week.
You also might be wondering what makes me such an expert on dicks. Fair question. I’ve been a dick many times in my own life, so I got the experience first-hand.
*You can buy Liberation from the Lie from various online retailers as a book or a Kindle file. But you can also purchase Liberation as a Kindle file, iPhone/Android file, or PDF (any platform) for only 4.95 by clicking on the widget to the right. Or you can read the complete book for free, by clicking here. Once you start seeing how the Wound and the Fear-Selves express themselves in people and especially yourself, it will change your life.
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The What Makes a Person a Dick by , unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
