Image Credit: “On Being Awesome: A Unified Theory of How Not to Suck” by Nick Riggle.

On Being Awesome: A Unified Theory of How Not to Suck is a beautiful book authored by Nick Riggle, an Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy at the University of San Diego. 

Ceci n’est pas a book review; instead, it is an appreciation of the essential distinctions of how we interact with people in the world and the effects we cause by our actions. It’s all about social interactions.

Riggle unpacks how we interact in any social situation, either on the awesome side (bringing value to both sides) or on the sucky side (bringing low energy to a social situation). Our actions are never neutral. Ever. Quantum Mechanics concur and proves that point. The observer brings a charge to the outcome. Everybody brings in either suckiness or awesomeness in our social interactions. 

Riggle has described a theory, mapped the ethics of awesomeness and its counterpart suckiness, explained the origins of awesome (see the diagram above), given examples of awesome culture, and on becoming awesome. My favorite is a taxonomy of social openings, categorized in suckiness on one side and awesomeness categories on the other side. What makes the book incredibly accessible are creative explorations and examples. The author brings in a myriad of examples that are very relatable to our everyday lives. 

He offers three variances of the mundane example in the social interaction in ordering coffee:

Employee: Hi, what can I get for you today?
You: I would like a large coffee, please.
Employee: All right, that’ll be two dollars, please.
You: Here you go.
Employee: Here you go. Have a nice day!
You: Thanks. You too.
This interaction follows familiar conventions of typical consumer exchange. P.17
or
Employee: Hi, what can I get for you today?
You: I would like a large coffee, please.
Employee: All right, that’ll be two dollars, please.
You: Small price to become human again. Here you go.
Employee: …

In this interaction, you have created a little social opening to appreciative interaction by cracking a small joke. You allow the employee to recognize your sense of play – and maybe react with a response of their own. You give them a chance to break out of their role and express their individuality in response. P.20.
or
Employee: Hi, what can I get for you today?
You: I would like a large coffee, please.
Employee: All right, that’ll be two dollars, please.
You: Small price to become human again. Here you go.
Employee: Um. Here’s your coffee.

That sucks! The employee could receive your social opening, but he refuses. By his “um-response,” you may be inclined to think that the café employee sucks when he rejects your social opening. When someone is busy, overworked, or perhaps clearly exhausted, a better way of creating a social opening is to tell them how awesome they are. You can choose to go out of your way to tell someone they’re doing an awesome job, perhaps in a stressful situation. This might elicit recognition of exchange of smiles, or a high five from both parts, raising the vibration for both parties, (BTW: see Riggle’s description of the high five, p.50-52.)

Anyway, back to the coffee ordering: your joke allowed the café employee to acknowledge your humor. He could have played along, saying something simple back, such as “you’re funny.” Or reciprocated by playing your joke saying something weird or quirky like “we are all robots here” in a robot voice. But, he made it clear that he did not care.

At the least, the employee could have been polite. He could have offered a polite smile or a little laugh. Politeness is neither sucky, or non-sucky here. It is a way of opting out of awesomeness without really sucking. A polite person acts with a sense of respect for all people, and this is a sense of self we can all tap into. Perhaps a merely polite person “entertains” the social opening without taking full advantage. People who are only always polite are in danger of sucking! 

For your action to suck, you decline a certain kind of opportunity; an opportunity to present, acknowledge, and cultivate each other’s individuality on the small and large scales. This is the grey heart of suckiness. For your actions to completely suck, the following conditions are present: 

1. You encounter a social opening
2. You recognize the opportunity
3. You could accept the opportunity
4. …but you don’t

So you just kind of suck if you opt-out for no good reason. The spirit of awesomeness does not flow within you, at least at that moment. (P. 26-33).

We perform an awesome action when:
1. we approach a situation customarily ruled by a social role/norm
2. the spirit of awesomeness flows within us;
3. we tackle this motive and break out of the social role or norm; and
4. we thereby create a social opening and allow our co-people to suck or not to suck.

Being awesome is about making an essential contribution by inspiring community and mutual positive regard by being excellent at creating social openings (p.36-37).

“We have to cultivate our social imaginations and excel at perceiving, interpreting, understanding, and sympathizing with our co-people…” “My sense of you – my sensibility and sensitivity with respect to you – depends in part on the image of your laughter at a joke, your response to a song, your willingness to come along. But this sense of mine depends in turn on the range of particular values and styles I’m able to vibe with, appreciate, or be moved and impressed by. We must be able to understand and appreciate a range of individualities and how they can be expressed, lest we cut ourselves off from one another…” (p.206).

This gives me a lot to consider the next time I encounter someone. I hope my awareness is sharpened enough to create awesomeness with the one I interact with.