There are some men stumbling-blocks of good manners either for themselves or for others... A hundred annoyances a day is nothing to them. Their humour always strokes the wrong way since they contradict all and every... Yet the greatest test of others' patience and prudence are just those who do no good and speak ill of all.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
Some people are engines of friction. They contradict everything, find fault reflexively, generate a hundred small annoyances a day, and make every interaction faintly unpleasant without ever quite doing anything you could name. The maxim gives a double instruction. First, do not become this person, because the friction-generator is easy to meet and hard to be around, and the cost is paid in every relationship they have without their noticing. Second, do not yoke yourself to one, in business or in daily life, because their friction becomes your environment and their hundred annoyances become your days. Spotting the type early is a real skill: they are pleasant enough at first meeting and steadily exhausting on contact.
Practice
- Audit your own friction; if people seem to brace slightly around you, you may be generating the annoyances you do not notice (maxim 119 avoids becoming disliked).
- Avoid binding yourself to the reflexive contradictor in partnership or daily proximity; their friction will become your environment (maxim 197 does not carry fools).
- Spot the type early; charming enough to meet and exhausting on contact is the signature, and the exhaustion is the data.
Use this when
- Use this choosing partners, flatmates, close collaborators, anyone whose friction you would live inside daily.
- Use it as self-examination; the friction-generator rarely knows they are one, so the check has to be deliberate.
Ignore this when
- Don't mistake a person with strong standards for a friction-generator; the difference is whether they contradict to improve things or by reflex (maxim 135 draws that line).
- Don't cut off everyone mildly annoying; the maxim targets the constant reflexive frictionmaker, not ordinary human imperfection (maxim 115 habituates to the rest).
A picture of it
Charmed at first by a sharp, opinionated potential co-founder, a founder only notices the pattern over a few weeks: every idea contradicted on reflex, every meeting generating small frictions, nothing ever simply agreed. The sharpness that looked like rigour turns out to be the reflex to oppose, and he can already see the shape of the next two years, his energy going to friction instead of to the company. He declines the partnership. The cost had been visible early, to anyone watching for it: the man was pleasant to meet and, on contact, a hundred small annoyances a day.
The reflexive contradictor is easy to meet and exhausting to live beside. Do not become one, and do not yoke your days to one.