He gets social dynamics and recognizes types, and so finds his bearings resiliently, reconstituting as the type he is expected to be, or as the type he can get away with being, as fits his immediate wishes:
contrariness, revolt, acceptance, or, most often, sex.
Schuyler, in particular, was the king of
contrariness."I used to tell people that George got up in the morning, waited to see which way the world was turning, then struck out in the opposite direction," his friend the historian John Henrik Clarke once recalled.
"We should not underestimate the
contrariness of some of their leaders."
To Fallaci, the craft of journalism demanded
contrariness. "To me, being a journalist means being disobedient," she wrote to one colleague.
As the International Institute for Strategic Studies coyly put it after the Tomahawk strike: "If it appears that Trump is on the way to reaching an appropriate policy equilibrium, his impulsiveness, ignorance of international affairs, unsystematic nature, native
contrariness and 'transactional' disposition probably preclude the coalescence of a distinctive 'Trump doctrine.'"
Here, Guillon's staunch
contrariness is most openly evident, but his refusal to grieve in any way for the death of a libertarian and anticlerical artist like Cabu may appear callow.
Rankin's fondness for overwriting aside, Joan Littlewood: Dreams and Realities is essential reading as a reminder of a one-off firebrand whose like hasn't come our way since, even if Littlewood's
contrariness and obstinacy leap off the page scarcely less vividly than the self-evident passion she brought to her peppery, populist art.
Colman puts that down to natural British
contrariness: "We're a grumbling old bunch.''
12:
contrariness constrainers--opposers or counters
Among the other Shakespearean tragedies
contrariness can be seen in King Lear and Macbeth.
He may feel a sense of
contrariness ("us against the whole world"), but he or she is conscious of his country being considered by many as an apartheid state, oppressing another people.
There is no rejection in the scheme of the universe; even
contrariness is an aspect of reality.