The Chosen Ones? Jordan, Einstein, and “The Babe” Defy the Myths

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Genius Chronicle: April 30, 1992, game three of the first round of the Eastern Conference’s playoffs, and Michael Jordan is nearly trapped in the corner of the three-point arc by Kiki Vandeweghe and John Starks. Jordan moves left and Kiki Vandeweghe drops off. Starks then baits Jordan into a trap, leading him into one of the most feared defenders in the NBA, Charles Oakley. Seeing those two Knicks narrow in for a trap into the corner would’ve led 99% of the NBA brightest stars to pass the ball. Jordan gambled. He faked left, and Starks fell for it, almost literally falling to the Madison Square Garden floor. Jordan then tucked under Oakley to take advantage of a sliver of real estate that existed between Oakley and the baseline. He straddled that baseline and dunked on arguably the most feared defender in the game at the time, future Hall of Fame inductee Patrick Ewing. If this wasn’t one of the greatest plays in NBA history, it might’ve been one of the most memorable. Jordan himself claimed it was his personal favorite dunk. Some said it was “Michael being Michael.”

Michael wouldn’t have been able to accomplish that play, against those guys, without incredible natural abilities. Yet, how many NBA stars, past and present, have been blessed with similar abilities? Jordan fans would say no one, but what separated Jordan from his peers was his ability to achieve the spectacular and the comparatively routine. He did both so well, so often, that he helped the Bulls achieve a 65.9% winning percentage in the regular season and a 66.5% in the playoffs, and six NBA Championships. Those of us who marvel at highlight reels often forget about that other half. Yet, a Michael Jordan, an Albert Einstein, or any of the geniuses of physical and cerebral accomplishment couldn’t have accomplished half of what they did without outworking their peers.

Genius Chronicle: June 30, 1905, Albert Einstein drops the first of four major contributions to the foundation of modern physics special relativity (later expanded into general relativity). The other major contributions included the photoelectric effect, and Brownian motion. In doing so, he helped fundamentally transform physics by redefining space, time, gravity, quantum theory, and atomic behavior, shaping modern theoretical and applied physics. Those who knew Einstein probably marveled at Einstein’s findings, but others probably said, “That’s just Albert being Albert.”

A line like that sounds like a compliment. It sounds like we’re saying that they’re so talented that they make the miraculous appear mundane, and we just came to expect that from them in their prime. Yet, I consider such lines reductive, because they fail to recognize their struggle to get to the point that their continued greatness was just “them being them”.

Dealing with Failure

Those who drop the “Michael being Michael” line should know that Michael Jordan wasn’t always Air Jordan, or Black Jesus, as some called him. He was cut from the Laney High varsity team as a fifteen-year-old sophomore, due to his height (5’10” at the time), his physical immaturity, and his lack of experience. Yet, how many fifteen-year-old sophomores make the varsity team? Prodigies do, and Michael Jordan thought he was just that. The coach, Clifton “Pop” Herring, later said he spotted Jordan’s potential, but that he didn’t believe the fifteen-year-old was ready to face varsity level competition. Herring basically told Jordan, he wasn’t a prodigy, not yet, and that crushed Jordan. He was so crushed that according to Roland Lazenby’s Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby, Jordan kept that publicly posted tryout list as motivation. The young Jordan obviously sulked about it, but then he went to work. Over the decades that followed, Jordan developed a relentless work ethic that he double downed on anytime he experienced defeat.

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career [12,345 regular season and 2,309 post-season for a total of 14,954],” Michael Jordan is famously quoted as saying, “I’ve lost almost 300 games [380 regular season and 60 in the post season]. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed.” This number, twenty-six, is the best-known estimate, attributed to Jordan himself, but it’s not independently verified by modern statistical databases. It likely includes shots to tie or win games in the final seconds of the fourth quarter or overtime, across both regular season and postseason. Bleacher Report estimated Jordan’s clutch postseason shooting percentage at 50% (8 of 16 attempts through his first 16 clutch shots), but this doesn’t specify total misses.

Einstein was asked to leave his school at fifteen. The school’s administrators informed Einstein, “Your presence in the class destroys the respect of the others.” He failed an entrance exam at Swiss Federal Polytechnic, and then he struggled to find work postgraduation, leading him to experience some level of poverty firsthand. His initial attempts at academic recognition fell flat when all of his early papers were either ignored or rejected, as his peers deemed his work unremarkable. Yet, how many young scientists, with no connections, are accepted into the scientific community in their initial attempts? Prodigies, or the “chosen ones” who can remove the proverbial Sword in the Stone are. Like Jordan, the idealistic, young Einstein knew he was destined for greatness, but no one else did. They were both faces in a crowd of idealistic young people who knew they were destined for greatness. 

When we read such stories about geniuses, we can’t help but think of ourselves as faces in that crowd. We thought we were destined for greatness when we were young, and it would’ve meant so much to us to be recognized as the geniuses we were, back then. Is that irrational, considering that we probably didn’t have the remarkable talent we thought we did, and if we did have any talent, we didn’t put in the work necessary to hone it? It is, but we were young, idealistic, and a little delusional back then. When we attempted to remove the proverbial sword from the stone, we realized that we weren’t “the chosen one”. Learning this hurts, but the notion that we are a lot more common than we ever thought stings. Even when it was obvious to everyone around us that we weren’t ready, we resented the guardians at the gate for not recognizing our genius. We became bitter, and we sulked. I don’t care what any eventual recognized geniuses say, they sulked too, and then they achieved greatness by using that rejection as fuel to prove their detractors wrong. Most of them had no shortcuts through nepotism, or anything else to ease their rise, and their only recourse was to just work harder than the similarly gifted.

Dealing with Rewards

The question those of us who will never be invited into the historical halls of greatness would love to know is, was your eventual, hard-won invitation just as meaningful as it would’ve been when you were an idealistic, and perhaps a little delusional, young teen? We’ve all been taught to think that success is the reward for hard work, but how much hard work is too much? When we devote so much of our time and energy to achieving greatness, sometimes we sacrifice the ability to develop normal, human relationships, we might accidentally ignore family members, and we could employ a level of tunnel vision that effectively ruins what could’ve otherwise been a happy life. Is that moment of acceptance as euphoric as we think it would be, or is it almost, in way that’s “tough to describe” anti-climactic?

Our knee-jerk response is that instant recognition would’ve stunted their growth, and the great ones probably wouldn’t be as great if bitterness, resentment, and all that inner turmoil didn’t fuel their drive. Yet, we can also imagine that there had to be some measure of “Where were you when this really would’ve meant so much more to me?” involved in their acceptance.

Michael Jordan hugged and cried on the Larry O’Brien Award the first time he won it, but those in his inner circle say that his almost ingrained sense of bitterness and resentment drove him to win five more. This bitterness and resentment could also be heard after his retirement, in his Hall of Fame induction speech.

Einstein harbored a similar sense of “smoldering resentment” toward the gatekeepers who dismissed him. In a 1901 letter to his sister, he wrote of “fools” in academia who favored conformity over originality, implying that if they weren’t so rigid he wouldn’t have had to work so hard to gain acceptance. The two of them both had chips almost biologically attached to their shoulders throughout their lives, and we can speculate that they may not have achieved half of what they did if they weren’t rejected early. They both used those early rejections to fuel their inner fire to prove their respective communities were wrong about them, but even when they did, my guess is it didn’t remove the pain of those early rejections.

The Supernatural, Natural Abilities

We’ve since limited the idea that Einstein was a genius as Einstein being a genius, as if he didn’t achieve that status. He was just different, so different he may have been a slightly different creature. We’ve studied his brain to see why he was so much smarter than everyone else, to see why he was so different that he was special or supernatural. We discovered that his brain had what they called “a unique morphology, and abnormal Sylvius Fissure, increased glial cells.” We also found that his brain “was actually smaller than average (1,230 grams vs. typical 1,400 grams), contradicting the assumption that larger brains equate to higher intelligence.” Even though speculative estimates suggest less than 1% of the population might have neurological enhancements comparable to Einstein’s, based on neurodiversity research, I still find it reductive to limit his incredible accomplishments with the idea that he had an unusually efficient brain. Why can’t we just say that all of his findings could’ve been the result of a lifetime of intense research into general and specific areas of physics? Why can’t we say that he spent so much time studying physics, persevering through the failures inherent in trial and error that he ended up developing some incredibly creative theories? Why can’t we say while he may have been biologically predisposed to intellectually brilliant findings, many others had the same cranial gifts, and they didn’t do anything anywhere close to what Albert Einstein did with these advantages. Why can’t we just say he worked harder, and more often than his peers?

We know there was nothing supernatural about what Einstein or Jordan did, but it’s just not very interesting to talk about all the hard work they put into it. We’re interested in the origins of genius, and we’re interested in the results, but everything in between is the yada, yada, yada portion of that discussion. We’d rather ask “How did they do that?” than learn about how they actually did it. It’s far more entertaining to think in terms of a “natural talent fallacy” or a “the genius myth” than breakdown the hundreds of hours they spent in a gym, or in a lab, honing their ability, or dedicating so much of their mind and energy to their profession, or craft, that when they happened to be “around”, they probably weren’t much fun to be around.

The Babe

George Herman Ruth (AKA “The Bambino,” “The Sultan of Swat”, or “The Babe”) may have been the opposite of Einstein and Jordan in that he appeared to enjoy every step of his gradual ascension to greatness. The Babe didn’t face the same substantial levels of rejection Einstein and Jordan did, but that may have been due to the fact that The Babe never felt entitled to it. I don’t think anyone would accuse Jordan or Einstein of being entitled, but whatever vagaries we apply to the term entitled in these cases, The Babe was the opposite when he was but a babe.

Babe Ruth was born into poverty, in a rough working-class neighborhood well known for crime and violence. His parents were hard-drinking saloon owners, who provided their son a chaotic, unstable, and troubled environment that led him to commit petty crimes and truancy. His overwhelmed parents sent to a St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys, a reformatory school. While attending this school, a Brother Matthias taught him baseball, but Ruth’s talent was confined to the school’s teams, unseen by wider audiences. Students of St. Mary’s were not expressly forbidden from playing in youth baseball leagues, but his confinement to the school’s isolated campus and strict schedule prevented participation in other organized, external leagues. Thus, while Ruth excelled, he toiled in obscurity, playing on St. Mary’s team.

Ruth’s luck changed when an owner/manager of the then minor league team the Baltimore Orioles, Jack Dunn, just happened to spot The Babe’s talent in 1914, and by 1916 he was a twenty-game winning pitcher for the Boston Red Sox who pitched a one-run, fourteen inning complete game (still a World Series record) to help the Red Sox win the World Series. Every talent has his or her story on the rise to fame, and they’re littered with personal motivations, including others seeing their raw talent that needed development and those who underestimated how talented they were, but compared to Einstein and Jordan, Ruth’s rise to fame was relatively quick and smooth.  

Based on Ruth’s upbringing, we can only speculate that he didn’t view rejection in the same way an Einstein or a Jordan would. Prior to being “discovered” Ruth likely viewed himself as nothing more than a poor, dumb, reform school kid. As such, we can guess that Ruth didn’t have the social awareness or the levels of expectation they did. As a poor, dumb, reform school kid, The Babe probably viewed anyone giving him a chance, someone paying him to play baseball, and all of his numerous accomplishments thereafter as gravy. In his autobiography, The Babe Ruth Story (1948), he describes his St. Mary’s days fondly, focusing on baseball and Brother Matthias’ mentorship, not on being overlooked. His 1914 minor league struggles (doubts about his discipline) were met with defiance, not despair, per teammates’ accounts. Therefore, we can say that bitterness and resentment never drove The Babe to accomplish rare feats in the beginning, or throughout his illustrious career, but something unusual drove him on the tail end, the very tail end, of his baseball career.

Genius Chronicle: May 25, 1935, George Herman Ruth is five days away from retirement. Did The Babe know 1935 would be his last season? He may not have at the beginning of the year, but his performance was so bad (he hit .181 that year, with thirteen runs batted in, and most importantly, only three home runs prior to 5/25/1935), and his 1935 Boston Braves were so awful, and that he knew. By the time he stepped to the plate in 5/25/1935, the accumulation of twenty-two years, and 2,503 games, of Major League Baseball play were also catching up to him, as his knees were so bad that he ended up only playing 28 games for a team that didn’t even know the definition of the words in-contention. He probably spent the 1935 season depressed with the knowledge that the natural talents, the grit, perseverance, and everything that made the man who changed the game into what he know today, were all gone. He was a shell of his former self, and he was only forty-years-old, relatively young for the average human but ancient for an athlete, particularly in his era.

Even with all that George Herman Ruth stepped to the plate on May 25, 1935, against the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirate pitchers he faced were “respectable but not dominant”. The days when Ruth dominated headlines were long-since passed, and I’d be willing to bet that most casual baseball fans probably didn’t know Ruth was still playing by this date. This was probably best reflected by the attendance of Forbes Field that day, was a mere 10,000 attended a game in which Babe Ruth played in a 25,000-seat capacity. Few wanted to see a man many considered one of the greatest to ever play the game of baseball, because it’s always sad to watch a broken-down, old horse gallop around the track in his final days. How many of them regretted that decision afterwards when they learned that Babe Ruth managed to put everything that made George Herman Ruth “The Babe” one final time, and in one final blaze of glory by hitting three home runs, which just happened to be the 712th, 713th, and 714th of his storied career.

Hitting three home runs in a game is still a remarkable feat for any Major League Baseball player, but at the point when Ruth did it, professional baseball was roughly sixty-five years old, and this feat had only been accomplished seventeen times by thirteen different players, including Ruth, who only accomplished it twice before in his lengthy and storied list of home runs. Ruth would go onto only have five more at-bats in the five games left in the season, before he retired. This entry is included in this article because Babe Ruth was often called the “Most naturally talented athlete of his generation.” Fans and players alike appreciated his talent and domination of the game of baseball, but there had to be some temptation to reduce his natural talents as supernatural, as if he  just picked up a bat on a Thursday and by Friday he basically invented the home run that we all celebrate today. Some fans probably marveled at the fact that this celebrated athlete put it all together in one final blaze of glory, but others probably laughed and reduced it to “The Babe being The Babe”.  It’s just kind of what we just do. It’s human nature.

Even with all the information we have about the rise of Jordan, Einstein, and The Babe, we still attach this The Sword in the Stone characterization to them, because we love the idea of superheroes. The three of them may have been blessed with superior natural abilities, but they weren’t supernatural abilities. Yet, belief in the latter permits us to worship them, and it gives us comfort to think “they’re just different”. We prefer to avoid thinking about all the “yada, yada, yada” of true grit, unusual levels of perseverance, and all of the work they put into honing their abilities. We prefer to focus on “natural talent fallacies” and the “genius myth” that suggests their Creator was so generous with them and comparatively stingy with us when it came to dispersing talent. I have news for you brothers and sisters, the idea of a chosen one being the only one able to remove the sword from the stone is a fictional tale, and there’s no such thing as a chosen one. Gifts require honing, dedication to craft, and a level of tunnel vision that would lead many of us to grow so bored with the mind-numbing hours of practice and work these men put in. We also wouldn’t be able to deal momentary, temporary embarrassment that arrives with the level of failure they dealt with under the scrutiny of white, hot lights. Those of us who admire these geniuses from afar often characterize them as the chosen ones, and ourselves as the character Sir Kay of that book, who attempted to pull the sword and failed, because it gives us comfort to think if we were as blessed as they were, we would do the same. It’s a compliment that we deem them different, of course, but it’s also uninformed and reductive.

To my mind, the greater details of the stories of Jordan, Einstein, and Ruth remind us that greatness and genius aren’t a gift bestowed at birth, but a fire forged through rejection, toil, and unrelenting drive. From Jordan’s high school cut to Einstein’s academic snubs and Ruth’s reform school obscurity, their triumphs—whether a baseline dunk, a revolutionary theory, or a final three-homer blaze—were built on the ashes of doubt. We marvel at their highlights, but their true legacy lies in the unseen hours of grit, proving that greatness belongs to those who dig deep enough to find that elusive “other layer” so often that we develop creative theories about how it’s all so unfair.

DDTY: Don’t Do This Yourself

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2020 was a huge year in the DIY (Do-it-Yourself) industry. We spent so much time inside, isolated, that we spent record amounts on DIY tools and accessories to accommodate what we thought might be our new reality. We spent so much time inside, isolated, that people who rarely used a tool were now purchasing power tools. Faucets, kitchen cabinets, and toilets were flying off the shelves. Home Depot saw a 20% increase in net sales, and Lowe’s saw a 24.2% increase. We spent record amounts on DIY tools and accessories to accommodate what we thought might be our new reality.

I thought it might be a revolution in individual empowerment, but the number one answer given to pollsters on this subject was “[I] finally having the time for it.” Translation, I always knew how to do this stuff, I just never had time for it before. The numbers reflect that, as DIY industry numbers have plummeted since 2020 back to normal, but those of us who didn’t know what we were doing before COVID, but learned it within, took our first bite of that apple and found the flavor empowering. We found fixing things ourselves less intimidating after seeing an oaf with a mustache on YouTube explain that insulating our attic and changing our garbage disposal can be accomplished in ten easy steps. 

Bob Peters didn’t know anything about plumbing, HVACs, appliances, or anything else in his home that required fixing. Anytime he had a problem, he just called an expert. Mr. Peters would’ve loved to fix his belongings in the beginning, but he never learned how to do it. His dad was probably less informed and less experienced in fixing things that he was, and Bob spent the first twenty years of his adulthood living in apartments. After purchasing his own home, Bob knew he was physically capable of fixing his fixables, but two minutes after opening these things up, he felt overwhelmed by the idea that an idiot like him could do it.

“One huge part of intelligence,” Bob often joked to friends and family who encouraged him to fix these things himself, “is knowing your limitations.”

Bob Peters wasn’t an idiot. He worked hard, and his hard-earned expertise, in his arena, was valued and well-compensated. He didn’t have the time or the wherewithal to Do-It-Yourself (DIY). During COVID, the individuals weren’t as overwhelmed as the certified, licensed experts. The wait times were insane.

“I understand your frustration, but if you knew what we were up against, you would understand.” The resultant desperation led Bob to discover the oafs with mustaches on YouTube. These oafs were licensed plumbers, certified HVAC guys, and former and current employees at the companies that manufactured the appliances Bob owned. They were experts in their field hoping to make some side money in the YouTube universe. They taught Bob that he no longer needed Mike the plumber, Leo the HVAC guy, and Craig the fix-it-guy to fix everything in his home. He could do some of this himself. The idea that an unlicensed, uncertified individual could fix the small things in his home “by following these steps” was a revelation to Bob Peters, and the only question left for him was how far do I take this? 

We’re not licensed plumbers, yet we can fix some of the majors, and most of the minors, in a little under an hour with the assistance of the ideal YouTuber. Bob even found that messing with electricity isn’t as scary as he thought it was. He maintained a healthy respect for electricity, but that healthy respect was a healthy fear prior to an oaf with a mustache informing him that as long as he followed “these necessary steps,” the electrical world wasn’t as foreign and scary as he thought it was.

The problem for Bob was that as healthy as his home, and now his car, were now through DIY maintenance, he could never maintain his own health. “How far do I take this?” he asked himself when he experienced yet another setback, a level of pain that suggested he was going to have to endure yet another emergency room visit. 

Bob’s life devolved to seemingly endless trips to doctor’s offices, rushes to emergency rooms, and some hospital stays. The routine was so demoralizing, painful, and tedious that in the midst of Nurse Nancy attending to him yet again, he said, “I just have this feeling that this is my life now.”

Those employed in health-related institutions gain knowledge, wisdom, and a level of expertise from books, professors, and personal experience, but they are methodical sorts who can leave a fella waiting, in pain, for thirty-to-forty minutes. I know what you’re thinking, a thirty-to-forty wait isn’t such a bad thing in the grand scheme of things, but when you’re in excruciating pain, each click of the minute hand feels endless. These doctors and nurses further complicated Bob’s life with all of their monitoring. They suggest that they need to keep us, sometimes overnight, to monitor the effects of our medicinal and procedural treatments. Bob Peters just got sick of the whole shebang, and when he experienced yet another flair up, he wondered “How far can I take this DIY stuff?”

He’d been through the process of having a catheter inserted into his nether region so many times that he joked, “I could probably do this myself at this point” to Nurse Nancy the last time she helped him through the painful procedure. He repeated that joke, in his head, as he waited in the hospital room that last visit, as they monitored his levels. He then repeated that joke to his friends and family when they asked how his last visit went, and he ended up repeating that joke so often that when he experienced another flair up, he began seriously contemplating it. Even though his friends said, “You’re not seriously considering this are you?” He said no, and he meant it, but now that he was in need yet again, and he thought about going through all the typical procedures again, he began seriously considering it. 

The beauty of YouTube is that they list for us the bullet points of most DIY projects. Most viewers at home were so uninformed we didn’t even know there were bullet points and finding them proved an empowering revelation. The one caveat that experts list for anyone considering YouTube-style DIY fixes is that oafs with mustaches often don’t cover variables well. 

Bob came to our attention after experiencing just such a variable. He consulted a YouTube video that instructed him how he could insert a catheter from the comfort of his own home. The oaf with a mustache covered the basics, the principles behind it, and a number of caveats and variables, but he neglected to cover whatever led to Bob experiencing what he called “a warm rush of liquid” that occurred shortly after he inserted the catheter. 

“I didn’t hear a pop,” Bob told Nurse Nancy, “But that warm rush of liquid concerned me, and I’ve been urinating blood since. And, it ain’t stopping.” Although he managed to drive himself to the emergency room, Bob characterized his pain as a ten on the pain scale. “I always characterize the pain I feel as a ten, don’t we all, but the pain I’m experiencing right now gives me new perspective. I’m going to go ahead and edit all those previous pains as sevens now.”

Fearing the worst, Bob suggested that Nurse Nancy have the doctor, “Check to see if I punctured one of my testicles.” Those in charge of making preliminary guesses, guessed that Bob didn’t do anything as drastic as that, and he probably scratched something or popped a boil of some sort, but they knew that without further analysis, the possibilities were endless.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the details of this furthered analysis, but suffice it to say that Bob found an answer to the question, “How far do we take this?” As a relatively new advocate for Doing-It-Yourself, Bob probably sounded like an evangelist on feelings of empowerment inherent in being able to fix your own fixables. Even after his episode, he would stand behind the DIY sword and shield, but he would encourage those of us who ask ourselves “How far do we take this?” to ask one crucial question: “What’s the penalty for error?”  

Bob would probably add that even in the age of oafs with mustaches on YouTube, AI, and the resultant sense of individual empowerment inherent in fixing it yourself that there is still, at this point in human history, as of yet devoid of superhumans melding with AI, a need to avoid traveling in areas we don’t belong. As much as the not-easily-intimidated crowd hate to admit it, there is still a need for knowledge and expertise in certain arenas. There is still a need for professional analysis, waiting on those with firsthand knowledge, experience, aptitude, and all of that monitoring for the effects of all of the above. What’s the penalty for incorrectly installing a garbage disposal? What are the penalties for making errors in trying to fix an HVAC, their electricity, or their plumbing? “Go ahead and pay attention to all those ‘Don’t try this at home’ disclaimers that oafs with mustaches list on their YouTube videos before they start in,” Bob might add, “because some drains are more intricate, delicate, and indispensable than others.”

The True Thief’s Mentality

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“Why do you watch such awful shows about such awful people?” our mother asks us. “Even the comedies you love are about awful people doing awful things to one another.”

“It’s complicated.” We say that because that’s what the critics call the complicated characters of Pulp Fiction, The Sopranos, and Breaking Bad. They call them complicated characters, because they’re good guys, family men in some cases, who just happen to do bad things. It might be complicated for them, but it’s pretty simple for us. We love criminality, violence, and a general stench of awfulness in our entertainment vehicles.

“If it doesn’t have some violence, or the threat thereof, we’re kind of bored,” a friend of mine said to wrap it all up for me. Is that so complicated it’s simple or so simple it’s complicated. We let those who concern themselves with such matters resolve those heady concepts, we just know we love reading watching, listening, and playing games that are violent in nature.

The funny thing is an overwhelming majority of us haven’t even considered using violence to solve our problems since our kindergarten teacher scolded us for doing so. We also pick up on their bizarre, cringey, and hilarious justifications, “He had to do it ma’, that guy just ate some of his peanut butter without asking. It’s about respect.” Yet, we only apply it to fictional characters in fictional settings.  

“I only take from the rich,” is another justification the modern thief uses, in modern movies, to establish their nobility. ‘Fair enough,’ viewers at home might say if we accidentally view their actions in an objective manner, ‘but who are the rich?’ Gilligan’s Island prototypes dance in our heads when we think of “the rich”, but the rich guy demographic is actually a pretty broad category. It can include “evil” hedge fund managers who short-sell a company into oblivion and devastate its employees, but it can also include the little old lady who scrimped and saved her whole life, so she didn’t have to work when she became frail and feeble. We don’t want to think about the latter, because they don’t fit the Robin Hood myth that thieves only steal from the obnoxiously rich to level the unfair playing field by giving it to the poor, and overcomplicating such simple matters does ruin movies. 

The thing with the Robin Hood myth that permeates so many of our favorite stories about thieves is that our more modern interpretations have twisted the original tales. We can’t call these modern portrayals wrong, because there’s no definitive evidence to suggest that an actual Robin Hood ever existed. Yet, the current interpretations are very different from the original English ballads and poems about this fictional character. They referred to a Robin Hood who stole from corrupt government officials who overtaxed and overregulated their constituents. These pre-Victorian-era English ballads and poems of Robin Hood detail how the Sheriff of Nottingham and the abusive local authorities overtaxed and over regulated their constituents to empower the government and line the government officials’ pockets. Why did this fictional hero prove so popular? Were the governments of this era too powerful? Were the people of Robin Hood’s era so overtaxed and over regulated that they were so reliant on government that they needed a hero to take that money and power back? 

These government officials became “the rich” by stripping their constituents of financial freedom through confiscatory taxes and burdensome regulations, and Robin Hood stole in back. For whatever reason, the Victorian-era fiction writers began leaving out the idea that the rich were government officials, and their bad guys were those individuals who amassed their own wealth. We don’t know why the Victorian-era writers rewrote the tale to leave out government officials, so we can only speculate that it either fit their worldview to do so, or they feared reprisals from their own government officials.

The altruistic, Robin Hood-style thief who steals from the rich and gives to the poor is such a romantic figure that we forget that some thieves steal stuff just because they want other people’s stuff. We think it says something about us that we assign noble goals to thievery. “They are only doing it to feed their children.” Some are, of course, but how many steal for the Thrill of it All? How many steal, because “He has so much that he won’t even miss it.” How many thieves “only steal from bad guys”? How many steal, because they think they deserve to have nice things? It is complicated in some cases, but in others, it’s actually quite simple.

No writer is going to write a story about a thief who just wants to steal things though. That would deprive their story of romantic and/or empathetic attachments. We want our fictional thieves, mass murderers, and other assorted criminals to be noble when they inflict pain on other people. Yet, we don’t need to read Dostoyevsky to understand that no thief considers themselves the bad guy in their autobiographical tale. All we need to do is listen to them. AsSocrates once said, “No one knowingly commits an evil action. Evil is turned into good in the mind.” They just have a want, and a want can easily be twisted into a need for those who want/need the justification. 

In the modern landscape, writers climb all over one another to depict the “gritty reality that no one wants to hear.” Yet, when they have their complicated characters say, “I only take from the rich,” they only have their characters steal from hedge fund managers who have yachts and second and third homes. I’ve never stolen from a hedge fund manager, but I have to imagine it’s not only very difficult, it’s fraught with peril. I have to imagine that most hedge fund managers have the best and most updated security systems set up in their homes and to guard their internet activity, and they also have a team of lawyers on retainer who are always on the lookout for cases to justify their existence. Thus, not only would it prove more difficult for the thief to steal from hedge fund managers, if they get caught, they know their prosecutors will be high-priced lawyers who know how to secure justice. 

Like the great white shark and the mountain lion, most thieves don’t act impulsively. They don’t want to get hurt, and they don’t want to get caught, so they profile their victims and stalk their prey, studying their practices and patterns for vulnerabilities. They want to know how easy it’s going to be to steal. If they’re able to steal something, they’d prefer victims who don’t have the money or the wherewithal to prosecute them. Thus, most real-life thieves aren’t as likely to pursue the noble cause of stealing from a hedge fund manager. They’d prefer to go after a little old lady’s life savings.   

No thief ever says anything along the lines of, “I’m actually a bad guy, and I have no qualms about saying that. I don’t care who I have to steal from, I’ll steal from my own mother if it means avoiding having to go to work. Say what you want about stealing, but it is so much easier than working for a living. People who work are such saps, especially when there are so many vulnerable people in the world who have so much stuff worth stealing. Hey, I know my soul is tainted, and it has been for most of my life. I’m just a bad person who enjoys hurting people financially. If I have to hurt them physically to get what I want, I will, but that’s not my go-to. And if there is an afterlife, I know I’m going to pay, probably for the rest of eternity, so I’m just going to enjoy this life while it lasts.” 

If no writer would have their beloved main character say such a thing, how about they have their thief drop all the typical “steals from the rich and gives to the poor” mythical justifications on us, and then steal from frail, little old ladies? To our complicated character, this would be true, technically, as the little, old lady in our production would be rich, and our thief would be poor. 

In our “gritty, real-life” production, the thief would get caught, and he would manipulate our thought patterns by complaining about the rough treatment he received from the arresting officers, the conditions of their jail cell, and how the judge took away their phone privileges. If a book captured that effectively and creatively established our otherwise sympathetic character saying a line like, “I only steal from frail, vulnerable old women because it’s easier and they don’t fight back. They just scream a lot about how I’m stealing their life’s savings and all that, and I find their tears delicious.” That book would not sell well, because it would be so confusing. 

I think it’s safe to say that we’re accustomed to our “bad guys” turning out to be the production’s most virtuous character when the smoke clears, and the generally agreed upon “good guy” being found out to be the complicated character in the end. We don’t want our favorite bad guys to hurt genuinely nice people just for the money. We also don’t want to learn a lot about the victims. We prefer they be largely faceless entities and corporations that have no people involved, or unattractive people who haven’t bothered to monitor their diets well. We prefer that the author avoid characterizing them, so we can enjoy the violent thefts without having to go through the guilt of watching the victims suffer. Or, if they’re going to characterize them, we prefer the victims be bad guys that no one but our very perceptive thief knows is a bad guy, because he’s done his research. We want those “good guys” who are actually bad to pay, because that’s the typical duality we’ve come to expect in our modern movies.

Some thieves experience remorse for their actions, some regret getting caught, but our psychopathic thief would prefer to steal from the lemonade stands that seven-year-olds set up, because that’s easy money. “I love money. I don’t care how I have to get it. I love money.” Our complicated character would characterize that seven-year-old, lemonade stand’s lead entrepreneur as a bad girl, because he considered her so aggressive that she was likely a bully. Then, on his death bed, our complicated thief would steal something from the dying patient with whom he was forced to share a hospital room. As our movie closes, his theft is discovered, and one of his nephews turns to the thief’s wife, hugs her, and says, “Well, he died doing what he loved.” Now that would be “a gritty taste of reality that would unnerve audiences about the reality of our world.” 

Whenever I sit through one of these modern portrayals of the nobility of the thief, the Robin Hood-style tales, I think about every thief I’ve encountered. They’re not prejudicial about choosing victims, as long as it’s easy, and they don’t give the proceeds from their theft to anyone, poor or otherwise, because, for all intents and purposes, they consider it theirs now. “I went to all the trouble of planning this, and I put my can on the line to get it. If they want theirs, they gotta go get it themelves!”  

I know my experiences with criminals, thieves, and fraudsters are anecdotal, but I worked in the fraud division of a huge company, and I spoke with hundreds of victims and alleged perpetrators on a daily basis. Those who created our website gave these thieves the opportunity to be an anonymous figure who could try to rip off other anonymous people in almost total anonymity. They weren’t ripping off a Helen Otterberg form Pocatello, Idaho, in their mind, they were ripping off a faceless, Hotter@internetcompany.com entity. They weren’t Steve Jurgensen from Loch Arbour, New Jersey, in their mind, they were Imhotep@othercompany.com. The anonymity, relieved the alleged perpetrators from the feelings of remorse or guilt they may have felt if they actually saw Helen. Well, I spoke to the Helens of the world, some of them were little old ladies who were a little careless with their information, and they didn’t the first thing about spotting fraud on the internet. The Steves didn’t hear the fear and sadness I heard on the other end of the line, and some of them may not have cared if they had. They believed they could use the anonymity inherent in the platform my bosses created to steal as much money as possible. 

Our fraud teams stopped an overwhelming amount of money from being withdrawn from our system into the fraudsters’ bank accounts, but we did not seek law enforcement’s assistance, unless the fraudster’s activity reached very specific levels. Thus, it was on the victim to seek further action, and in my experience few of them did. They considered it our job to stop the money, and it was, but once we completed our job, the matter was basically closed as far as most victims were concerned, and the victim and the alleged perpetrator learned something from the experience, and they both adjusted accordingly. As I wrote, these experiences are all anecdotal, but my experiences with friends who stole stuff, and my work in a fraud unit, gave me a better taste of the true thief’s mentality than most will ever have. 

Even with experiences that differ from what screenwriters portray on screen, I still love fictional violent crime dramas. I think The Godfather I and II, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and The Sopranos are some of the greatest productions of all time. I also love their cringey, complicated moral relativism, their attempts to achieve nobility, and the excuses these characters use to absolve themselves of wrecking so many lives with their actions. Yet, I absolve myself for ever flirting with the notion that their actions were justified by saying I don’t believe in the supernatural beings with supernatural powers, but if I know if I want to enjoy a movie about them, it’s incumbent upon me to suspend my disbelief for as long as it takes to enjoy the movie.