Certain members of the Westlake 4.5 Men's tennis team are likely to have an sad fate.

I am basing my prediction on their character. What are the odds that my prediction will be correct? How good of a barometer is a person’s character?

“A man’s character is his fate.” - Heraclitus (540 BC - 480 BC), from On the Universe.

“Our character...is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.” - George Santayana, from The German Mind: A Philosophical Diagnosis.

So I am confident in predicting their destiny. Confident because I know that character is a product of environment. (Regarding this, Fred Astaire said “The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any.”)

The aforementioned players are pleasant enough, as are sociopaths who appear as good people yet their dark character is camouflaged like a fur coat made from four kinds of puppy dog.

If I’m wrong, roast me in hell and make sandwiches for the devil.

Following are some tips for weeding these type folks from your garden:

Don’t use your “intuition”. My gut has never told me anything more useful than “the quiche is too rich”.

Learn to recognize the foundation of good character: empathy. It’s important to recognize the difference between true empathy and rote empathy. Empathy is something that’s felt by the empathizer, although it is often confused with the action of “giving” empathy to someone else. On the extreme end, sociopaths are folks who don’t really experience empathy; they just fake it to fit in with everyone else.

Thus the following metrics are necessary but not sufficient conditions of good character; i.e., if a person fails these tests, they have demonstrated they lack character, but it remains possible that they still lack character despite passing these tests.

1. The way someone treats a waiter or waitress is surprisingly revealing. Cheap, rude, disrespectful people with a sense of entitlement are remarkably oblivious to this fact, which is handy for those of us who like to keep the number of such people in our lives to a minimum. General respect for fellow human beings indicates good character.

Note: In addition to being a sign of weak character, being rude to a waitress also increases your chances of being served something that had fallen onto the floor. Therefore it is possible that a person with bad character might be nice to a waitress for no reason other than to avoid food poisoning. Therefore, perhaps a more generalized guideline is needed, such as these guidelines from Abigail Van Buren (aka: “Dear Abby”).

The best index to a person’s character is
a) How he treats people who can’t do him any good, and
b) How he treats people who can’t fight back.

2. Observe someone driving a car. Don’t worry about their driving skills (unless they cause you to stay busy cutting deals with God). Worry instead about those drivers with a generally selfish attitude; those who do not signal, don’t allow others to merge lanes, or attempt to pass other cars in the drive-through lane at Burger King. This kind of behavior might be actively selfish (“my needs override those of others”) or selfish by default, by simply not even thinking to take others’ needs into account or actively pay attention to what is going on around them.

3. “Character is doing what’s right when nobody’s looking.” - J.C. Watts
Obviously this metric is useful only if someone doesn’t know that you are looking. I will include spying tips in a future letter, after you have purchased a nice trench coat.

Fortunately you won’t always need to spy. Sometimes people will simply confess to bad things they did. One of the best times to elicit such a confession is when someone is very drunk (tip: look for a person holding on to the floor, afraid to let go). Furrow your eyebrows deeply and ask them, “Did you really think that you would get away with that?” Often they will snivel and blubber out a confession of nearly all the more attractive sins they’ve committed, and justify their behavior by saying that since Jesus paid for their sins they were merely getting their money’s worth.

4. Notice how a person speaks of other people. What flaws do they see in others?

Jean Paul Richter said, “A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another’s”.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said “People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.”

Winston Churchill said, “A man is about as big as the things that bother him.” So you should avoid people who judge others for petty things such as fashion sense (unless they are making fun of someone at a formal occasion who is wearing a hat with clapping hands).

5. Notice if a person laughs too loud at the expense of others.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said “Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.”

Example 1: What’s the difference between a Hoover vacuum cleaner and a Harley motorcycle?

With a Hoover, the dirt-bag is on the inside.

That’s funny, unless a friend just bought a Harley (in which case proper etiquette requires that you change the motorcycle to a Honda and hope they miss the analogy).

6. Notice how a person deals with conflict or when something goes wrong. Do they blame themselves or someone else? (I once had a boss who blamed me for everything except the First World War. He said that that was started by my grandparents.)

Note: Sometimes others are clearly at fault and you will have to either blame them or keep quiet. The correct response is to keep your thoughts bottled up inside you until years from now when you will go to therapy and discuss who you can blame for everything.

It’s difficult to know someone’s real character without conflict. Just being cool and great all the time isn’t really a test of character at all.

Anyone who can deal with someone disagreeing them, whatever their views, gets character points. Anyone who changes their point of view when they realize that they’re wrong gets character points.

It takes good character strength to apologize quickly. A person must possess a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize.

But beware of folks who use the following gambit: I apologize. I was wrong. I did a stupid thing (once again). But the honestly required for such a ruthless self-inventory is almost unheard of. Therefore, I am a gem. You are lucky to be in my presence. Bow when I enter the room.

Final note: There may be conflicts in which nobody is to blame. For example: My wife and I disagree on certain points of etiquette. She feels after I shave and use a towel it is proper to fold it in three, making sure it’s all even, and arrange it so it is parallel to everything. I feel it is good enough to have the bloody side facing the wall.

7. You can learn a lot by watching how people treat animals. Those who are callous toward animals are usually not good people, and those who go out of their way to hurt animals (including lower creatures like harmless bugs) are almost always worthless human beings.

Albert Einstein said, “Our task must be to free ourselves...by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.”

Unfortunately Einstein’s thinking may have been overrated. If he knew so much about gravity, why did his hair stand up like that? So I have included thoughts of others:

Pope John XXIII said “Man must never hurt animals, must never ill-treat them nor torture them physically because they are sensitive creatures. If anyone told me that to achieve my purpose it would be sufficient to kill an ant, I would not do it.”

Reverend Dr. Andrew Linzey said “To stand for Christ is to stand against evil of cruelty inflicted on those who are weak, vulnerable, unprotected, undefended, morally innocent, and in that class we must unambiguously include animals.”
Pierre Troubetzkoy (painter) said, “Why should man expect his prayer for mercy to be heard by What is above him when he shows no mercy to what is under him?”

To summarize:
1. Rude to waitresses and subordinates? Bzzt.
2. Hateful driver? Bzzt.
3. Brags about things they “got away with”? Bzzt.
4. Speaks ill of others? Bzzt.
5. Delights in others’ suffering. Bzzt.
6. Defensive when wrong? Bzzt.
7. Cruel to animals? Bzzt.

Three final quotes about character:

Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny. - Anonymous

When God measures man, He puts the tape around his heart -- not his head.

And finally, my personal favorite: “Sports doesn’t build character, it reveals it.”

In this capacity, the members of the Westlake team revealed who that are -- dishonest.