1:07am July 15, 2014

Also if you have ever thought this of me…

youneedacat:

madeofpatterns:

youneedacat:

…because I’ve been talking to someone who does.

If you ever look at me and see a good person. And look at yourself and see a bad or evil person.

I can pretty much guarantee you that:

You are not as bad or evil as you think you are.

I am not as good as you think I am.

If you care about whether you’re good or bad, that means something. People say intent doesn’t matter, but intent matters. Intent isn’t everything. But intent is something. And often the first step towards being as good as any of us can be, is the desire to be good, the desire to do the right thing, the desire to be compassionate, the desire to care about people, any of those things. Those things are what start any of us off.

Anyone who looks hard enough and accurately enough and honestly enough at themselves will find a whole lot of bad things that need changing. But they’ll also find a lot of good qualities too. And the bad qualities don’t make us irredeemably evil, they just make us human.

Everyone has done things we’re not proud of. Most of us have done things that we fear to ever speak to another person about. I have done things I will likely never admit to in public — and Dave Hingsburger has my unending admiration for his ability to publicly admit horrific things he’s done, much worse than the things I’ll never admit in public… and I’ll still probably never be able to admit them.

And good and evil, when applied to human beings, are oversimplifications at best. We’re too complicated for such simplistic descriptions. And most people who think they’re evil and agonize over it, aren’t anywhere near as evil as they think they are. If you were, you wouldn’t give a shit. Giving a shit is a good sign, even when it hurts sometimes.

I don’t believe in good guys and bad guys. I just believe in people, most of us trying our best, and not always getting there. If you idealize me as a good person, you’ll be in for a lot of disappointment. Being good is a big part of my goals in life, but people rarely fully meet that kind of goal, and I do a lot of things that are not good at all, even knowing they aren’t good. Because I’m a human being and we do things like that.

And always be wary of comparing your insides to other people’s outsides in general. It doesn’t work well.

There’s a sense in which I believe in good guys and bad guys. Like, there’s a sense in which I think you have to say that Peter Singer is a bad guy. But I don’t believe that anyone is a superhero or human garbage.

Agreed, completely. But in everyday social life, it’s much less likely that you’ll come up against that degree of a good guy or a bad guy. I mean, you will sometimes, it’s just not as common as coming up against a garden-variety human being, which is usually a fair mix of both, even if they seem like one or the other.

And like - even Peter Singer is not.. a monster trash unperson. He’s a person and has some good aspects because he is a person even though he has dedicated most of his professional life to evil.

But… I think the fact that good guys and bad guys exist always matters, even though usually you are coming up a garden-variety human being who is much more mixed than they might initially appear.

It’s… the possibility always matters?

And I think trying to avoid considering the possibility is actually one place that NVC goes wrong.

I agree with you, actually. But the context I’m thinking in here is a context where people are most likely to consider themselves irredeemably evil, when they’re not even bad enough to be evil, let alone irredeemably, even if they’re doing bad things (in this case, the person who was hurting me on purpose because they were jealous of my perceived “goodness”). And in that context, it’s important to emphasize that everyone’s a mix and very few people are anything close to all bad or all good.

I think this is one of those areas where there’s two ideas, and both of them are equally important in different contexts. I’m talking about one context, and you’re talking about another context. So you’re talking about contexts where it’s really important to remember that there are good guys and bad guys. And I’m talking about contexts where an overemphasis on good guys and bad guys (or in some cases even thinking in those terms at all) can fuck up people’s thinking at best and literally make them suicidal at worst, so it’s important to not think in those terms, even though technically they do exist. Because the moment someone in this situation lets into their consciousness the idea of “bad guys”, they will automatically decide that not only they are a bad guy, but they’re the worst of the bad guys ever.

And of course ideally a person will come to a more balanced view of the world, where they know that in some contexts good guys and bad guys make sense and in others they don’t. But I’m talking about a context where being a little oversimplistic about it, and assuming most or even all people (and especially oneself) are a fair mix of both, can actually be important.

Notes: