To an extent; you can’t be nice to someone if they always yell and scream and demean you
On those cases, walking away and not fueling their fire is being nice… to yourself. You don’t deserve to be yelled at or demeaned.
Be nice, but stand up for and defend yourself.
Nothing upsets people more than when you refuse to match their emotional state though. Kill them with kindness.
I wish I could be like a programmer that did some work for my dad.
My dad, being an asshole, would start telling and screaming when he wasn’t happy. The programmer would just stop and quietly say that he needed to calm down. It drove my dad ABSOLUTELY INSANE, but there was nothing he could do. He’d have to choke back his rage, calm down, and ask nicely.
I wish I could do that, but when people yell at me, I yell back.
You definitely can be nice to such people.
You were preoccupied with whether you could, that you forgot to consider whether you should.
Yeah, but people with problems shouldn’t take it out on me. It’s not like I don’t have my own stuff going on.
You are not wrong in your thinking. However ,if someones lashes at you, then you by turn lash out to someone else unrelated to your issues, and then by consequence that person lashes out again on someone unrelated, very quickly becomes a very long and complicated chain that you simply can’t stop from coming at you, but you can stop it from spreading once it reaches you. This has been debated for a very long time as the cycle of rage, which to be honest, I am not sure if we have a way out completely. Maybe over time we care more about emotional intelligence and make these problems less prevalent (but I would not bet on that)
Are you a fellow freedom lover? I swear you’ve just described a huge part of the rot in American culture. Hell the whole world knows that one of our major political parties stays in power largely by promising to hurt the “right” people.
I am not from the US, but I do see in many places (if not all) this “us vs them” mentality. From what I know, specifically in politics, by giving a “face” to a specific problem and then lash out on that “face” to have more influence has been a constant lately (I believe the rise of the extreme right has a lot to do with this). In general, I am a firm believer emotional intelligence is in extreme short supply everywhere. We need to have more understanding how we should behave with ourselves and others. Society wise needs to change as well, but that is a tall order…
I don’t lash out, I’m more of a “keep everything inside” person, but that still doesn’t stop others from taking it out on me, and while I internalize a lot, I react… Harshly to aggression.
I think in this instance is a bit different, we are talking about reaction in this case to the supposed aggressor. I won’t lie I am guilty of this myself at times, but this can also be detrimental on many interactions (depending if we are talking about a stranger vs a friend or family member). To be clear, we as humans are hardwired to always prioritize our well being first, and sometimes that does contradict on how our behavior is expected. However, on every instance of these events we should be able to first think how we should react and then do something about it (on a flight or fight situation this does not exist, since at that point our reflexes and reactions prioritize our well being first no matter what). Meaning, for the most part we should try to behave in a way that de escalates a situation instead of escalating. And for my understating, this is where the kindness argument comes in. If a situation can be de escalated by not responding on the same way as the aggressor, you can potentially get out of the aggression situation to a more neutral ground.
PS: regarding your internalization bit, I cannot say what is the best way to live your life, but from my personal experience, having someone to just talk to about these subjects can be extremely valuable. Just by offloading in a constructive way to someone (meaning, no lashing out) can relieve a massive burden out of you (and as for me, I do not believe in the methods where there is not feedback, e.g.: diaries, but that is my take)
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Each one of us has a war raging inside, often intestinal.
Usually on Taco Tuesday.
I’m kind to others precisely because I am usually in great emotional pain, and don’t wish to contribute to the pain of others because I know it all too well from younger days.
I firmly believe empathy must be taught, and taught young. This was a good example of what such education would look like:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/introduction-2/
But th US is blame central. We’re taught to figure out what the suffering must have done wrong to deserve their plight. We’re taught to be hostile to the concept of demonstrating empathy for others, oh I’m sorry, “virtue signaling.” It would hinder our lifelong economic competition against each other, can’t have that!
One of the most fascinating responses to trolls I’ve found to DM trolls back in the day was “What happened to you to make you act like this?”
It was amazing how just one question was enough for these jerks to do a 180° and trauma dump, explaining exactly why they were so desperate for attention.
Not that it excuses their behavior, but boy did those trolls really just need a hug now and a single decent adult back in their childhood. Maybe that’s just the nature of the ones who wanted to talk, though…
Although this is good advice, it shouldn’t be necessary to assume someone is having a bad time to be nice to them.
That’s not what’s being said at all.
That’s exactly what’s being said. The motivation to be nice is to assume someone could be going through something and act accordingly. That’s good advice, but shouldn’t be necessary. You should be nice for its own sake.
I always try to be nice, but the motivation comes in handy when the person in front of you seems to be trying their darnest to be infuriating
Being nice and accommodating have gotten me in much more trouble than being distant and aloof. No thanks.
We punish empathy in the US. We give cruelty and practiced sociopathy stock options.
Exactly. Being empathic is in my nature but it’s disincentivized at all possible turns…
“I want to educate the next generation!”
Society: Oh shit, guess you’ll be a forever renter having your empathy manipulated into forcing you to buy your student’s school supplies.
“I want to run a hedge fund and send letters to the companies I own pressuring them to destroy their business model by giving their product/service improvement and employee bonus money to meeeee, and also fire the workers that made them so profitable for a short term stock bump, also for meeeeee!”
Society: get this man a private jet.
Our society lives in service to our economy, the opposite of the entire point of an economy. Our economy should tax and punish attempts at selfishness, and reward pro-social vocations that help society. No hope of that until collapse, but its sad to watch.
I think that empathy and sympathy are sorely lacking in people these days. I’m not sure why, if its violent media or something else that makes people inured to feeling the suffering of others, or even caring.
Also I think that the most kind people I’ve ever known were also among the most intelligent. It seems that one hallmark of intelligence is the ability to feel sympathy and to be kind to others. And that makes sense, since it’s also a way of assuring you get what you need out of the situation as well.
I blame our rigged, unrestrained market capitalist economy. You can’t tether at half or more of people’s waking hours to competing against each other to have their basic needs met and not expect that to infect the broader culture.
It stops us from being a society. It encourages us to be a bunch of rugged individuals at one another’s throats trying to beat each other over paper.
It MIGHT be rigged and certainly is a rampant capitalist economy, but having been to places in Mexico where people literally live under cardboard boxes and use open trenches for sewers, I can honestly say it isn’t entirely rigged in a bad way for most us here. I mean, we do see SOME trickle down benefits of being a capitalist country.
My older brother and his wife, on paper, have about $21 million in the bank. And they didn’t themselves exploit anyone but themselves to get there - my older brother got his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and went to work for a major U.S. firm, and so did his wife, and they earned well over six figures for several decades. But they also invested well along the way.
My cousin is very rich because he sort of accidentally invented a way to track packages and Fed Ex bought out his ideas. My other cousin owns the most productive cement plant in Colorado, so he has money up the wazoo also.
I’m only using those as examples because it shows that you CAN get ahead in a capitalist economy, even if it is often rigged in favor of those who already have money.
People do that here. There isn’t a population center here where there isn’t a massive tent city or cities within it.
In my opinion, a society where some people live in gluttony while others starve is worse than a nation where all struggle, because a society would divide resources equitably. We’re worse because we have more than enough to feed, cloth, and educate everyone, but a few thousand sociopath families want to live like modern Pharoahs, that makes us a lot worse than a nation ethically that simply doesn’t have enough food, homes, or educational resources, because impoverished nations don’t choose to have a massive underclass as we do.
Getting ahead in a capitalist economy is more about birth lottery than anything, a few get lucky ingratiating themselves to the sociopathic monsters that own this system that we should be dragging out into the streets and letting homeless encampments, their greatest victims, decide what to do with, but our brand is supposedly upward mobility, and we’re far from the top of that list in the world.
I genuinely try to live by this advice, but then every day some jackass waits until they ran out of merge lane to merge and tries to burst into my lane without even signaling and I’m tempted to not be nice.
I try to live like that too, but when somebody wants to casually risk my safety I’m just worried about getting them out of my life ASAP.
I wonder if driving feels a bit anonymous since everybody is physically separated, and some people get internet tough guy syndrome on the road. But it’s not like plenty of these people aren’t assholes in normal life too.
Every state overtly chose at inception Rule of law
Not Rule by ForceEver since then RbF guy have been trying to add in exceptions to legitimize the use of force
Adding complications to leave room for interpretation of rules/laws is a classic good ol boy scheme, great for the guild of lawyers :D The ends never justify the means
There can be the rare situation where force has to be met with force, it’s the unnecessary use/escalation where it goes wrongStop it You Know Better!
People claim otherwise to further their own interests
We really do know better…
Stop it You Know Better!
Try it as a response to a trollThere is only one meaningful moral tenet
Don’t Be a Dick !
Don’t do stuff to others you wouldn’t want to have happen to you
Don’t Be a Dick!People are angry right now. I know I am, and sad, and emotionally struggling at times. I WANT to lash out in frustration. To pick a target and point fingers. There are certainly people out there wholly deserving.
Thing is though we are being pushed against one another. Made to feel as if our struggle is our own. Much of those feelings are from fear bred through uncertainty and this idea that we cannot trust one another. So if you’re struggling to find that kindness do this: Pay forward a small act and trust that others will do the same. We all have a backlog of small kindnesses shown to us, so let’s begin by tapping into that horde and pulling people together, one step at a time.
Dont wanna!
Only if they move out of the damn passing lane. 😤
