This is the main weakness of believing that “might is right.” As soon as it’s applied to you, all of a sudden, it’s unfair and invalid.
if you’re against racism—let’s say you’re against racism against white people—don’t BECOME a racist.
If you’re against sexism, let’s say against men, don’t BECOME a misogynist. if you think women hate men, that they’re only out to get men’s money and they view relationships as purely transactional, don’t become a transactional-minded unabashed scumbag who views women the same way you believe women view men.
In other words, don’t become EXACTLY THE TYPE OF PERSON YOU ACCUSE THEM OF BEING: transactional, shallow, self-absorbed, opportunistic, ordinary and uninteresting, et cetera.
If you’re against war, don’t BECOME someone who dehumanizes any group of people, since dehumanization is the main mechanism for making war possible.
If you’re against corruption, if you’re against injustice, if you’re against getting cut off in traffic by some asshole in a Bimmer, DON’T FRICKIN DO THESE THINGS.
If you feel like there are no nice people left in the world, BE A NICE PERSON. Not an asshole.
All of these reactions become self-fulfiling prophecies. And what do they signify?
They signify you selling out your principles, compromising them, abandoning them in order to make life easier. You even discard the IDEA of having principles in favor of becoming the exact type of person you KNOW is why the world is the way it is.
It’s fine to lower your expectations of people and the world. To temper them. To not be gullible or easily hurt. That makes sense.
But don’t sell your greater, more complex, more nuanced and perhaps more forgiving understanding of human life in exchange for something simple, black or white, zero-sum, that it’s me versus the world and everyone wants to take what I have.
This just becomes an expression of how you feel towards yourself. You see the world as cruel and selfish, so YOU become cruel, uncaring, and selfish. You assume the worst of others, so you assume the worst of yourself. No longer are you capable of purely good intentions or altruism or warmth; you see it all as pure selfishness, insincerity, manipulation.
No longer can any vulnerability or weakness or need act as a reason to find common humanity and common cause with anyone. Instead, it becomes yet another reason to push your fellow suffering man away.
And in so doing, YOU suffer.
This pain compels you to seek out others who suffer and who express their suffering through hateful causes, causes that don’t seek to address the causes of such suffering but that instead sow more of it: more oppression, more division, the injustice of one man’s pleasure at the cost of another’s pain.
When in fact, none of this is necessary. It is not “tough,” “edgy,” countercultural, or “pragmatic.” It’s self-destructive of your potential as a human being, and by extension, of humanity’s potential.
So don’t become what you despise. Become what you love. The people will see that and appreciate it and love it, and more importantly, so will you, because you will not have abandoned what you know is right. Perhaps you will not know what you love, or precisely what is “right.” But you will know what is NOT right: to dehumanize, and to be dehumanized. To live one way and expect others to live a completely different way. To blame the sufferer for his suffering, or the ignorant for never being shown the way.
You will LIVE that way, the same way from one day to the next, and proven its truth to yourself.
And so the next time someone tries to do injustice to you or to your fellow man, you will know what to do.
Aulos Media 