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Jul. 29th, 2004 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnpalmerThis started as a response to someone talking about not liking humanity, and it finally shook an essay out of me that I'd been wanting to write for a while.
Skip it if you don't like the word "asshole".
People are assholes.
It's a fundamental, absolute truth. Every single person on the planet is an asshole in their base nature.
*BUT*... some people realize this and rebel. They refuse to be assholes, unless they get caught off guard, or when they're too tired/cranky/whatever.
The thing is, it takes effort. You have to work. The instant you give up and let go, you're slipping back to your asshole nature.
Oh, you can build up good habits, and good patterns of thought, that make it much, much easier to spot asshole opportunities and avoid them, but in the end, you're fighting your nature, and you can't help but slip up from time to time. You need to accept this, in the same way you accept that you're going to fart once in a while during inappropriate times. You need to try not to, and you need to try not to do it *again*, and you need to make amends (or at least say "excuse me"), but you can't let it crush you, because people are assholes, and it's going to show through.
So, you've got to have a mirror that labels the face in it "the biggest, sneakiest asshole on the planet", and look into every day, and think "what is this asshole going to try to do? How will I stop him (or her)? What has this asshole done to try to sneak an asshole-opportunity past me?"
The day you change the label on that mirror to "pretty decent person", you risk overlooking multiple asshole opportunities. That doesn't mean you can't be proud when you've managed to conquer your asshole nature in a difficult situation... you can be, and should be, and if you manage to conquer it more often than not, you should accept that you *are* a pretty decent person. But, you still need to look in that mirror, and remind yourself that the best weapon your inner asshole has is the thought "*I* would never do something so cruel, so mean, so callous... why, I'd have to be an asshole to do something like that!"
The minute you think you couldn't do something nasty, because only an asshole would be that nasty, you need to keep that mirror in front of you until that delusion passes. *EVERYONE* has their inner asshole struggling to break free.
Realizing that *everyone* is an asshole, including me, well, that teaches me that if I allow the negative to rule me, it will, and it will do so easily. Since it takes work to be a non-asshole, well, no one likes extra work; they'll be just enough non-asshole to get by.
I'll have to look for the positive, and revel in the fact that so many people are willing to rebel against their asshole-nature so often, if I want to see goodness in humanity.
It's work... but if I refused to acknowledge that there's a lot of people who fight their inner-asshole, now that I understand how pervasive it is, I'd be... well, an asshole.
Skip it if you don't like the word "asshole".
People are assholes.
It's a fundamental, absolute truth. Every single person on the planet is an asshole in their base nature.
*BUT*... some people realize this and rebel. They refuse to be assholes, unless they get caught off guard, or when they're too tired/cranky/whatever.
The thing is, it takes effort. You have to work. The instant you give up and let go, you're slipping back to your asshole nature.
Oh, you can build up good habits, and good patterns of thought, that make it much, much easier to spot asshole opportunities and avoid them, but in the end, you're fighting your nature, and you can't help but slip up from time to time. You need to accept this, in the same way you accept that you're going to fart once in a while during inappropriate times. You need to try not to, and you need to try not to do it *again*, and you need to make amends (or at least say "excuse me"), but you can't let it crush you, because people are assholes, and it's going to show through.
So, you've got to have a mirror that labels the face in it "the biggest, sneakiest asshole on the planet", and look into every day, and think "what is this asshole going to try to do? How will I stop him (or her)? What has this asshole done to try to sneak an asshole-opportunity past me?"
The day you change the label on that mirror to "pretty decent person", you risk overlooking multiple asshole opportunities. That doesn't mean you can't be proud when you've managed to conquer your asshole nature in a difficult situation... you can be, and should be, and if you manage to conquer it more often than not, you should accept that you *are* a pretty decent person. But, you still need to look in that mirror, and remind yourself that the best weapon your inner asshole has is the thought "*I* would never do something so cruel, so mean, so callous... why, I'd have to be an asshole to do something like that!"
The minute you think you couldn't do something nasty, because only an asshole would be that nasty, you need to keep that mirror in front of you until that delusion passes. *EVERYONE* has their inner asshole struggling to break free.
Realizing that *everyone* is an asshole, including me, well, that teaches me that if I allow the negative to rule me, it will, and it will do so easily. Since it takes work to be a non-asshole, well, no one likes extra work; they'll be just enough non-asshole to get by.
I'll have to look for the positive, and revel in the fact that so many people are willing to rebel against their asshole-nature so often, if I want to see goodness in humanity.
It's work... but if I refused to acknowledge that there's a lot of people who fight their inner-asshole, now that I understand how pervasive it is, I'd be... well, an asshole.
