Who Needs Enemies?
Classic Gin
Saturday, 2006-01-07 | Classic Gin
Yesterday's sermon on tolerance aside, there are some people whose actions demand swift censure.
There are some people whose public miscarriages are so unforgivably and intolerably clumsy that the blood boils at the mere suggestion that they might continue without reprimand. There are, however, problems with issuing the sort of injunction that truly tactless, ignorant and graceless behavior demand. Most of these have to do with cultivating spite.
I have a good friend who makes it his business, 90% of the time, to "cultivate good will" in the world. The cultivation of good will is certainly a virtuous activity because it facilitates productivity by turning potential enemies into friends and thus removing certain obstacles from the path of progress in advance. The problem with scolding someone for a particularly egregious instance of personal misconduct is that this person will, invariably, take this personally and make it his business to nurture a grudge.
In short, people's feelings get hurt.
The problem with hurt feelings, as we all have become painfully aware, as that they tend to linger. Even a person with the "patience of a saint," the affability and charisma of a chart-topping rapper and the studied gregariousness of an LCSW will pathologically nurture a grudge if his feelings have been hurt.
It has to do with pride, mostly. Most people are so proud of their individual contributions to the world, regardless of whether these contributions are imagined and regardless of how immaterial or lite rally inconsequential these contributions are, that they will turn feral at the mere insinuation that their contributions are anything less than integral. When you hurt someone's feelings by scolding him for having acted tactlessly or out of vain ignorance, you are, in no uncertain terms, indicating to him that his contributions to a given social situation are not contributions at all. You are telling him that the thing of which he is most proud, his own benevolence, is in fact malice and that you'd just as soon go on without it.
In short, people's feelings get hurt when they're scolded for inappropriate behavior because, in almost every case, the misbehaving person understands himself as having acted with the utmost decorum simply because his intentions are good.
This is also something of which you might remind yourself the next time you are galled by the stupidity of an actor in a social setting.