having an abusive childhood is the main reason why i’m extremely sympathetic now, and probably part of why i’m also a massive doormat
Your post is great OP. There are so many entitled people in this thread arguing that their life gives them a reason to not be a good person. Its lovely that they’re all outing themselves for who they really are.
There will always be someone out there who had it worse than you did. Many of those people choose good. Being a good person is an active choice that you have to make every day, and it is not the easy choice. It’s work.
You don’t want to make the effort and try and leave this world a little better than you found it? Fine. But at least own up to it. Don’t blame circumstance. It’s you. It’s the choice you are making.
I fall into the “no free will” camp. I don’t think people should get a free pass, however. The goal should be rehabilitation and prevention.
If any punishment is involved, it should not be anything beyond what is most likely to correct the behavior and/or discourage others from engaging in the problematic behavior… if we can even agree on what is considered problematic behavior.
Figuring out the rehabilitation and deterrence is also hard, and we’re usually just happy to punish in such as way as to minimize cost or maximize profit so… I doubt we’ll figure it out anytime soon. That and people’s egos can’t handle the whole “no free will” thing.
I made this post strictly to incite horrible arguments/statements in the comments. Both my title and the photo itself are reductive and cringe. This is a shitpost.
Shitty childhood led me not to have kids at all.
Growing up in a environment that isn’t conducive to social adaption gives you a free pass to be not socially adapted, but it also means it is now your personal responsibility to fix that.
Un my experience the worst people are the ones who have had no adversity.
This is basically all of gen z, expect they pretend to have shitty childhoods.
They’re like performative trauma victims that make everything some sort of political battle for clout and social media attention.
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That’s right.
Just because you’re a minority born and raised in a struggling household in a bad neighbourhood, that doesn’t give you an excuse to act like an asshole. Do better.
Just because you have Autism/ADD/other that doesn’t mean its ok to be an asshole to people. You’ve lived with that condition for long enough that you should be able to manage it. Do better.
I agree with the underlying message, what I have an issue with is that it’s portrayed as a universal rule.
It’s a universal rule
I guess we can then tell people who don’t know better to just magically do better. That will fix it.
Exactly, see you get it.
Fun fact, people really enjoy accusing minorities of being bad people. That’s why I’m always to scared to stand up for myself. It will be my fault.
Are these supposed to be examples to the contrary?
Having autism isn’t an excuse to be an asshole.
Neither is being a slave, really. It’s just that, coming from me, that’s kind of like an abusive father telling you not to be angry after I hit you.
Telling a person who doesn’t know better to just do better will at best do nothing and at worst exacerbate the problem.
Sure, telling people to do better makes me feel better about myself, but it does nothing beyond that.
I wouldn’t tell someone to just do better, but that’s because I have tact.
I have plenty of sympathy for the difficulties of self-improvement, but only for people who actually try. Life is about steeling oneself against harsh winds so that you may see the sun again. If you have forgotten all about the sun, I don’t know what to do with you. It’s sad, is what it is.
*neighborhood. Not neighb our hood. Do better.
Just a tip if you’re trying to be edgy/poignant. Don’t end the message with “Sorry”. It both weakens the message you’re trying to convey and makes you sound like a complete asshole.
Example:
Shitty adults do not give you a free pass to be a non-achieving leftist whiner.
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Fuckin… wut?
No, but understanding how a shitty childhood can often lead to a shitty adult can help prevent it.
Yes and maybe you’ll be able to bring up some compassion for shitty people when you understand them a bit better
“Just because you got burned doesn’t mean you get to go around setting everyone else on fire.”
A quote I remember often.
The thing about trauma is that it hijacks the default mode network and makes everything look like a threat. The word is hypervigilance, and it filters everything you perceive through the lens of danger.
So when “hurt people hurt people,” it’s not usually because “I’m in pain so I must make others suffer.” Often it’s because they see a phantom of whoever hurt them in the past, and it’s overlaid on every interaction they have.
The default mode becomes defensiveness and self-preservation, and often the impulse is to preempt any potential pain by reacting to it before it even happens.
Therapy can help, but blaming people for their trauma and treating them as a fundamentally bad person because of how it manifests in their behavior doesn’t.
Good luck with that. It was never really about fault, but responsibility.
A captain can do nothing wrong themselves, have their ship be scuttled, and be liable for it.
Without this, society would simply not function.
Really, because it seems society is constructed around mitigating liability for the people at the helm while passing blame down the cargo nets to the poop deck.
Maybe a literal ship captain is responsible for his ship, but what about the owners of the shipping company? I’ll pop the champagne the day they’re held accountable for their reckless profit-gouging policies.
To be clear, that applies to shareholders and executives of any major corporation, not just maritime shipping.
On the smaller scope, I’d agree in theory that accountability should be about responsibility rather than mere fault, but we live in a backwards world. Our entire justice system is designed around assigning fault and administering retributive punishments.
A more just system would find who is at fault only as a means to identify who is culpable and to what degree, and the corrective actions would be assigned proportionally, with the primary aim being restorative or reparative justice. Sometimes punishment and/or confinement may be necessary, but it shouldn’t be the modus operandi of the entire justice system, nor the default course of action.
Especially when you consider how blame is doled out in society; it tends to roll down the social hierarchy until it lands on the lowest possible candidate who can’t manage to shift it onto a subordinate.
They say the leadership assumes the risk/responsibility. They also say wealth trickles down. They say a lot of stuff that’s utter bullshit, just to justify their own positions.
My quote wasn’t intended to be a solution for people with genuine problems. It can be a reminder to take a step back if one can.
Yeah, trauma or other defensive behavior can be like wagon ruts. That’s the well-worn path the brain defaults to and it can be really hard to lift that heavy wagonload of trauma out of that deep rut. Creating other roads and lightening the load is a job for therapy.
Absolutely humans are deeply affected on conscious and unconscious levels by all kinds of things that are out of their control - both experiences and brain chemistry. Absolutely it is a privilege afforded to only a few to have access to the support and resources needed to become aware of their situation and create deep change for themselves.
It’s also true that if you do a bad thing you did a bad thing. That does NOT mean you are a bad person, it does NOT mean all the things you can’t or couldn’t control are your responsibility, it does NOT mean that you even were fully aware of what you did.
But if you do a bad thing you are responsible for what you did. YOU did it. It is your responsibility to get on a path that will allow you to recognize and change that behavior.
It is nobody’s job to be perfect or beat themselves up for mistakes. It is everyone’s job to work towards being better - to themselves and to the people around them.
Part of that is understanding that you are responsible for your actions. You may genuinely not have been capable of making a better choice at the time - but if you did it = it’s on you to own the mistake.
I’d argue it is everyone’s job to be perfect, as trying for anything less, means choosing intentionaly to not care if you would potentially harm someone.
It’s great for us all to be the best we can be, and to always be working to improve.
“Perfect” is an abstract idea - it’s not really applicable to something as complicated as a human. Not just because it isn’t obtainable, but because we definitely would never be able to agree what the criteria are.
Makes me think of the fact that boys that are sexually abused as children are far more likely to grow up to become pedophiles than boys who are not sexually abused as children.
They should still be in prison if they ever act on their pedophilia.
They should still get help for the trauma they have experienced.
I’m willing to bet that almost all of them are fixable as long as they have not offended, but saying that, I also say that it’s practically inexcusable if they did.
I’m glad my childhood raised me to be a pathological people pleaser utterly terrified of anyone’s disapproval. Nobody complaining about these sorts of people
Not yet. But when the day comes when you decide you don’t want to live like this any more, you’ll get a lot of “you’ve changed” and “why are you being so cruel to me” from the people who have grown accustomed to your lack of boundaries.
correct. I got this a lot from what used to be my family when i tried to start regulating my interactions with them. eventually they switched into passive-aggressive mode because they feel like boundries are oppression, and that treating me with respect was a bridge too far.
So fucking true.
One day you’ll emerge, fed up with being steamrolled by everyone. There’s a strong assertive raging badass inside of you who won’t take shit from anyone.
Deep down inside, everyone has their Office Space moment just waiting to bloom!
Oh you’re one of those? People pleasers are the worst
On one hand, I am the same way. On the other hand push that further in the same direction to get BPD, and people absolutely complain about people who have it. I guess also my wife complains about my people pleasing sometimes…
I’m a people. And you can please me by giving me french fries.
Same for age, wealth, status, gender, education, height, weight, hair color, surname and any other inane metric yould care to list. People just need validation and respect, yet don’t recognize it’s a two way street. Not difficult.
Nobody is asking for a free pass, but mental healthcare and just a general recognition of the lack of free will that we all suffer in this deterministic universe does require us to think in terms of consequences that might actually work to make the world a better place.
I’m other words, when has saying, “be better” ever persuaded anyone?
plus things like autism/adhd have been largely balked at as being “lazy”(because the child isnt doing what they are expected as an adult) and not as a symptoms that is now gaining more recognition too.
I’m other words, when has saying, “be better” ever persuaded anyone?
When the other person respects your opinion of them.
I’ve had a couple instances in my life where a friend has pulled me aside, explained how I’m being an asshole and told me to be better. Honestly, that has done more to unfuck the person I am than just about anything I can think of. Because I actually care what those close to me think, and don’t want to push them away with my character flaws. Same reason I go to therapy, my therapist just knows how to word it better.
For sure. That the answer. But that’s a select group of people for everyone. And we don’t all have people in our lives we feel obligated to impress.
At least don’t fuck over the people that actually stand beside you. Everyone else is fair game.
Buncha times
Be good. Stop being bad. Okay you can go…
You’re against using the phrase “be better” ? Because it’s overly reductive, lazy and lacks any real tangible call to action? Is that why?
That’s part of it. The other part is who would actually benefit from being told this? Only someone who already wants to self improve and is motivated not to disappoint you.
What other words are you
Doesn’t seem like good ones
It took me quite a while to climb out of that pit. Even now decades later I’m realizing how much they did to me. They didn’t know it and didn’t care but they shortened my life with their neglect. I had never looked up rheumatic fever. When I was fourteen I was third in free style swimming in my region. I got sick with a sore throat and ear ache. My parents waited three days to take me to the doctor. The 80 year doctor just said it was a minor ‘red throat’ I went back home and two days later my I started bleeding from my ears. Three days after that they finally took me back to the doctor. I had a high fever and was really out of it. I was out of it for a few days and in the hospitals for fourteen days.
After that I started getting slower in swimming. I couldn’t no longer keep up with the times I had when I was younger. I was getting tired all the time and was having pain in my chest. My mother insisted I was too old for that and fool that I was believed her. In truth I had heart problems related to that fever. They had the money and I had insurance but they decided that their money was more important and the only reason why they went to the doctor when they did was because someone came by the house and saw the bloody paper towel next to my ear and freaked out. I didn’t learn that for thirty years just like I didn’t learn they called SCAN which was child services at the time. Of course they talked them down and I was in my late forties before I found out.
I had a heart attack when I was in my mid thirties. Now in my mid fifties I’m looking at severe problem with my heart valves. If I lose my job I’m dead in the Land of the Fee. I have tried to raise my children better but I still have difficult emotional problems and I can tell you right now I don’t hate much but even though they are dead I will always hate them.
sometimes the parents are so shitty, that the children turns out that way(and the child gets blamed for it because they are grown up but unable to do this or that as an adult), and the parents get mad when they get the consequences of it. i think strep goes like this strep throat to scarlet fever to rheumatic, which is the most serious.
