Practical Nihilism: Stop Believing You're "A Good Person".
2,316 views · Published 29 October 2017 · 14:31 · Indexed 22 September 2026
Channel: à-bas-le-ciel · 2017 · Howto & Style
Conflicts often escalate because people feel that their own sense of themselves as "a good person" is being impugned by the problem at hand. With this defensive feeling in mind, we then have a culturally-inculcated tendency to demand, "Who do you think you are? Don't you know who I think I am?" —although this is never so directly stated. The tractable then becomes intractable, as the disputing parties struggle to apportion blame and cast aspersions on one-another, though this behavior can never give either side the reassurance they're seeking: it's a struggle for the moral high ground in which both sides feel denigrated. In praxis, this sense of our own "ethical identity" shouldn't be involved in the dispute/resolution at all, and it can be removed by one side simply claiming the low ground: parting with the pretense that they are "a good person". And yes, BTW, this is a video that explains my rhetorical device of insisting that "I'm not a nice guy", and, also, that I'm "a terrible person" (in various practical, problem-solving contexts!).
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