Monday, 06 July 2009

• Why I Refuse to Be Mean to People

       I realize that many of you will have already guessed the nature of this response before you have ever read it.  However, I feel that it needs explaining; in part, because even if it is a basic awareness of some, I do not believe basic and active awareness are the same thing, nor do I believe that all will make the following connections.  So please, allow me to explain why I refuse to be cruel to people.
       In life, I have experienced a great deal of cruelty.  In point of fact, we all have.  We all have been to the points in time where there are the small cruelties of childhood that time magnifies - yelling, fighting, screaming, arguing, defending.  There are also the greater cruelties of life - loss of mother or father, lost of friend or sibling or loved one.  The ravages of a cruel world on simple people, or on the complicated.  The rain falls on the simpleton and the socialite alike, you know...
        That is my first reason to choose to not be mean.  The world is cruel enough already, without my adding to it.  By choosing, actively, to avoid adding to that cruelty, I am aware that even if I do not make the world a better place, I also do not make it a worse place.
         Secondly, it is my understanding of meanness and cruelty as prideful.  It is impossible to speak cruelty from humility.  Cruelty is not simply the decision to be mean to someone, it is also the decision that you have the right to inflict pain on another person, and the prerogative.  That is a profound and judgmental decision to make, and one that cannot be made without choosing to believe that you are somehow better than another person.  I say that pride is not just wrong, it is sinful.  "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before the fall."
         Pride itself should make us wish to flee from engaging in mockery, cruelty, and meanness.  It is far from humility, and goodness.  Pride destroys us, by slowly but surely raising us aloof from more and more of the people, until suddenly no one is good enough to be with us.  Pride is destructive, and so we should avoid prideful actions.
         Thirdly, meanness is a violation of our relationship with another person.  Sometimes, we must be hard, direct, and do the right thing - and that is not meanness - it is kindness, just firm kindness.  But that cannot be done until you are sure it is wholly right, and done wholly out of love for that person.
          The whole of this subject has not be broached, surely in this post.  However, I have had it brought to task on me, recently, by a particular xangan (who threatened my life), and by others who seek to attack me and distort my words to say things that are not true about me, and by others who have sought to argue with me.
          Some people say that meanness is a sign of aggression - I disagree.  I think it is a sign of fear.  I have never been mean when I felt fine - cruelty is a result of fear.  A fear that manifests itself in anger.
         In the end, the Christian in me would quote some verse about love, or something, but I think I would lose most of you in doing so.  Or perhaps it would be best to quote a common proverb.  Instead, let me coin my own - meanness is a kind of cowardice - the fear of loving, and being loved.  Meanness is the decision to choose to hate, because someone is afraid to love.
  
  

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