I have immediate disgust for people who think that they have the right to speak new orders to strangers, first and before anything else, in the patter of a kindergarten teacher.
I'd rather throw in my lot with the Nietzscheans than with people who are think they get to lecture anyone and everyone about their peccadilloes with a "Dear people," "It only takes a few seconds," and a "Thanks!" because at least the Nietzscheans realize I am not a masterless puppet but rather that I am self-mastering
Contrary to the Nietzscheans, I think I really really really do depend on the kindness and generosity of others, but I am also vertiginously close to acknowledging that those people don't owe me shit.
You know what all those polite terms are there for? "Dear X," "Please," "Thank you." They reflect the reality that I have no control over you, that I NEED you to uphold some basic human dignities, and I am frankly reduced to pleading with you to alter your self-conduct in many cases.
Dear Mastodon peepz,
It costs you zero dollars to be kind. But on the other hand, it also costs you zero dollars to manifest greatness in your every moment, to look upon everything in existence and to comment, "I willed it to be such." JUST A FRIENDLY REMINDER :) You are free to choose or free to choose not to choose, but you can never be authentically unfree.
THANKS 🙏
The alternative is the mindset that you follow polite protocol to the letter in order to have the standing to lecture everyone.
The contrast between the moralism and the smugness, somehow, is actually the worst part of it. The moralism says "I am scrupulous in my treatment of others" but the smugness says "I am waiting for the opportunity to be cruel to someone for the sake of a distant and inhuman principle."
What is this pattern of reaction-formation? How does a person end up like this?