#030 Stop Confusing Charity with Being Nice
Or, how naïveté, being sheltered, and worried about being mean and hurting other people’s feelings allows self-serving people to use you
Frequently, I get accused of being too critical of others, though part of accepting yourself is accepting the parts that aren’t always very pretty. I have many gripes with the adults that run in my circles. Perhaps a better title for this newsletter would have been “Sh*t that Pisses Me Off”. But of all of the gripes that inflame me the most, it is the strange denial and dismissal of the behaviors of other adults around us. Is it poor judgement and reasoning skills? Is it a desire for everyone to get along? Is it that I’m too harsh a critic and just nitpicking things? Am I being too judgy?
If I’d been cleverer, I’d have named this newsletter blog Call Me Cassandra, for the number of times I’ve said to a friend “There’s something fishy about that person”, been brushed off, and then been proven right later.
Having been at parties and shindigs from the Maryland collectives of philosophy students at CUA, to the kiddos who work on the hill in DC, to your average backwoods types and cultured rednecks who live way out in the boonies of Virginia, I’ve heard I was too harsh and judgmental, or I was being unfair because I hadn’t walked in that person’s shoes and should be more kind and charitable:
Someone at a party being a bit sloshed and belligerent; a guy who talks the talk of the trad Cath and goes to Latin Mass on Sundays—daily mass through the week, but he becomes passive aggressive and snipes if you turn down his advances; the gaggle of lawyers and working professionals of sophisticated, coiffed Catholic women who lead a guy on, and when he pursues a girl who was toying with his affections, ice him out and then gossip about how much of a creep he was, to his absolute bewilderment.
Gossip and anecdotes aside, there’s a issue with people being afraid of being perceived as “mean”, and we really need to stop this shit.
There’s a mistaken understanding of the difference between charity with being nice. Let’s see if we can clear that up.
Last year, before getting married, my husband and I were chatting with a man and his fiancé. He’d been hired to replace a woman who was leaving a decent position. I had worked with the woman once a week in a limited capacity, and had mistaken some subtle behaviors she evidenced as anxiousness and stress. At an after work party that also served as a going away, my husband-then-fiance and I got a really good view of her personality, the year before.
During the party, the woman incited gossip and played as the conversational traffic cop.
“Oh my God, did you hear …” And if we disagreed with her perspective, she quickly shut it down with a “Well, that’s not how it is/was …”
It was almost comical if it hadn’t actually been happening. One of the other members got into a tiff with her about the recent restrictions on the Latin mass, and a second group member jumped into the fray to mediate.
Later, about half of us, including the aforementioned gossip, floated in the pool, while the rest dipped our toes in the water on a hot day. The woman began to gossip about how one of the senior admins “[he] has to be genuinely stupid. Like other people in the office have noticed. You have to repeat things for him to understand.”
Notwithstanding the admin perhaps had an intellectual disability, processing disorder, or learning disorder — not that he was required to disclose nor was it her business if he did. When I pushed back that that wasn’t fair, she switched to criticizing the other admin, because “Guys, there’s something wrong with him. I try and tell jokes but he never laughs, he just doesn’t think I’m funny.”
In relating some of the mean-spirited gossip to the new hire replacing the woman, the man politely told me off and steered the conversation in another direction. To be fair, my relating the story probably was gossip.
But I’ve seen this occur often enough that either the problem is me, or, it’s a cultural issue. If it hadn’t been for my husband who also affirmed that the behaviors he saw were inappropriate and gossipy (on her end), I likely would have continued to question my own judgment of reality.
It isn’t good to assume the worst of others. It can place us in the mode of being a victim or accuser—getting high off the power of inciting gossip and drama, sewing derision, mistrust, and pettiness, and can be sadistic in nature. We are often called to give people the benefit of the doubt because intent matters. It’s the difference between a cutting, petty remark, and a socially awkward person putting their foot in their mouth because they haven’t learned all the social rules yet to negotiate the conversational landscape.
Gossip is telling secrets, lies, or twisting true things in such a way as to paint others poorly and encourage prideful commentary and false judgment.
Then again, if we see poor, immature, selfish, or dangerous behavior, we need to call it out and correct the person (in private, kindly and with love, and not to make a spectacle or example of them for our own pleasure), lest the behavior worsens, and the individual continues to cause problems in the environment they’re in.
All behaviors serve the emotions in some way. What does the behavior of dismissal do to help you? What is it in service to?
If it’s in service to ensure that we keep the peace and keep the perception of our social standing as agreeable and likeable, well, that’s going to cause some issues.
I would like to make a point clear: disliking someone is not a sin. Emotions are not sins; there is no moral hierarchy or equivalency to be made about feelings. Feelings are in service to the will. That’s it. Now, we don’t have to go around character-assassinating or converting everyone to our dislike of someone, but it doesn’t make you immoral, amoral, evil, bad, or wicked, because you don’t like a person. It doesn’t make you a bad person to dislike someone. Perhaps the person you dislike is falsely chipper and you can tell it’s fake; perhaps they're selfish or curmudgeonly; or maybe they’re nice enough and you’re the jerk. We can neither make everyone like us nor be liked universally.
Modern attitudes tell us that’s it’s wrong to dislike people, that it isn’t fair or kind to them. But this is inconsistent—we can all probably agree that the majority of us dislike Hiter for the sheer repugnance of his deeds.
There’s a disconnect then, in how we apply rational judgment to the behaviors of others.
In my job, I am required to make clinical judgments everyday. Judgements come from observable behavior, assessing what all of these behaviors mean in context to one another, and the reported experiences or symptoms of the client. This helps me to make the determination of what to diagnose them with.
Why then, do we consistently discount the reported observations of others? To be fair, people are plagued by their own biases, some self-informing, some from previous experiences, some because the person is jealous, insecure, proud and condescending, and so they filter what they see through the emotions they have at the present moment, based on how they feel or think they feel, that colors their judgments.
Some people require others to reinforce or affirm their perceptions, because they lack surety or confidence in the ability to make a firm decision.
Developing a keen awareness and understanding of the behaviors you observe, coupled with a gut instinct or intuition is integral to spotting predatory or self-serving people, or just people who are problematic, because their run-of-the-mill immature and selfish behaviors keep causing problems for themselves and everyone around them.
I racked my brains to account for what’s driving this, and here’s what came up.
First, how is “charity” defined?
There are a couple of working definitions of charity — both the theological, and the more modern interpretation and understanding.
One from Britannica reports it as:1
the highest form of love, signifying the reciprocal love between God and man that is made manifest in unselfish love of one’s fellow men.
To quote from New Advent:2
While charity embraces all the children of God in heaven, on earth, and in purgatory (see COMMUNION OF SAINTS), it is taken here as meaning man's supernatural love for man, and that in this world; as such, it includes both love of self and love of neighbour.
In the more modern sense, by Merriam Webster, we get:3
a: generosity and helpfulness especially toward the needy or suffering
also : aid given to those in need
b: an institution engaged in relief of the poor
c: public provision for the relief of the needy
2: benevolent goodwill toward or love of humanity
3a: a gift for public benevolent purposes
b: an institution (such as a hospital) founded by such a gift
4: lenient judgment of others
It is only by the fourth definition from MW that we get the idea of making a lenient judgment toward others. In our present day, the idea that we cannot criticize others comes from a mistaken understanding of charity and of judgement, motivated by sentimentality.
Our culture teaches us not to “yuck each others yum” — you cannot judge me for what I like/am doing, because judging others is bad, and it’s unfair to make a judgement because I should be able to pursue what makes me happy. Who are we then, to question what brings fulfillment and happiness to others?
This is a type of circular, lazy reasoning. Not all actions are good ones—molesting children, raping women, killing innocent people may bring someone some kind of pleasure, but then, in order to determine that those three examples are wrong, we have to devise a system of judgements for what constitutes right and wrong behavior.
Let’s replace the word “judgment” with the word “criticism”.
There are four questions that come to mind when using criticism in the situation:
What is the set of standards being used to make the assessment/criticism?
Does the person offering the criticism have the authority to make a comment on the behavior or actions of the other person?
Was the criticism invited?
Is the criticism warranted?
Generally, people fear receiving criticism due to risk of exposure—this could be real or imagined—revealing one’s incompetence or failures. But I think this comes down to a larger issue.
People resist making a judgment on the behavior of another person because it calls into questions their ability to judge things correctly. If they can’t make right judgements—it means they can’t be relied upon to be consistent, reliable, trustworthy, or unbiased. Then again, people are often at the mercy of their bias and frequently don’t bother to really do an honest self-assessment, for fear of what they will discover or are hiding about themselves from themselves. Easier to attack the person and dismiss than face the possibility that it might be true, all in service to protect the ego.
If we have a guy who has drunk too much, to the point that he starts swinging fists and getting angry with random strangers, why do we say that behavior is wrong or problematic? Because his behavior and lack of self control leads to creating a dangerous environment for everyone else around him.
But often, people are demotivated to speak up and correct behaviors for several important reasons:
being rejected by the person whom they are correcting
being ostracized by others witnessing
the fear of being corrected themselves for intervening
the social sin of being labeled as mean
A.k.a. the risk of sticking your neck out and the resulting consequences on your social standing.
1. Any kind of criticism/judgment is considered mean or wrong.
If people are failing to hold up their end of the bargain, social contract, or behaving in unhealthy/dangerous ways, that’s not an unfair criticism. Pointing out a flaw, failing, problem, or issue that is causing greater dysfunction in whatever situation it is, isn’t mean.
It’s actually charitable to call it out instead of ignoring the problem because you have an issue with conflict. If it goes on long enough to snowball other problems, it’s kinder to say hey, this behavior is self-destructive, unprofessional, etc., otherwise, we keep putting up with suboptimal situations.
The constant minding of people’s feelings is an over-feminization of “I’m okay, you’re okay”. If an adult is living in squalor, with rats, roaches, and other vermin infesting the house, or their actions are contributing to the state of decay, saying, “Your habits are unhealthy and causing an unsafe living condition for you and X number of people” it’s not a bad thing.
If you’re doing self-centered stupid shit and don’t care how it causes undue stress, frustration, or tension to others, and receive criticism for it, it may be time to grow up your ego and recognize that you have some level of a responsibility to others. Otherwise, it’s not going to be a very pleasant time for you.
2. Sheltered people with little lived experience outside of their immediate family dynamics or culture of origin.
People sometimes like to show a great deal of social status based on having travelled all over Europe and the world, from the colleges and universities they attended, and the “post code envy” as Lorde sings it, demonstrated in their conversations.
But being well-travelled, having read many books, going to the most prestigious schools, having well-off parents, and eating fine dining, doesn’t mean you have a lick of common sense or the ability to use sound judgment to determine the character of other people. That comes in the formation of experience through peers, mentors, and parents, introspection, and reflection over many years.
There are a great many people, poor, well-off, cerebral, empathetic, who are incredibly bad at picking up on body language and cues, to such a detrimental level to themselves that they make the same mistakes again and again in failing to recognize manipulative and or predatory behaviors.
Some of it may be that as we’re more reliant on technology, we invest more time on a screen and away from social gatherings. We’ve lost the ability to read body language and understand the nonverbal cues being communicated by other’s intentions. In addition, many young adults hold a narrow, sheltered understanding of others, their behaviors, motivations, intentions, and incentives for what they do. We often don’t want to think other people are callous enough to do something harmful or wrong, and react in a scandalized way when others are petty, mean, cruel. It goes against the social rules. And yet, it persists and exists.
Some of this can be attributed to the films, shows, and books we consume by teaching us what is “acceptable behavior”. “Riverdale” is unwatchable for its sexualized content and tawdry, ridiculous plot lines. But watching the adults interact with one another and how they treat their children, the behaviors are manipulative, undermining, and toxic. Mother Goethel from “Tangled” is an excellent example of subtle and not-so behavior of gaslighting (and other maladaptive behavior). If we consume enough of this, even if we’re aware of it, it begins to impact us, and may even shape our view that for a fraction of the time, this behavior is acceptable and is “normal”. This is particularly true for children and early exposure to pornography and its impacts on sexual attitudes.
It’s a good thing not to go around assuming the worst of people; it makes for a lonely life, and our perceptions and interpretations can be wrong. But there are patterns of behavior to be picked up on for people who are manipulative, selfish, self-serving, or very good at crafting and perfecting a fake image. Because younger adults have limited experience with other people—especially truer now than before for interacting with people from truly different class strata—and really reading the body language, or, comparing what people do to what people say on a consistent enough basis to notice a pattern, they fail often to recognize disingenuous, shallow, immature, and/self-serving behaviors. If we fail to introspect and have adiversity of experience and behaviors of people from outside of our family or social caste, there’s going to be a lot behaviors we think are normal that…aren’t actually healthy. Or ok.
People often don’t like to think the worst of others, in part, because I don’t think they like the shame of being bamboozled and wrong about someone whom they developed positive feelings for. Realizing that you made a wrong judgment is a painful ego blow and forces you to question your judgment in many if not all other facets of life.
A line from the show “Bojack Horsman” takes the cake. The MC is speaking to an anthropomorphic female owl who says to him, “When you look at someone wearing rose colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags.”
People taking advantage of others, being disingenuous, obfuscating the truth through partial or total lies, not meaning what is said—all masked by smiling and pretending prosocial behaviors—sheltered/naive people often struggle to believe that other’s have self-serving agendas, or would actually use them. Denial and delusion are powerful drugs. People who struggle to believe that others mean them ill will, or would use them for self-serving ends, live in a naïve worldview that everybody intends them well and the idea that someone intends them harm is unthinkable—because we’re all Christian, support the same social cause, have the same values, and couldn’t possibly have other reasons to be here. They are often blindsided because they hold onto a narrow, immature view that the world is all good all the time. Because they have not contended with the complexity and nuance of reality, they are unprepared for when they are hurt, used, or taken advantage of. This can jade the individual who now has to grapple with that beautiful cognitive dissonance. The more complex the reality, if they cannot integrate seemingly conflicting worldviews of complex reality, people often will double down on the belief that they have about others because to let go of it likely means they have a flawed set of tools to interpret the world. And that personal honesty is harder to swallow than some people can handle.
3. Positive feelings toward the person(s) being criticized because you’ve had good times together/never experienced the other person behaving “that way”.
This one comes up fairly frequently. But here’s another example.
Many years back, I remember a tv talk show host discussing on his radio program how trusting your gut is important—something I argue for frequently. He’d had a party at his house, and one couple that he and his wife had recently gotten to know showed up. Both people were all smiles and the husband was charming, but the tv host couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss in the relationship. He spoke to his wife and several other friends who knew the couple, and was dismissed for reading into something that wasn’t there.
“They’ve been together for years! They have a house, X number of kids! They’re happy. I don’t see what you’re talking about."
The story details are a bit fuzzy, but around six months later, the tv show host heard that the woman had separated from her husband because he had been physically and emotionally abusing her, and was seeking a divorce. People around the host were shocked, as it was terribly unexpected, but the host’s suspicions were validated, though he wasn’t very pleased about it.
Everyone of us filters the world through the lens that we develop: based on previous life experience, interactions with that specific person, what we’ve watched, read, etc. In professional editing, a useful rule of thumb is “different eyes see different things” and not everyone has great emotional intelligence, or is great at picking up body language or social cues. Additionally, people behave differently depending on the makeup of the group of other personalities they’re around.
Our filter for assessing and detecting behavior is based on everything we’ve seen previously, because it’s a form of highly developed pattern recognition: a flicker of the eyes, the dilation of the pupils, flushing of the face, crossing of the arms. Our brain takes these many external cues, no matter how nuanced and subtle they are, and tries to find similarities to other situations we’ve experienced to inform us: friend or foe. Often people dismiss their gut, because it may not contribute to the social cohesion to single out every suspect behavior. In other instances, they’ve experienced a pattern of correction or dismissal from others (primarily the family of origin) that teaches them to distrust their gut. People make nice, try to play and get along with each other, because the survival of the group cohesion depends on it. But if everyone is blind because we’re all exhibiting the same set of behaviors, we’re not going to develop great insight to spotting a problem, cover it up, avoid unpleasant feelings, or make excuses.
Which leads me to:
4. The criticism of the other person reminds you of your own failings in some way.
I want to say this is self-explanatory, but let’s dive into it.
Due to this “we must all be nice and play along with everyone else” mentality, when there is open criticism, especially among women but I’ve seen men do it as well, people will be quick to defend the person being accused. Once, a complaint was made about a woman who had expressed, at the age of 30, an immature view that getting up earlier than 8 am was a chore and had voiced other lazy attitudes about getting her act together since adulting is “so hard”. A friend of hers quipped that the first woman had greatly matured and was doing significantly better in defense of her friend, and became fairly uncomfortable at the pushback she got for her defense during the conversation.
Often, people are attracted to others that evidence similar attitudes to themselves. They’re also often attracted to others based on subtle similarities—either in looks, or a sympathetic “We both like the same team” or “We both went to the same university” that creates an emotional and psychological bond of like to this person, creating an inherent bias that because you have this random common interest or connection, they can’t be all bad. It’s likely an advanced evolutionary strategy to create bonds during periods of stress or low resources to help one another survive; it’s not necessarily a bad thing. This can cloud one’s judgment too much by projecting your own desires of how you want to be felt/thought about onto the other person—who in some but probably very few ways matches the idealized version you’ve created in your head.
And when a criticism is lobbed, especially a fair criticism of another person’s failings or behavior that reminds you of your own insecurities on the topic, it probably serves as a way of protecting oneself and the other person in the “tribe” from discovery, embarrassment, shame, etc. People don’t like to be reminded of the flaws they’re self-conscious about.
5. People don’t want to believe the negative criticism about someone else.
Recently, a client disclosed that it is easier to believe and forgive her husband for his emotionally abusive and selfish behavior toward her throughout their marriage by reframing it as a way of him protecting himself from being hurt, abandoned, or criticized.
“It’s easier to believe than that he hurt me on purpose.”
Well, unfortunately, both can be true. It can be true that a person does a selfish or abusive thing out of a need to protect themselves. It can also be true that they do this because they enjoy hurting others. As the old line mother’s tell (told? do they still do this?) their kids about bullies, bullies attack those weaker and smaller to feel better and bigger about themselves. It allows them to externalize the anger, self-hatred, or whatever other feeling is going on internally to give a sense of control and power.
We’re geared to be social creatures who create incentives and out of altruism, compassion, and empathy, help and care for others around us. It’s difficult to believe that people are Machiavellian enough to take advantage of us or use us for personal gain because they don’t really care for us at a core level. The idea that it’s just because they’re hurt or or damaged in some way hinges on the underlying assumption that if they were the opposite way, had they had different circumstances, been taught better values, they wouldn’t do these things, not really. It exonerates the individual from their free will and responsibility over their decisions and actions. The truth is, these people do exist, and on a level, enjoy hurting someone else because of the thrill it gives them. And often, they know it’s wrong, whatever the wrong is, but find a way to justify and rationalize it their own ends to assuage what little conscience they do (or don’t) have.
General Housekeeping
Often, we have the ideas of fancy in our minds that — at least I did — I was going to get a phenomenal head start, which was delayed by the fact that I have been sick for three out of the last four weeks this past month. This post was 75% written before Monday over a period of stops and starts, and getting back on the writing bandwagon after being stupid sick has been a Sisyphean task.
I have a backlog of content ideas that were supposed to be written, and currently will come out in relative order.
Though it’s old news now, the first content posts for Inking Out Load went out on January 8 that give a subscriber breakdown of benefits. If you’re interested in a subversive fantasy novel about a secluded group of people living in a cliff trying to solve a murder and get revenge, please consider a paid subscription, as paid subscribers will receive a printed copy of the book once it finishes in June 2025.
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In other side hustles projects, I’m working on a children’s book for next Christmas. If you are an illustrator or can recommend a good one, please shoot me a note. Paid subscribers can also send an email to thepracticaltherapist@substack.com.
Scientists Resort to Once-Unthinkable Solutions to Cool the Planet: An alarming article that does have experts raising the question of the impact of various methods to lower the earth’s temperature due to climate change fears. Personally, knowing that sodium hydroxide (a main ingredient in lye soap) explodes due to a chemical reaction from water—I can’t see dumping this into the waters near Martha’s Vineyard as being a good thing for the marine life, but you do you scientists.
On sharing with a friend the above article, he mentioned this lovely bit of history, Operation Sea-Spray — a lovely foray my scientists and military experts through the 1950s to test biological warefare-related methods to see how susceptible San Francisco was as a target. Nothing says “advancement” like attempting to test-infect your own people.
- had a great bit on reclaiming our children from the “devil’s rectangle”, as named cellphones a few weeks ago. Check it out if you’re starting to feel childhood is getting more lost in a digital sea of overstimulated sugar coated light shows. It’s Time to Reclaim Our Children From Devices.
A second piece that came out on Valentine’s that appears to be a good followup to the previous recommended article ⬆️. Kids learn from adults—we model for them the entire structure of how the understand how life works, including what we give our time and attention to; if it’s not them, then what? Food for thought.
I’m off to finish convalescing and catch up on the backlog of content I was going to have done before I got sick. Wish me luck I don’t get hit with a plague, though the day off from work for non-illness related reasons might be nice.
Rachael Varca is a pre-licensed therapist and writer of more than fifteen years experience. She writes at The Practical Therapist and Inking Out Loud, a collection of essays, poems, and home of the serialized novel, Heart of Stone.
The Practical Therapist is a free enterprise. Please consider a paid subscription, or, you can donate through this nifty link/QR code through Buy Me a Coffee.
Britannica, Charity, Christian Concept
Thanks so much for the shout-out! Much appreciated.
Where does Mathew 7:1-3 fit in? Judge not lest ye be judged........