This article seems useful

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/

I like the part where he points out that it doesn't fucking matter "who you are inside", because people, rightly, judge you by what you actually DO. It's like all the people who claim that they're "really a nice guy and we would probably get along really well if you knew me in person".

BULL SHIT.

Also, man, his take on being "nice" is perfect.

I do think that every person has an intrinsic human value. But above and beyond that, you are only as valuable as you make yourself.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Or people who want you to be best friends with THEIR friends, who you already know you have zero compatiblility with, because they have a "heart of gold".

Uhhhhh, NO. My decision. 

[Cain]

It's David Wong, so it's automatically going to be good.

Also this:

I like the part where he points out that it doesn't fucking matter "who you are inside", because people, rightly, judge you by what you actually DO. It's like all the people who claim that they're "really a nice guy and we would probably get along really well if you knew me in person".

BULL SHIT.

is absolutely true.  I don't know whether because of my interest in existentialism a while back, or it's just extremely fucking common sense, but the idea that someone can be wholly different inside from the acts and the state of mind which produced those acts seems entirely counterintuitive.

Zizek, in one of his books where he isn't entirely trolling, goes off on an entire tangent about this and the psychoanalytic response to it (which is essentially "stop talking bullshit"), which I may repost if I can remember where it is.

[Cain]

Also, the article in question not only has a totally badass speech from Alec Baldwin (hell, it made me wanna go sell the fuck out of something), it also linked to this great article.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Can't wait to get home and read this.

[Elder Iptuous]

good article. thanks for the link, Nigel!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It's David Wong, so it's automatically going to be good.

Also this:

I like the part where he points out that it doesn't fucking matter "who you are inside", because people, rightly, judge you by what you actually DO. It's like all the people who claim that they're "really a nice guy and we would probably get along really well if you knew me in person".

BULL SHIT.

is absolutely true.  I don't know whether because of my interest in existentialism a while back, or it's just extremely fucking common sense, but the idea that someone can be wholly different inside from the acts and the state of mind which produced those acts seems entirely counterintuitive.

Zizek, in one of his books where he isn't entirely trolling, goes off on an entire tangent about this and the psychoanalytic response to it (which is essentially "stop talking bullshit"), which I may repost if I can remember where it is.

Oh, please do!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Can't wait to get home and read this.

I think you'll like it. A lot.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

good article. thanks for the link, Nigel!

YW.

[Cain]

Oh, please do!

Here we go:

On account of its all-pervasiveness, ideology appears as its own opposite, as non-ideology, as the core of our human identity underneath all the ideological labels.  This is why Jonathan Littell's outstanding Les bienveillantes (The  Kindly Ones) is so traumatic, especially for Germans: it provides a fictional first-person account of the Holocaust from the perspective of a German participant, SS Obersturmbannfohrer Maximilian Aue. The problem is the following: how to render the manner in which the Nazi executioners experienced and symbolized their predicament without engendering sympathy or even justifying them? What Littel offers, to put it in somewhat tasteless terms, is a fictionalized Nazi version of Primo Levi. As such, he has a key Freudian lesson to teach  us: one should reject the idea that the proper way to fight the demonization of the Other is to subjectivize him, to listen to his story; to understand how he perceives the situation (or, as a partisan of Middle East dialogue puts it: ''An enemy is someone whose story you have not yet heard"). There is, however, a clear limit to this procedure: can one imagine inviting a brutal Nazi thug-like Littell's Maximilian Aue, who rather invites himself - to tell us his story?  Is one then also ready to affirm that Hitler was an enemy only because his story had not been heard? Do the details of his personal life "redeem" the horrors  that  resulted  from his reign, do they  make him  "more  human"? To cite one of my favorite examples, Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the Holocaust, liked to play Beethoven's late string quartets with friends during his evenings of leisure.  Our most elementary experience of subjectivity is that of the "richness of  my inner life" : this is what I  "really am;" in contrast to the  symbolic determinations and responsibilities I assume in public life (as father, professor, etc.).  The first  lesson of psychoanalysis here is that this "richness of inner life" is  fundamentally fake: it is  a screen, a false distance,  whose function is,  as it were, to save my appearance, to render palpable (accessible to my imaginary narcissism) my true social-symbolic identity.  One of the ways to practise the critique of ideology is therefore to invent strategies for unmasking this hypocrisy of the "inner  life" and its "sincere"  emotions.  The experience we have of our lives from within, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves in order to account for what we are doing, is thus a lie - the truth lies rather outside, in what we do. Therein resides the difficult lesson of Littell's book: in it, we meet someone whose story we do fully hear but who should nonetheless remain our enemy. What is truly unbearable about the Nazi executioners is not so  much the terrifying things they did, as how "human, al too human" they remained while doing those things. "Stories we tell ourselves about ourselves" serve to obfuscate the true ethical dimension of our acts. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh, please do!

Here we go:

On account of its all-pervasiveness, ideology appears as its own opposite, as non-ideology, as the core of our human identity underneath all the ideological labels.  This is why Jonathan Littell's outstanding Les bienveillantes (The  Kindly Ones) is so traumatic, especially for Germans: it provides a fictional first-person account of the Holocaust from the perspective of a German participant, SS Obersturmbannfohrer Maximilian Aue. The problem is the following: how to render the manner in which the Nazi executioners experienced and symbolized their predicament without engendering sympathy or even justifying them? What Littel offers, to put it in somewhat tasteless terms, is a fictionalized Nazi version of Primo Levi. As such, he has a key Freudian lesson to teach  us: one should reject the idea that the proper way to fight the demonization of the Other is to subjectivize him, to listen to his story; to understand how he perceives the situation (or, as a partisan of Middle East dialogue puts it: ''An enemy is someone whose story you have not yet heard"). There is, however, a clear limit to this procedure: can one imagine inviting a brutal Nazi thug-like Littell's Maximilian Aue, who rather invites himself - to tell us his story?  Is one then also ready to affirm that Hitler was an enemy only because his story had not been heard? Do the details of his personal life "redeem" the horrors  that  resulted  from his reign, do they  make him  "more  human"? To cite one of my favorite examples, Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the Holocaust, liked to play Beethoven's late string quartets with friends during his evenings of leisure.  Our most elementary experience of subjectivity is that of the "richness of  my inner life" : this is what I  "really am;" in contrast to the  symbolic determinations and responsibilities I assume in public life (as father, professor, etc.).  The first  lesson of psychoanalysis here is that this "richness of inner life" is  fundamentally fake: it is  a screen, a false distance,  whose function is,  as it were, to save my appearance, to render palpable (accessible to my imaginary narcissism) my true social-symbolic identity.  One of the ways to practise the critique of ideology is therefore to invent strategies for unmasking this hypocrisy of the "inner  life" and its "sincere"  emotions.  The experience we have of our lives from within, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves in order to account for what we are doing, is thus a lie - the truth lies rather outside, in what we do. Therein resides the difficult lesson of Littell's book: in it, we meet someone whose story we do fully hear but who should nonetheless remain our enemy. What is truly unbearable about the Nazi executioners is not so  much the terrifying things they did, as how "human, al too human" they remained while doing those things. "Stories we tell ourselves about ourselves" serve to obfuscate the true ethical dimension of our acts. 

I love this!

It reminds me a lot of The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon... everyone has a story they tell in their head about themselves, but what really matters, who we really are to others, is in what we DO.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I love this!

It reminds me a lot of The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon... everyone has a story they tell about themselves, but what really matters, who we really are to others, is in what we DO.

Yep.  It falls in with my definition of a Bad Person.  Which is, of course, a person who does bad things.

[Eater of Clowns]

I can see why Cracked writers, and Wong in particular, are magnets for the "poor me I'm just trying to do my thing how come it never works out" type.  What those people don't get, and what this article points out beautifully, is that in spite of all their self deprecating humor, the writers for the site are considered good enough at what they do to get paid to do it, if not make a living from it entirely.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I love this!

It reminds me a lot of The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon... everyone has a story they tell about themselves, but what really matters, who we really are to others, is in what we DO.

Yep.  It falls in with my definition of a Bad Person.  Which is, of course, a person who does bad things.

Yes.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I love this!

It reminds me a lot of The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon... everyone has a story they tell about themselves, but what really matters, who we really are to others, is in what we DO.

Yep.  It falls in with my definition of a Bad Person.  Which is, of course, a person who does bad things.

Yes.

I cannot judge people on what's inside; I am not a surgeon.

I can and do judge them first by their actions, then by the company they keep.