People can be hard. It can be difficult to work out who to trust and who has lost the right of trust. Some people need special care in handling, some people are incompatible and toxic, some people are just abusive and should be avoided. Here we explore a series of ideas that helps you to get from meeting someone, with the assumption that they are decent, to a potential recognition that this person may need to be treated with lots of caution. The Good to Abusive Scale helps you navigate a way through seeing someone for whom they are really showing you.

Understanding the “Good to Abusive Scale“

Please feel free to print or distribute,
but please don’t modify it or claim it as your own.

Feel free to let us know if you have questions, would like help, or have a suggestion of how we can improve it.

Assumption of Good

Most people are mostly good, most of the time. When you do meet a new person, you should assume that they are going to be mostly good, most of the time. For people who have earned their way into the Green Trust Zone, you can also assume they are good and will do good things.

The point of this is that without a reason to distrust people, new or known good people should be presumed to be good.

If there are clear signs that you should be cautious (such as warnings from other people, something feels off about them, who they prefer to associate with etc), then the evidence you may need to see to afford them some more trust may be higher, and you by all means should be more cautious and alert while they earn that trust. It is important to protect yourself.

Some people start directly in the Red Zone of Trust (harmful), due to our prior knowledge of them, or what they do in the first meeting – that isn’t a bad thing, or you being judgemental. That is you being smart and safe. Not everyone deserves a second chance (see the Three Pillar Method, Perpetrator Reformation, NPD).

Principle of Charity

Principle of Charity

“Interpreting a speaker’s statements/actions in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation.”

[Wikipedia on Principle of Charity]

Effectively, charitably try to give them the best reasonable interpretation – but do check the evidence.

No one is perfect. We are learning, growing and maturing. When we do make a mistake, it is nice to be given a chance to apologise, fix it and where needed, make amends. If we learn from our mistakes, we can become better people.

If it is good for us, it is fair for someone else too.

• Green Flag, Equivalent Standards:
  • Where you treat everyone the same and hold them to the same reasonable standards, including yourself.

• Red Flag – Double Standards (the opposite):
  • Where there are the rules you expect others to follow, but they don’t apply to you;
  • Where this group of people must follow a more restrictive / controlling set of rules than another group of people, without a good individual level reason.

The Flag System.

When you meet a person, or are not aware of all of the facts, assume they are trying to do the right thing with the information and abilities they have, that they are trying to say the right thing and don’t know how to say things better, and any ill consequence is hopefully ignorance.

We give to them the Principle of Charity, where we try to see the good intentions they likely meant, even if what they did was a mistake. Additionally, even when mistakes aren’t made per se, we try to see any person’s actions as being of good intent first, and then check for problems only when problems occur.

In the Principle of Charity, we are trying to give the person a bias towards them being good and just making an honest mistake, like how we would like people to assume our mistakes.

However, this does have limits.

Hanlon’s Razor

Hanlon’s Razor

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

attributed to Robert J. Hanlon

[Wikipedia Hanlon’s Razor]

Robert J. Hanlon proposed this philosophical razor in his book “Murphy’s Law Book Two: More Reasons Things Go Wrong! (1980)“. While Hanlon has the attribution for this wording, similar statements have been recorded since at least the 18th century.

The core idea is to prioritise the likely reason someone did something wrong as a simple mistake rather than an act of malice. Even if you think that the action and intent seems malicious, without evidence of intended malice, try to see if it was more of a gross error in action or understanding, than a malicious goal.

Most of the time, for most people, really bad actions are just mistakes.

Malice is actually quite rare. When you are confronted by an anomalous (rare) situation that seems malicious, in the absence of concrete evidence, this is likely to be a stupid error.

When someone’s action seems malicious, with this razor in mind, it is time to start to investigate. That generally means, look for evidence over opinion and assumption, and go and talk to the person.

Anomalous is doing some heavy lifting there.

Hanlon’s Razor is useful to remind you that when someone has been generally good (Green Flag behaviours), the out of place and rare odd behaviour is an anomaly. That suggests that using Hanlon’s Razor to avoid misattributing malice is wise.

If the person’s current behaviour is harmful, and it is amongst a trend of harm, then Hanlon’s Razor is not applicable.

Ignorance, or Incapable

Margaret Atwood ‘…the difference between stupid (sic) and ignorant was that ignorant could learn.”

Alias Grace Quotes by Margaret Atwood

‘Stupid’ is an old term for someone who could not learn, aka incapable. People with low intelligence can often learn.

Think of the last time you made an error. It was an error because you didn’t mean to do it.

One of the most common reasons why people make mistakes is ignorance. They either don’t know it went wrong, they don’t know some key information about why what they did ended up wrong, or they don’t know how to do better.

You cannot make a choice that you don’t know you have.

If the person doesn’t know about the problem, doesn’t know what went wrong or doesn’t know what to do about it, then it wasn’t malice.

Abusive people will often take advantage of this basic idea to get out of trouble. That is, they’ll claim ignorance as an excuse to try not be responsible, then they’ll just go and do it again.

Once you have talked to the person and attempted to explore what went wrong and what could change, the potentially abusive person cannot reasonably use the claim of ignorance next time. That won’t stop them from doing it, however, you’ll know that they are falsely claiming.

When talking about what went wrong, begin with the assumption that they are a good person who would like to solve a problem. Good people, even when ignorant or mistaken, are not the problem – the problem is the problem, and together we can solve it.

Abusive people will often enact DARVO – Defend, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. They will not discuss in good faith, they’ll try to imply that you or someone else was the cause of the problem.

It is important to note, that someone who is currently distressed may be in survival mode, where they may not be cognitively available and may resemble an abusive person due their emotional state of anger or fear. If you suspect this is the case, ask for a time when you can meet with them to discuss the situation to resolve it. Ask them how to approach you about this to have the best conversation. Good people will help you talk to them, concerning people will avoid this – See below, Grey’s Law.

Caraing, Adaptation, Growth

“People who care adapt.
Adaptation is learning.
Learning for others is growth.
Growth lasts more than 4 weeks.”

 Joshua Davidson, BSW

If you’ve talked to the person about what went wrong and why that was a problem, then ignorant people will learn and not repeat the rationally explained and reasonably evidenced error.

You shouldn’t have to explain too much or go into too much detail to be able to tell the difference between someone trying to learn what went wrong and someone refusing to engage (likely malice), or incapable of engaging (limited capacity aka stupid) in the process.

Once you know the kind of person you are dealing with, you can make some decisions about how to handle them. If the person is incapable, then you can try to manage their behaviours. That can be by giving them less opportunity to be harmful, stop trying to educate them on the thing they can’t learn, and limit how much time you are around them.

“People who know better cannot help but do better”

Attributed to Socrates.

“Good people who know better cannot help but do better, concerning people won’t do better even if you help them know what is better – that’s how we tell who is who” –

 Joshua Davidson, BSW

Grey’s Law

Grey’s Law: “Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice”,

Unknown author

[Gooden, Philip (2015). Skyscrapers, Hemlines and the Eddie Murphy Rule: Life’s Hidden Laws, Rules and Theories. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 83. ISBN 978-1-47291503-0.]

Grey’s Law is a useful idea. It is a pity that the original author is not known.
It borrows both Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘Three Laws’ regarding ‘sufficiently advanced science being indistinguishable from magic‘, and incorporates a point from Hanlon’s Razor from above.

Grey’s Law points out that it at certain levels of harmfulness, it is no longer important to differentiate between someone who is harmful because they can’t understand that their action is harmful (and thus they won’t adjust), and someone whose goal was to be harmful.

The most important aspect was they they were harmful, and they won’t or can’t make changes to avoid repeatedly hurting you or others. This matters if the person is likely going to be doing the same actions of harm rather than a single disagreement about how and what that is not likely to come up again.

Far too many people get stuck on trying to work out if the person is aware or not of their harmful behaviours, while standing in the place that they are being harmed.

Once you have determined that the person is not ignorant of their actions and their consequences, since you’ve told them, the priority shifts from being charitable and trying to help; to getting safe from harm even if they think it is mean and unfair.

At some point, it doesn’t matter if the person is malicious or stupid (incapable), if they keep hurting you, they are abusive to you.

Get away from them.

Assumption of Malice

At this point they have lost the presumption of good will. They are harmful.

Once a person has shown an inability to stop hurting you, they are abusive to you.

Get Out.

As per Grey’s Law, it doesn’t matter whether someone is unable to not harm you (incapable or indifferent), or whose goal is to harm you, they will harm you.

Waiting until you can prove that they are specifically malicious traps you in being harmed by them, and those who are good at violence will take advantage of your uncertainty, hijacking your generosity and patience, to continue to harm you for their benefit.

Don’t give them that opportunity.

If you do get proof that they know they are hurting you and don’t care, or even enjoy it, then you can adjust your method to become safer. You don’t need that proof to take actions to become safe from them.

Even without proof, if you have down to Grey’s Law:

It is now important to shift your assumption of someone’s behaviour from Mostly Good Most of the Time, to

Likely to be either be Harmful Most of the Time, or Harmful When You Can’t Afford It.

You should now work on the Assumption of Harm.

Abusive People can do occasional acts that seem nice.

Often they do this when they can get Hero Points for it – where someone else will think they are a Good Person for Doing The Thing. Abusive People are almost always the Hero or Victim in their stories of themselves, never the perpetrator of harm. Or they will use the Good Action as a method to push you to do something for them (transactional behaviour).

This plays on our charity and cooperative nature, trying to give a person extra ‘benefits of the doubt‘ and ‘additional chances to prove they can do better‘ than is safe for you.

I reiterate, keeping you confused is part of a Abuive Persons tactics. The stopped watch is right twice a day, but that doesn’t make it a good time piece.

• Take a look at the Three Pillars to understand how many chances to give a person to do better.

Getting Out

Getting out/away sounds easy when we just say those words, but the reality can be very different. The Abusive Person may be your employer, in a social group, a family member, a partner, or a dependent.

If you need some help to navigate if a situation is Abusive or not, speak to a trusted friend, or see a therapist to help get a reality check. Therapists are also generally good at helping you find a way out of messy situations with Abusive People and toxic situations. [Book now if you need help].