Most people are good enough under most conditions. Unfortunately, some people are quick to take advantage of a situation, and some have little regard for the consequences to other people in fulfilling their wants and needs. Those who are not good in most situations can be dangerous, and some are quite abusive.

Quick Contents

Most People Are Good People

As was said above, most people are good enough under most conditions. That is, most people you randomly meet in most places are going to be safe.

Civilisation runs on a few accepted social contracts. We recognise that:

Murder is wrong, physical violence is wrong
Children should be protected (protect the vulnerable)
You do not take what belongs to someone else (stealing is wrong)
Try to be fair in your treatment of all people (do to others what you want done to you)

Try to imagine a country that thinks that any one of these agreements is the opposite and consider if that country is considered to be a good country to live in, or rather a country to avoid.

Even so, many people will make a selfish choice if they cannot see a way that their choice will cause any real harm to someone else, what they perceive as a harmless cheat to the social contract. This does not make them a bad person or abusive. They are just human, and this is what humans do – we take advantage of opportunities that do not directly harm the above mentioned social contracts. There are situations where it is not possible to make a good choice and people are left with the uncomfortable situation of making the least bad choice.

People also make mistakes out of ignorance. A person may not know that you have an allergy to a particular food, or they have genuinely forgot that this is the case. That doesn’t mean they intentionally meant to poison or harm you – they made a human error.

We need to be aware that some selfish choosing and some genuine mistakes or misjudgements are reasonable in good people.

Unfortunately, not everyone is good. Some people will try to gain the most for the least and either be insensitive to the harm it does to others, not care about the harm they know they are doing, or delight in the harm they do.

Grey’s Law

It can be hard to truly know if a person is unable to perceive the harm they do, are willfully ignorant of the harm they do, or enjoy their harm they do, unless they tell you that they are aware and don’t care or enjoy it.

Honestly, though, it doesn’t really matter. We have entered Grey’s Law.

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

This law riffs off Clarke’s third law – “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.

In this case, Grey’s Law tells us that if the person is incompetent to the point of not being able to see the harm they do and so they keep doing it, the difference between that and someone who does harm knowing and not caring about the cost to you – aka malicious intent – is irrelevant. They are hurting you and they will do so again.

The only real difference is how you deal with them so that they stop being able to hurt you.

Abusive Person – Someone who Either Can Not or Will Not Change

Socrates, a philosopher around 350 BCE, stated that a person who knows right (the right thing) cannot help but do the right thing, and if someone does not do right (the wrong thing), it is because they did not know how to do the right thing.

This can be simplified to “People who knows better, cannot help but do better”. This is true for some people, and very not true for some others.

“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

Some actions are societally recognised as wrong, and we do not have to give the benefit of doubt that the person was ignorant about it. When someone crosses that line, it is highly recommended to be very wary about them. If it was a long time ago that they crossed that line, then hopefully they have done some excellent soul searching and made some real changes in their life, or got whatever was going wrong that led them to such an action managed.

For everyone else, we certainly want to give people some benefit of the doubt on some issues, and so inform them that what they did caused, or will cause, problems so that they can know better and do better. Once that benefit of the doubt has been offered, and you have had a conversation with them to make sure that they understand reasonably quickly and concisely that it was wrong and what better looks like, then you watch what they do. Good people will make changes and do better – they can’t help themselves. Those who do not do better are flagging by their lack of growth that there is something very concerning about them – probably abusive.

Abusive People Index – Explainer of Pages

Bad Guy, Mistaken or the Fall Guy

How to tell if you are the bad guy, if you made a mistake, or if you are being painted as the fall guy (sacrificial goat).

Bullying, the Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Bullying, the Good, the Bad, the Ugly
- We can all be over the top and unfair at times. A phase of this is not uncommon in many children or teens. By adulthood, this should no longer be true as we grew up. Those who didn’t are abusive.
- If you are being attacked by a bully, then here is the useful method of how to deal with bullies. Also see “Grey Stoning” below.

Narcissism and NPD

Narcissism and NPD
- On the Narcissistic Spectrum are five categories from “not at all” to “fully NPD. We discuss all 5 categories.
- We also look at what might be going on inside the mind of NPD, and why it is an order of magnitude worse than just “narcissistic”.

Grey Stoning

Grey Stoning
- Grey Stoning recognises the drive of abusive people to garnish your emotions and shows how to interact with them in a way so that you “don’t feed the troll“, starving them of the emotions they are trying to trigger in you. See also “Bullying” above.

Schrödinger’s Douchebag

Schrödinger’s Douchebag
- A person who decides after the reaction to their statement whether “it was just a joke” or “I’m serious”. Repeat offending is a red flag of a potential Abusive person.

Testing for Toxic

Testing for Toxic
- Is the person you are interacting with toxic? How can you tell? Here are some methods to test for that so we can feel more confident that they either are safe so you can relax, or toxic and so you should take some precautionary actions.