quotes and an essay on meanness--an obstacle to living life fully

meanness

home - contents - obstacles contents
cruelty

In my experience, meanness has been a symptom, not a state of being. I've met very few truly mean people, and those I have met have also been rather miserable people. Scrooge was mean, and Scrooge was very unhappy, miserable, even--pathetic. But Scrooge changed, and he changed when he was shown just how his own actions were affecting other people's image of him. They despised him, and Scrooge was truly unloved, a state I wouldn't wish on anyone. But if meanness is a symptom, why do so few mean people get help? Why don't they examine the problem that meanness is a symptom of, and then work on that problem?

I believe that it's because being mean feels good in a certain way. It's a powerful way of behaving that tends to make other people react in ways that they really wouldn't react otherwise. Meanness is a method of domination, and it's a domination that has the cards stacked in your favor when you're mean, for so few people are willing (or even able) to react in kind when you're mean to them. Redfield touches on the dynamic in The Celestine Prophecy, in the context of a power exchange. The dominating person diminishes the power of the submitting person and therefore gains power him or herself; the mean person diminishes the power of the person he or she is being mean to and therefore gains that power. It's a rush, almost like a drug--"look how I can make this person so uncomfortable."

One of my favorite stories in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series has to do with a large, drunk young man getting on a subway train in Japan. He starts to push and threaten people, and the author of the piece thought that he would have to fight the man. But then an old man speaks kindly to the young man, inviting him to sit down and talk, and within minutes, the large young man is lying on the bench with his head in the old man's lap, crying as the old man strokes his face. It's an incredible lesson, one that I think about often. When I see meanness, I try to think of the hurting in the person being mean.

Pain may explain mean behavior, but it certainly doesn't excuse it. The problem, though, often lies in the role models a person has had, and how loved or unloved the person feels. If I feel you love me, I may consider your role modeling when I decide on a certain behavior. If you're afraid of me or if you avoid me, though, I'm not going to use you as a role model. I'll use the powerful people as role models, the people who have control in their lives, the people who dominate others.

How can we show love to someone who's being mean or cruel? It's very difficult to do so--it's always more difficult to love those who most need our love. They're simply not lovable. But in refusing or neglecting to love them, we tend to perpetuate their behavior indirectly, and we have to consider that some of their meanness is the responsibility of the community that surrounds them yet neglects them. Martin Luther King's line from his "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" is very relevant here, as it is in many other situations: "We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people." In another context, he refers to the bad as "people of darkness" and the good as "people of the light."

Can we be people of the light if we don't try to help pull others from the darkness? Can we truly call ourselves human if we don't try to help other humans who are hurting? I struggle with this question constantly, and I truly don't know how I can help others who don't even seem to want my help. But I have to try. I have to try to find the needs, to recognize the needs, and I have to try to give love, even if it's thrown back in my face. For even if it's thrown back at me a hundred times, it may be accepted on that one hundred and first time, and then there will be just that bit less meanness in the world, and the world will be just that bit closer to being healed.

Malice drinks one half of its own poison.

Seneca

Half of the harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important.

T.S. Eliot

The high-spirited person may indeed die, but he will not stoop to meanness.
Fire, though it may be quenched, will not become cool.

Ovid

quotations - contents - welcome page - obstacles
the people behind the words - our current e-zine - articles and excerpts
Daily Meditations, Year One - Year Two - Year Three - Year Four

Sign up for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign up for your free daily meditation

Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.

Walter Bagehot

Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean.
It's like how turning on a light makes you realize how dark the room had
gotten. And the way you usually act, the things you would have normally
done, are like these ghosts that everyone can see but pretends not to.

Rebecca Stead
When You Reach Me

My mother says that when Mrs. Rowley is mean, which is generally
the case, it is really because she is just unhappy, and who could
blame her with a husband like that . . . She says this is really the
only reason people are ever mean--they have something hurting
inside of them, a claw of unhappiness scratching at their hearts,
and it hurts them so much that sometimes they have to push it
right out of their mouths to scratch someone else,
just to give themselves a rest, a moment of relief.

Laura Moriarty

When you give a lesson in meanness to a critter or a person,
don't be surprised if they learn their lesson.

Will Rogers

It always seemed strange to me that the things we admire in people--kindness
and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling--are the
concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest,
sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest
are the traits of success. And while people admire the quality
of the first, they love the produce of the second.

John Steinbeck

What is lofty can be said in any language. What is mean should be said in none.

Maimonides

We have some inspiring and motivational books that may interest you. Our main way of supporting this site is through the sale of books, either physical copies or digital copies for your Amazon Kindle (including the online reader). All of the money that we earn through them comes back to the site in one way or another. Just click on the picture to the left to visit our page of books, both fiction and non-fiction!

Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health,
strength, honor, generosity and beauty as conspicuously as the want
of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness and ugliness.

George Bernard Shaw

Some people have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising
a faculty which they had to partially neglect since early childhood.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Any expression of mean-spiritedness or cruelty is a sign that you
are in pain and you are attempting to relieve yourself of your
discomfort by passing it along to others. But this never works.

Alan Cohen
The Tao Made Easy

Someone who is mean and manipulative
is steeped in fear, the densest of energies.

Back in his toolshed, Ove fetches the spare battery for the Saab and two large metal clips. He lays out the sheet of corrugated iron across the paving stones between the shed and the house and carefully covers it with snow.
   He stands next to the cat, evaluating his creation for a long time. A perfect dog trap, hidden under snow, bursting with electricity, ready to bite. It seems a wholly proportionate revenge. The next time Blond Weed passes by with that bloody mutt of hers and the latter gets the idea of peeing on Ove's paving, it'll do so onto an electrified, conductive metal plate. And then let's see how amusing they find it, Ove thinks to himself.
   The cat tilts its head and looks at the metal sheet.
   "Like a bolt of lightning up your urethra," says Ove.
   The cat looks at him for a long time. As if to say: "You're not serious, are you?" Eventually Ove sticks his hands in his pockets and shakes his head.
   "No. . . no, I suppose not." He sighs glumly.
   And then he packs up the battery and clamps and corrugated iron and puts everything in the garage. Not because he doesn't think those morons deserve a proper electric shock. Because they do. But because he knows it's been a while since someone reminded him of the difference between being wicked because one has to be or because one can.

Fredrik Backman
A Man Called Ove

cruelty