“Self-Righteousness”
Summary: the accuser rejects the possibility of your advice’s correctness on the basis that you have the gall to offer it.
When you go to preach, in public or private, and say that you have a better way of living, and you enjoy the benefits of such, some people will tag you as “self-righteous”. This is true for those who preach family values, who preach racial equality, better eating or exercise, or any other healthy habit. They will accuse you of looking down on their behavior, and being an elitist snob, who is almost certainly also a hypocrite, since they reject the assertion that human beings can live a better life.
You recognize the obvious flaws:
– To attempt any good deed, you attract scorn instead of praise, and therefore social isolation, instead of community, which is the rewarding mode of living for most people.
– To praise others’ good deeds, you are accused of sin and others close their ears to the good news.
– Therefore these individuals equate you with the criminals, utterly refusing the possibility of peaceful coexistence. For them, suffering is the proper way, and they absolutely oppose a different life.
What to do? If they really believe this, you couldn’t constructively influence them; their entire claim is that any individual who tries to advise them is unworthy of same.
In my low confidence opinion, if the matter is about self-help (not a societal issue), the response should be to state it plainly: “You are saying my help/advice is suspect because I’m trying to help/advise you. It would seem because of my attempts, that you have judged me as an inferior class of human being, unworthy of consideration. The suffering will continue regardless of whether you choose to accept my help/advice.”
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“True” Whistleblowers
Summary: the accusers do not even present a coherent argument, and they cannot produce any tangible harms.
When some people see you performing good works in accordance with truth and justice, they will demand that you suffer for it. Here, I am not meaning to address the malice of those who claim that any independent attempt to ensure the enforcement of the law is a crime (that is a separate explanation on this site). Rather, I am addressing those who claim that suffering is the affirmation of the truth or good motives of your actions.
If you pull a man back from a ledge, rescuing him from danger, does he not live because you have not suffered enough to earn his life force? If you show that money has been embezzled, does that money, or the goods bought with it, vanish into the ether because you are not rotting in prison? If you have advised a wayward man that there’s a better way, do his better actions become void because you can sleep in your own bed at night?
In other words, what is the tangible harm of insincerity, malice, or other ulterior motives, if the course you advised was correct?
Often, these individuals then claim, that there is some guilt that an individual brings upon themselves for these acts, which must be expiated through suffering. So – if an individual commits a crime, or stay silent about it, they bring guilt upon themselves, and if they do good deeds, or report the crimes being committed, then they bring guilt upon themselves. Being coarsely equal in consequences, this cannot even be a recommendation to a particular action.
If their answer is to punish everyone strictly on the basis of having some association with crime, as victim, witness, or criminal, then you also should point out that every Samaritan, intervening bystander, woman who resists rape, policeman, and prosecutor also must suffer for their association. The result of the people following these recommendations, would be the increase of criminal activity due to gross negligence and tolerance.