Common Fucking Courtesy

If you've been following this blog for a while now, you'll know that I try really, really hard to keep things positive around here so I hope you'll pardon me for ranting just this one time. I am ranting about this because I know that I can be very, very condescending when I want to be and that if I were more of an asshole (warning: this post is quite expletive-heavy) I could probably find about fifteen different ways to talk down to someone. It is so easy to be the kind of person who peppers their sentences with citations of the things they've read or watched--and I've read and watched a lot of things--for lack of anything helpful to say. 

 Because I try so hard to say what I mean in the most constructive manner possible--oftentimes to the point of rendering myself completely inarticulate--it frustrates me terribly when people use this tone either toward me or toward people who aren't doing anything wrong to them, really. I've found that all the people I've ever met who've talked down to other people mindlessly are severely, severely insecure and I suffer second-hand embarrassment every time that I see that happen.

I once tried to have a decent conversation with a professor of mine where I told him that I was sorry for offending him (which I found out I'd done from a friend of mine who was his friend, over something completely unrelated to him) and instead of saying "Alright, I'm sorry for being presumptuous" he said, "Well--being young allows you to commit mistakes." Said teacher was what, 22 at the time? 23? 

My problem with condescension is that it's extremely counter-productive. Do you really need to talk down to someone to help them out? Do you have to say something mean to come off as assertive? Do you need to belittle someone to feel like you know a lot? Most definitely not, I would say. In fact, I believe so much in not talking down to other people that I almost didn't write this blog post because I don't want to condescend to these people either but there's a fine line between courtesy and being dishonest. I just cannot stand it anymore and I think it's high time something was said.

Now, I realize that my circle of control is limited and I can't really do anything about all the people who are going to treat people like shit or talk shit about people off this blog but at least here, in my little corner of cyberspace, this kind of thing just isn't going to be tolerated. I know that a lot of my readers are lovely people and a lot of them have very strong opinions but please, if you're going to say something mean to me or (even worse) your fellow reader, then  take it outside; obviously, as this blog is personal, the things I write here are thoughts and opinions that I am not asking anyone to agree with. All I'm asking is that you take enough time out of your day to be able to word your opinion in a way that it doesn't make you sound like an asshole (I swore that if I was going to write this, I would do so with minimal reservations). Being unnecessarily mean is not a requisite or an effect of being too smart. It's a result of laziness and a refusal to think about why you're doing something or saying something in a certain way and this blog just isn't the place for that. If you really need a place to graze your high horse in, then well--blogspot is after all, a free blog hosting website. You can do that on your own blog, but please get the hell away from mine.