Hostility, Anger,
An argument in a game made me reconsider anger, kindness, and boundaries—and how I should face people who offer no kindness in return.
I ran into a teammate today who made me furious.
What happened was not complicated. For no apparent reason, he began putting pressure on everyone else, talking trash without pause, and eventually shouting over voice chat. At first I merely snapped back with a couple of lines: “You’re the only one who won’t stop talking.” “Are you ever going to shut up?” He immediately turned on his microphone and cursed at me. I lost my restraint and turned on mine too.
“What is wrong with you?”
“All you know how to do is spew garbage.”
Looking back now that I have calmed down, it was plainly an argument with no point.
I did not persuade him, and a few words from me probably did not inspire any reflection. We simply raised our voices at each other through our headsets. The match ended, and nothing had changed.
Yet I was still angry.
More disappointing than the anger itself was the realization that, even now, something like this could still pull me into an argument.
I am still all too human.
I Just Couldn’t Swallow It
I know the simplest thing to do.
Mute him, turn off voice chat, and keep playing.
That is where nearly every rational piece of advice ends up, and judging by the outcome, it is probably the most effective answer.
But when it happens to me, I cannot let it go so easily.
I resent it.
When someone attacks me for no reason, I want to defend myself. I want to prove him wrong, make him see how absurd his words are, and prove that I am not someone he can humiliate at will.
In the past, I tended to handle conflicts like this in one of two ways.
The first was to .
When someone dismissed me, my instinct was to tell him what I had experienced, what I understood, and why I was qualified to make my own judgment. As though proving I was not as ignorant as he imagined would deprive his attack of its foundation.
The other was to reason with him.
I have always felt that disagreements between people can ultimately be explained. Even if we cannot agree in the end, there are still facts to distinguish and logic to follow. Surely we can at least make the issue clear.
But with this kind of person, both approaches fail almost completely.
There is no reason to present my credentials to a stranger on the internet whose mouth is full of abuse. On closer thought, doing so is almost humiliating. Why should I lay out my experience, ability, and judgment one item at a time for a stranger like that to review?
As though only his approval could finally prove that I am not what he says I am.
The idea is absurd.
Reasoning with him makes even less sense.
He was never there to discuss anything.
He did not care whose judgment was more reasonable, and he had no interest in solving a problem. He was angry. He wanted release. He wanted to turn his own unhappiness into somebody else’s.
Trying to argue logically with someone whose emotions have already overwhelmed his reason is like taking a proof to be graded by someone who never sat the exam.
I know all of this.
And still I could not swallow it.
If I had said nothing at the time, I can imagine the scene returning to me again and again over the next few days.
“I should have said this.”
“That was the obvious reply.”
“Why didn’t I think of it then?”
I would replay the argument in my head, trying to supply one line that was more elegant, more cutting, more certain to leave him speechless.
As though the matter could end only when I found the perfect retort.
But perhaps no such line exists.
Because what I truly wanted was never to win a war of words.
I only wanted to prove that I had not allowed someone to trample over me.
I Used to Assume That Other People Were Much Like Me
This tiny incident eventually led me to a much larger question.
I realized that I had been living with an assumption.
People in this world may differ in countless ways, I thought, but surely a few basic qualities should be common to us.
Some emotional stability.
Some humility.
Some sense of boundaries.
Some willingness to reason when conflict arises.
I do not think everyone must be noble, nor am I naive enough to believe there are no bad people in the world. But when I actually deal with others, I do instinctively project my own standards onto them.
Because I would not abuse a stranger for no reason, I struggle to understand why someone else would.
Because I know a few words can hurt, I exercise at least some care before speaking.
Because I do not believe my pleasure should rest on somebody else’s pain, I cannot understand someone willing to ruin the game for every teammate just to enjoy a moment of release.
But people are often less kind than I imagine.
I do not mean to paint “the people” as something contemptible. I am, of course, as ordinary a member of the crowd as anyone. I get angry. I am vain and competitive. I say things that are beneath me.
Still, I have to admit that people are not always good.
People can be selfish, cunning, spiteful, and jealous. They can have mean and shadowed sides.
Some will casually throw their pain at a person who had nothing to do with it.
Some mistake restraint for weakness, courtesy for vulnerability, and another person’s kindness for something to exploit.
This is often where I lose out.
Not because I am nobler than anyone, but because I first try to understand others in the way I understand myself.
I assume the other person can feel shame, so I point out his disgraceful behavior.
I assume he cares about reason, so I try to reason with him.
I assume people must have some boundaries, so when I meet someone with none at all, I do not know what to do.
I am too accustomed to assuming that others are like me.
They are not.
When “Every One Works for Every One Else. We Can't Do Without Any One.” Meets Reality
That is why such a small argument could leave me with a deeper kind of sorrow.
I once found it natural to believe that people deserved kindness.
You could even call that belief a premise beneath many of my ideas.
I want to do things that genuinely help others—things that improve lives, create value, perhaps even deserve to be called a benefit to humanity.
Because in my imagination, the vast numbers of ordinary, decent people deserve it.
I have always loved the idea of “Every one works for every one else. We can't do without any one.”
It means that people are not completely isolated from one another.
I do a little more for someone today; somewhere else tomorrow, another person willingly carries a little more for someone else. Kindness need not return by the same route, but it can move from person to person.
I am willing to act for everyone, and I trust that one day the world made by everyone will hold me up as well.
The problem in reality is that not everyone wants to be part of that arrangement.
Some want only “Every one works for every one else.” and have no interest in “We can't do without any one.”
Some enjoy the convenience that rules provide, then show no concern for those rules when their own conduct must be restrained.
Some accept another person’s friendliness while treating their own malice as perfectly natural.
So I cannot help wondering:
Is this really worthwhile?
What if the people I value include those who value no one else?
What if I want to make the world better, while some people want only to take the benefits of a better world and then carry on damaging it?
Why must I persist?
Why shouldn’t they be the ones to change?
These questions do not have easy answers.
Nor do I want to brush them aside with “but we must still believe in kindness.” That answer is too weightless, almost a way of avoiding reality.
After thinking about it for a long time, however, I began to see that I may have confused two different claims.
“People deserve kindness” and “people are always kind” have never meant the same thing.
Kindness Should Not Depend on Naivety
There may indeed have been some naivety in my kindness.
Because I believed most people were open to reason, I was willing to reason with them.
Because I believed most people carried goodwill, I was willing to offer mine first.
Because I believed in “Every one works for every one else.”, “We can't do without any one.” seemed natural.
But if I must first prove that everyone deserves these convictions before I can keep them, then they are far too fragile.
Meeting only a few sufficiently awful people would force me to put all of humanity on trial again.
Today I meet someone who spews abuse, and I question whether people deserve kindness.
Tomorrow I meet someone selfish, and I question whether my effort was worthwhile.
Later, after seeing enough calculation, deceit, and malice, I would probably arrive at an increasingly cold conclusion: if everyone else is like this, why should I be different?
But is that truly the person I want to become?
I think the answer is still no.
Perhaps maturity does not mean continuing to believe that “everyone is good at heart.”
Quite the opposite. It means finally admitting that people can be malicious, that some simply reject reason, and that the kindness I offer may go unanswered or even be exploited—and then deciding anew how I ought to live.
Once I saw it this way, it occurred to me that the fact that people are not naturally good is precisely what makes so many things important.
If everyone were naturally restrained, we would need no rules.
If everyone understood respect, we would need no boundaries.
If no one would hurt another person, we would need no protection, education, fairness, or constraint.
It is because people have private desires, lose control, and hurt one another that we have things worth struggling to preserve.
Seen this way, “people are not always good” is not a refutation of an ideal.
It may be the very reason ideals exist.
I can stop believing that every person will treat me kindly and still hope to live in a place where most people are willing to respect one another.
I can admit that one particular person is awful without letting his awfulness erase everyone I still cherish.
More importantly, seeing evil does not require me to hurry and remake myself into someone better adapted to an ugly environment.
Kindness Must Grow Boundaries Too
None of this means I should continue facing everyone without defenses.
If this incident truly taught me anything, perhaps it is that kindness needs boundaries.
I used to think that a good person should be more tolerant, more understanding, and better able to control their emotions.
Looking at it now, that idea can easily become another form of self-coercion.
Why should I blame myself for getting angry when someone else has offended me?
Why, after one person chooses to attack, should the person being attacked bear the entire responsibility for “remaining respectable”?
I am allowed to be angry.
Anger does not in itself turn me into an awful person.
When someone crosses my boundary, I have the right to tell him to shut up, to despise his behavior, and to stop speaking to him.
The fact that a person deserves basic human respect does not mean all of his behavior deserves my tolerance.
I do not need to understand the tragic past of every person who spews abuse.
I do not need to take responsibility for educating him.
And I do not need to accept every offense in silence merely to prove that I have manners.
Sometimes refusing someone, leaving someone, or even asking the rules to punish someone who damages a shared environment is itself a way of protecting the others willing to follow those rules.
When kindness has no boundaries, the people most likely to end up exhausted are those willing to be kind.
The malicious, meanwhile, lose nothing.
That is not the “Every one works for every one else. We can't do without any one.” I want.
The real thing should not demand that kind people always give way. It should ensure that those willing to protect a shared environment are not always the ones made to pay.
I Am Still All Too Human
Back to today.
I still turned on my microphone.
I still got angry.
I still said things that, in hindsight, accomplished nothing.
I could not behave like someone completely above it all, calmly clicking mute at the first piece of abuse and continuing the game without the slightest disturbance.
I am all too human.
I cannot even promise that I will not be angry the next time the same thing happens.
But I no longer feel quite so eager to blame myself for that.
Fighting back does not make me exactly the same as him.
One person choosing to pour malice onto another and another person angrily defending himself after being attacked are not the same act.
Still, I need to admit that defending myself does not require me to persuade the other person.
That is the part I find hardest to accept.
I always want to prove that he is wrong.
But sometimes the fact that someone is wrong does not mean I can make him admit it.
Proof requires a person willing to hear evidence.
Reason requires a person still willing to enter the realm of reason.
Someone who only wants the thrill of shouting was never going to give me the ending I expected.
Could I curse him into silence?
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
But even if I succeeded, I doubt it would give me what I truly wanted.
Because what I wanted was not a crueller line.
I wanted confirmation that nobody had taken away my dignity.
And that was never his to confirm.
Perhaps, slowly, I can learn to fight back, express anger, and tell someone that he has crossed a line without remaining obsessed with making him surrender.
Once I know an argument is pointless, leaving is not humiliation.
Muting someone is not defeat.
I can simply acknowledge: “That person did offend me. I am angry. He paid no price for it, and that is unfair.”
And then let the matter stop there.
Not by pretending I was never hurt, nor by consoling myself that “I was the real winner.”
Only by deciding that someone so unimportant will occupy no more of my time.
For now, that may be the only way out I can see.
I am still willing to believe in “Every one works for every one else. We can't do without any one.”
I simply no longer understand it as a guarantee.
Treating others kindly does not guarantee that they will treat me kindly.
Nor do I do things that benefit others only because every person in the world has first proven worthy of them.
People are complicated.
Some are kind and some are vile; some are humble and some are arrogant; some preserve a shared sense of decency, while others do not hesitate to pour their hostility onto strangers.
These people may still disappoint me. I may still become angry, and I may still find myself unable to resist an argument.
But I do not want them to decide for me what kind of world this is merely because I have encountered them.
Still less do I want them to decide what kind of person I will become.