My New Year's Resolution: Stop giving awful people benefit of the doubt.
Hanlon's Razor is wrong; we SHOULD assume that shitty people are evil.
We’re halfway into a new year on planet Earth, and a new year is the best excuse to reflect on the way we treat other people, and whether we should switch things up.
I’ve always been very sparing in selecting New Year’s Resolutions, because I sincerely want to commit to a permanent change. That’s why it frequently takes me a few weeks into the new year before I even know what that year’s resolution will be!
Further, there are many years I don’t even have a New Year’s Resolution to adopt, because the previous years went so well that I’m continuing past the twelve-month mark on a victory lap. I’m going to take that as a sign that when it comes to self-improvement, quality trumps over quantity.
But this year, my resolution feels…less conventional, and certainly much more questionable. This resolution is about changing my thoughts, not just my actions. But I think that, on balance, this New Year’s Resolution will serve me well; it may serve you well too.
So, in the year 2025: I promise to stop giving people the benefit of the doubt. When somebody does something inconsiderate, or hurtful, or aggressive, I’m not going to make or accept excuses, and I’m not going to have empathy for them either.
Now, this may seem contrary to common wisdom in our modern society, so let me run this one back quickly, and explain why I’ve decided to reject all moral ambiguities, and adopt a pleasantly simple black-and-white mindset.
Hanlon’s Razor is an adage sourced from Arthur Bloch’s series of Murphy’s Law books, claiming that one should “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
This particular quote was submitted to Bloch by a reader ostensibly named “Robert J. Hanlon”, yet the existence of a very similar quote in author Robert A. Heinlein’s 1941 novella Logic of Empire indicates that this was likely a bludgeoning of that quote, submitted under pseudonym as a dubiously-amusing gag.
In 1990, Hanlon’s Razor would find itself included in the Jargon File, an early pre-internet slang dictionary filled with quotes and memes from the ARPANET and Usenet eras of online interaction; by 1996 the Jargon File editors would themselves note the similarities to Heinlein’s quote in Logic of Empire.
Usenet is the same pre-Internet digital space which gave us words like “FAQ”, “spam”, and “sock-puppet”, among many others. While the Jargon File was last updated in 2003, the Usenet culture that it documented was a formative influence on early Internet users, and by extension the entire culture of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, which have fully integrated their communities into the digital sphere.
While your eyes may glaze over at phrases like “Usenet Groups” and “Dial-Up Bulletin Boards”, if you have ever checked your email’s “spam” folder, you can credit these digital pioneers; Hanlon’s Razor is merely one of the many cultural touchstones to transition into the modern day from that bygone era.
Unfortunately, I would say that adage became too popular on the Internet, and that popularity crossed offline into the real world. You see, I believe Hanlon’s Razor is a fundamentally stupid idea, in that it assumes that someone’s intent matters.
Indeed, a remarkable quote on that exact point is present in author H.G. Wells’ novel The Wheels of Chance, released in 1896:
There is very little deliberate wickedness in the world. The stupidity of our selfishness gives much the same results indeed, but in the ethical laboratory it shows a different nature.
Knowing why someone does bad things can ostensibly be useful, if you’re operating from an academic perspective. But if you’re just living your normal, everyday life, interacting with these terrible people? It doesn’t really matter why someone keeps hurting you, the only thing that matters is that they do.
I am tired of the constant refrain that we must not hold people morally accountable for the things they do to others. It is exhausting to watch human beings fall over themselves to protect people they don’t even know from accountability for obviously heinous acts.
One of the deepest sicknesses in Canadian culture is that we praise “civility” and “respectability” over actual morality. A Canadian politician can say the most odious, most bigoted things, but if they do so in a calm and soothing voice, then they will be celebrated as “working across party lines.”
And yet when another Canadian raises their voice to criticize that person for their wilful actions, they are told they’re being too “divisive”, and that it’s the “wrong time and place.” Those who do terrible things are protected, and those who try to enforce basic standards of decency are attacked.
When you offer up excuses for shitty people, when you provide moral cover for immoral acts, you are in your own fashion creating more toxic filth…and then you are dragging my face below the surface of that pool of bile, until it chokes my lungs, and you have forced the both of us to drown in it together.
Fuck that.
We do not owe civility to horrible people who willingly do awful things. It is not our place to step into H.G. Wells “ethical laboratory” and obsess over the intricacies of why hurtful people hurt people.
What is our responsibility, is that we must make this world a better one, a kinder one. We must hold bad actors in our community accountable when they harm others, and we must never make excuses for them!
My New Year’s Resolution for 2025 is set. I am done giving anybody the benefit of the doubt, whether they be a friend or a stranger; I will solely trust your intentions when they are proven through your actions, and that trust will be revoked when it is abused.
Whether it’s the big picture degenerates, like the politicians who abuse their power to hurt the vulnerable, or the small-fry pond scum, like the prick who talks on their phone in the movie theatre, I will be relentless and give no quarter to the assholes whom plague us.
Choosing this resolution has freed me, when I didn’t even realize I was trapped. And now that we’re a few weeks into 2025, and I’ve fully settled into my new mindset?
I am the happiest I have ever been.