The Importance of Being Shitty

            In "The I Who Says 'We,'" Stacey Ake touches on a concept that I have long adhered to: never trust someone who proclaims to be a good person. If we see ourselves in a shining light, she says, we are presuming we are perfect in light of another’s imperfections. Only when we can see ourselves as imperfect can we have genuine understanding and realistic acceptance of another’s inevitable moments of shittyness.

            We are, all of us, at least kind of shitty. We’ve all hurt someone, or been rude or demanding, ungrateful or snide. We’ve broken someone’s heart and disappointed someone when they’ve needed us. We’re human. We’re imperfect. We’re kind of shitty. This is fine. It is a realistic, fair assessment of ourselves, which is the first step towards personal authenticity, from which springs the ability for all meaningful, lasting relationships. When we recognize our propensity for shittyness, we become more tolerant of shittyness in others. We are less likely to rush to the fundamental attribution error, the term psychologists give to being a self-righteous dick. This error skews a person’s opinion such that they believe their own failings or missteps are due to circumstances, while perceived failures of others are due to the flaws in their character.

            We’ve all done shitty things, so reasonable people believe themselves to be a bit shitty. People who view themselves as good, on the other hand, have explained away the impact of their negative actions. They feel justified and righteous. They are wrong. They are just as shitty as the rest of us, only less cognizant of that fact, which emboldens them into further acts of shittyness. Their lack of repentance shows a lack of self-realization, one that is dangerous to their relationships and to themselves. To boldly move forward without objective self-reflection is to continue to blunder through life without a genuine understanding of how deeply a person can hurt the people in their sphere. And this necessary, genuine, comprehensive, and objective self-reflection will invariably result in the realization that one is, to at least some degree, kind of shitty.