The Ugliness of Self-Righteousness

Self-righteousness is an ugly beast. I don't run into the petty monster too often, but when I do, I always marvel at it. But as soon I see the envy, frustration and inflated sense of self in the self-righteous person - and experience the insult of their reactive behavior - I run for the hills. And so should you. You see, they're toxic.

My last post on the early sexualization of girls featured a video, research and my own thoughts on the subject matter. I received the following email from a research blogging site that uses my blog feeds:

"Clearly your blog has a large audience, but I'm not sure its audience intersects significantly with ours, so perhaps it's not beneficial for either of us to maintain an association."

I was initially taken aback by this email as I've been a contributor for many months, even receiving Editorial nods for my posts. Instead of inquiring about my writing, there was just a decision to reject it all together. Strange, how little flexibility the self-righteous have.

I wondered why this reaction happened. Was it the content of that post? The overwhelmingly high number of visits I garnered? Clearly, I was being flagged by someone who needed me out of the way. But why? The mutual goal of our association was to bring research to the masses. Isn't that the greater good here?

Well, it didn't take long for me to decide that, indeed, it was beneficial to not be associated... especially when my contributions were so callously brushed aside. Dust-ups like these are teachable moments. I use this example to show how important it is to look for the underlying reasons behind the hurtful behaviors of others. Often, you'll find they stem from envy and reactive narcissism.

From hereon in, I'm with Groucho.