Hanlon's Razor Wants You to Chill the Fuck Out
Wow, poor you. Everyone is out to get you. Must be exhausting, constantly thwarting legitimate attempts to foil your well-being.
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You know when someone cuts you off in traffic cause they’re trying to kill you? Or when your co-worker intentionally sabotages your project by sending files late? Or when your friend purposefully excludes you because they secretly hate you and are trying to elevate their own social position by diminishing yours?
Wow, poor you. Everyone is out to get you. Must be exhausting, constantly thwarting legitimate attempts to foil your well-being.
OR — here us out — you just need to calm the fuuuuuckkk down and get some Hanlon’s Razor in your life.
Who the hell is Hanlon, and what is this razor he speaks of?
Long, long ago, companies would publish books full of conventional and ancient wisdom, jokes, memes, urban legends and the like. These books were like Subreddits that you could pick up and flip through while sitting on the toilet at someone else’s house.
One of these titles was Murphy’s Law Book Two: More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong, a joke book published in 1980 that riffed on Murphy’s Law, which is “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” Hanlon is some guy from Pennsylvania who submitted to the book this adage: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Boom. Hanlon from Pennsylvania won some free copies of the book, and his razor was born.
No, this guy didn’t invent the concept. Since the beginning of fuck all, there has existed the conventional wisdom of, “Chill out, they probably didn’t mean to.”
See Exhibit A below.
“No one does wrong willingly.” 399 BC – Socrates
“We find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds; and by a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe malice and goodwill to everything that hurts or pleases us.” 1757 – David Hume
“Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness.” 1774 – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Let us not attribute to malice and cruelty what may be referred to less criminal motives.” 1812 – Jane West
“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.” 1896 – H.G. Wells
“The most dangerous of the three great enemies of reason and knowledge is not malice, but ignorance, or, perhaps, indolence.” 1900 – Ernst Haeckel
“In this world much of what the victims believe to be malice is explicable on the ground of ignorance or incompetence, or a mixture of both.” 1937 – Thomas F. Woodlock
And last but not least, our personal favorite:
“You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.” 1941 – Robert A. Heinlein
All of these tidy sayings are meant to help you apply the benefit of the doubt you freely give yourself to the actions of others.
We aren’t talking abuse or genocide. We’re talking about feelings, mmmmk?
We typically give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, but not to others. Cut someone off in traffic? You didn’t see them! Sent files late? You forgot! Didn’t invite a friend? You didn’t think they’d want to go!
You aren’t out to get other people, and they ain’t out to get you, John Wick. They’re just stupid. And so are you. We are all just fucking stupid, trying to get through the day with a little bit of joy, and in the process, we misstep. We hurt feelings. We say the wrong things. But for some reason, when other people do it, we don’t give a shit. We’d rather be pissed off.
There is a part of us that loves to feel wronged, to feel rage because anger is more comfortable than hurt. Sometimes, we want an enemy to funnel our negative feelings toward, because we don’t know what to do with them. If we can’t throw them at someone else, who the fuck has to deal with them? How will we assert our point of view, our autonomy, if not with self-righteous anger?
It feels better to scream and speed up than to take a deep breath, turn the music up, and keep driving like a sane person.
It feels better to accuse a colleague of sabotage than to ask for an extension or to ask them point-blank and kindly how you can help obtain the files you need.
It feels better to shit talk, to hack away at your friendships, than to ask to join in after feeling slighted.
All of that feels better in the moment. But fuck the moment! What are we, heathens?!
No, we are adults who understand actions and reactions accumulate to build our reality.
Assuming malice all the time fucks up your brain. You’re wiring yourself to flip your shit every time you feel hurt, annoyed, or frustrated. You’re setting yourself up to be a paranoid old fuck who has no friends and whom children fear.
99% of the time, people don’t mean to. It doesn’t mean you can’t offer corrections; it means approach those corrections with the understanding that not everyone is out to get you.
It’s called grace, motherfuckers. The more you give, the more you’ll get.