Have you ever made an honest mistake?
Maybe your mind was wandering during your commute and you accidentally cut off another driver causing them to slam on their brakes.
Maybe you misinterpreted something your work leader told you to do and that miscommunication caused others to be impacted.
Maybe you parked behind your roommate thinking you’d move your car later but ended up forgetting about it and now they’re late for work because they’re blocked into the driveway at 7am?
These things happen. And when you’re the one causing them you have the benefit of understanding that your intentions were pure. You didn’t mean to cut that person off, you honestly thought your boss said Thursday instead of Wednesday, and you really were going to go to Home Depot last night but got sucked into a Netflix N Chill hole. You’re sorry for the trouble you made, but everyone makes mistakes, right?
You can’t be too hard on yourself in these situations.
But what if you’re the one affected?
Someone cuts you off in traffic, someone causes you to have to pick up the pieces at work after their mistakes, your roommate blocks you in the driveway?!
These people are out to do you wrong. You cannot believe the nerve, the gall, the malice of these people! How are you supposed to function in this world when you are surrounded by enemies on all sides??
Because we have the awareness of our own thoughts and intentions we tend to justify everything we do as perfectly reasonable. Even the unreasonable things. We had a good reason for doing them at the time. But since we can’t see the reasons of others it’s equally easy to assume that others know that what they are doing is harming us. They’re doing it on purpose.
So we float through our lives as perfectly innocent angels that are constantly victimized by the world around us.
This is a problem.
Firstly, because its incorrect thinking. Malicious actions are much, much rarer than we perceive. Most of the time people are just floating around inside their own bubble worlds like you are and sometimes they bump into your bubble and shake you around a little bit.
Secondly, assuming people have negative intentions causes us to experience the negative emotions associated with those slights. We feel angry, or stressed, and we complain about it to our significant others, causing them to burden some of that anger and stress. It also deteriorates the space in which a workable relationship can be formed between you and the person you perceived a slight from.
The solution to this is Hanlon’s Razor.
Hanlon’s Razor is a philosophical rule that states:
Never attribute to bad intentions that which is adequately explained by other causes (ie; stupidity, ignorance, carelessness, incompetence, or lack of information
Let’s be honest with ourselves, we can be really, really dumb some (read: most) of the time. That includes you, especially you. This doesn’t make us bad people, or malicious relationship terrorists, it just makes us human. And everyone around you is human too.
Applying Hanlon’s Razor can bring a number of significant benefits to your health and relationships.
Firstly, it simply allows you to assess situations faster and make better decisions. If your default assumption is that others aren’t attempting to purposely cause you harm you can remove negative emotions from the decision making process and come to a reasonably conclusion with a lot less pain. If you stop focusing on the intentions you can spend your resources on the solution.
Another benefit is that Hanlon’s Razor is arguably the right thing to do from a moral perspective. You’d want to live in a world where others apply Hanlon’s Razor to your own actions so its important to be a part of the solution. Think about the Golden Rule. For those of you that were homeschooled that means “treat others how you yourself would like to be treated”. Given the amount of mistakes we all make on a daily basis we should hope to receive the benefit of doubt from others as well.
Hanlon’s Razor is also a balm for relationships. It’s nearly impossible to form deep, meaningful relationships with others if we assume they’re constantly acting against us. Further, if we allow ourselves to bask in negative assumptions we may avoid taking actions in our relationships to make things better. If we assume that our roommate is playing loud music while we’re trying to sleep on purpose we may avoid saying something to them so we “don’t give them the satisfaction” or some other crazy bullshit we come up with. The truth is they just might not know you’re asleep and simply asking them to turn it down could cut to the chase.
Its important to note that Hanlon’s Razor doesn’t imply that people never act against you with ill intent - they most certainly do. However, if you stop assuming every act is made with ill intent it will become easier for you to recognize those that truly are and act accordingly. It will make you a more effective person.
You can move through your life a victim to the evil actions of those around you - or you can accept that you live in an imperfect world of imperfect people and most aren’t out to get you anymore than you are them.
The latter is the easier choice.
A lot of my research for this post came from https://effectiviology.com/hanlons-razor/