PREPOSTERO!DS:

You seem to think that being “diplomatic” means you estimate what others want and give it to them insofar as YOU’LL get something out of it. It is the second-lowest rung of moral reasoning. You lead them to the false impression that you value what they value, so they come to trust you, and then they discover you’re a fraud. For every good thing that you do, which both of you agree to, you expect some sort of compensation, even if that compromise would compromise the good intentions of the other. For each bad thing that you do, you feel entitled, owing to the good things that you did. It is because you have no sense of right or wrong at all, outside of what you want, that you are pit against good people, for they all ways MUST have things go their own way, and that appears unfair to someone who has much invested in the evil path. To our minds, you are unreliable; half of the time, you do the right thing, and half of the time it’s wrong. We do not think at first that you’re AWARE of this, since you profess a kinship to our values, and to some extent we’re right: you’re NOT aware of what you’re doing, truly. To YOUR mind, you’re simply balancing the things you do “for others” with the things you do “for your own self”, and since the former is merely a means to serve the latter ends, the balance can sway in your favour without any harm to you. But life’s not a horizontal trade; it is a vertical ascent. Each day the better people of the World aspire to a higher height, and we would look to YOU, with optimism, to inform our research. Yet you only give us skewed impressions, false associations, and vague hopes of transcendence. Because you do not think in vertical terms, right and wrong, but rather horizontal terms, self and other, and since that other is clearly only a means to serve the self, there is no true communication possible with you. I’ve all ways done the right thing, to the best of my ability and knowledge, whether or not you preferred it; I cannot be held in debt to you for when YOU did the right thing!! After all: what if that debt, to be repaid, necessitates that I do wrong? Preposterous.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]