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Originally Posted by horn
the problem is that i have a problem with the premises they're based on. i feel they're a whitewash of reality.
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Maybe. I think though that in many cases they're merely supposed to balance excessively negative attitudes. I think I've used this example before, but once I was at home with my wife on a Sunday. Someone was working on their car outside in the street and revving the engines for periods at a time through the morning (not for an unreasonably length of time, nor was it unreasonably early). After a while my wife started articulating some paranoid fantasy where the guy
knew it was really annoying but was doing it anyway, he could probably do it any other day too but he probably felt like being a jerk and pissing off her personally by doing it now when she was trying to rest, etc, etc. Your ears soon got used to the noise but now the idea of this thoughtlessness really got on her nerves.
My response was that you could also imagine that his wife is heavily pregnant and he's gotta make sure his car is still running properly in case he needs to take her to the hospital quickly. He's been working longer hours recently because they've got a kid on the way and this is the only free time he's had. In that context, the noise wasn't nearly as annoying and you soon learnt to ignore it.
Now, both scenarios were almost certainly untrue, but if we're going to start assuming stuff without any evidence then where there's zero consequences one way or the other it may as well be the one that leads to be positive/calm about the situation. Obviously this isn't a universal truth - if the guy was doing this 24/7 then clearly excessive leyway would be a mistake but most situations where people seemed to get upset/angry about things don't really seem to be worth it.