When Barbara Bush died, a college professor in California decided to go on a tweetstorm to insult the newly deceased. For years, the Westboro Baptist Church has outdone themselves with offensive protests, including, in some cases, at the funerals of veterans. Trump mocked a disabled reporter. Give your neighbors a few posts on Nextdoor.com and you’ll quickly find that they’ve been harboring some dark thoughts they’ve been apparently dying to share. 

What do we do when we bump into this kind of rudeness? This kind of mean, egregious stupidity? Well, if we take our cue from the media, our obligation is to freak out. Get angry. Denounce them. Show the world—with our loud outrage—that we are vastly superior to these people. That will make everything better, right?

No. A Stoic knows that this is the way to misery…and changes nothing. Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations several times about the proper response to offensive, unpleasant behavior. Guess what? It’s not matching tit for tat. It’s not getting down in the mud with the pigs. If there’s a chance you can have a decent conversation with someone doing wrong, he advises, go for it. If you can change their mind, obviously you should try. But if you can’t?

Then you have to ask yourself: Is a world without shameless or stupid or mean or insensitive people possible? No. Of course not. “Then don’t ask the impossible,” he says. “There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them. The same for someone vicious or untrustworthy, or with any other defect. Remembering that the whole world class has to exist will make you more tolerant of its members.”

Shake your head. Note the cautionary tale. Move on. Forgive. Try to be better yourself. Try to raise better kids yourself.

P.S. This was originally sent on February 17, 2021. Sign up today for the Daily Stoic’s email and get our popular free 7-day course on Stoicism.