What personality trait in people raises a red flag with you?
I do not like
What does not help
What does not heal
What hurts
Pretence and prevarication
Criticism and ostracisation
Demanding and bullying
Spite and nastiness
Hiding behind a keyboard
wasting your education on insults
Lashing out at others using the
most hurtful terms a small mind can find
Not even caring about the results
There is no truth in pretence
No honour in prevarication
No skill in criticism
No decency in ostracising someone
No intelligence in spite and nastiness
The confident speak up honestly
and have no need to prevaricate
The respectful speak up considerately
The kind choose the best words they can find
A decent human cares about their impact
There are two sids to life
Those who understand this
And those who laugh at it
Decrying the woke
One side thinks the other are idiots
The ‘woke’ wonder why those people were born
To exist to cause harm and hurt
Why?
Where is the purpose?
Where is the point?
Where is the strength to be decent?
From the most casual unkindness
to the most awful war
the emotions that create it
the character traits required to be it
are a mystery to those who understand
That if you love your children
If you value your family and friends
You should be able to empathise
and then make better choices
All lives matter and are of equal value
Deb Hawken - 2025
I feel this
I have never understood how people can be so unkind to others yet scream blue murder if someone is rude to people they care about. The double standards are unbelievable.
You can add double standards to my red lines above.
I have never understood why there is any need to be cruel and spiteful, we can all choose good words to express our point. Courteous words are often ten times more powerful than nasty ones, or curse words.
An amusing example
I had a very dear friend who was a master at dealing with such situations. A person we worked with walked over to him one day and spent at least three minutes calling my friend an idiot, in various unpleasant ways.
Keith let him finish. Looked up at him, and said quietly “really?” Then he just kept looking at him. The guy nearly disintegrated into the silence that followed. He didn’t know what to do, what to say, how to reply. In the end he just turned and walked away and Keith got on with his work.
So…back to war
Extrapolating this out, do the various warmongers trying to destroy this world not love their families? Surely they love them too much to have them die in a war?
They may think they can protect them, but with today’s weaponry that’s doubtful. Still those people kill innocent children in their beds, bomb hospitals, destroy housing, starve them. It doesn’t even matter to them that it could bring the same down on their families.
I will never understand them, but I’m sure you agree when I say that I wish they understood us.
Best love and hold the line for decency
Deb xx
Deb Hawken - Amorah 
This is so powerful. You make me wonder: if kindness is free, why do so many people choose cruelty instead? Is it fear, ignorance, or just the absence of empathy? Either way, you’re right — holding the line for decency matters.
LikeLiked by 3 people
That is an inspired way to look at it, kindness being free and costing nothing yet they choose expensive wars that destroy everything. They do say there are only two emotions, love and fear, and everything comes from those. So I see all harsh speech and violence as fear in action. But thank you for such a thoughtful comment. You must have a blog in that!
LikeLiked by 1 person