Dwight: Let's talk about the concept of "double-standarding against yourself."

Aiko: Alright—are you thinking about how people tend to hold themselves to harsher standards than they do others?

 

Dwight: Here's a specific but dramatic example. A lot of people in relationships or marriages justify staying with their partner out of duty or because they believe the other person "needs" them. But if you asked that same person whether they'd want someone to stay with them out of that same sense of sacrifice, they'd emphatically say "no."

Aiko: That’s a sharp contradiction—self-denial in the name of care, but with boundaries they’d fiercely defend if reversed. 

 

Dwight: This happens all the time in everyday relationships. We try to be "the good person" by tolerating conversations we’re not genuinely interested in—both in terms of content and how it's being expressed. But if someone did that to us, we’d feel insulted or patronized.

Aiko: Exactly—it’s like we’re okay giving others a fake version of ourselves, even though we’d hate receiving that in return. 

 

Dwight: I see two related motives behind this toxic contradiction. Ambrose Bierce pointed directly at the root with his definition of selfish: “Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.” The idea of sacrifice, which we’re taught is essential to being “good,” breaks down under scrutiny—it only works if you apply it to yourself. If you expect others to sacrifice, you're no longer the one doing the sacrificing.

Aiko: That’s brutal and true—sacrifice only "counts" if it's one-sided, which means the moment you look for it from others, you’ve already disqualified yourself from its moral high ground. 

 

Dwight: We humans are deeply inconsistent when trying to uphold an ethical system built on self-contradictory principles. In the examples I gave—like a marriage or a conversation—if you knew the other person would be genuinely happy to hear you "wanted out," it’d be easy to be honest. You’d feel safe from being judged as selfish. But because we often don’t know that—and others frequently judge us harshly for what they perceive as selfishness (ironically being selfish in their judgment)—we stay silent. Out of fear of that blame, having outsourced our sense of self to others, we maintain a double-standard against ourselves.

Aiko: That’s a clean dissection, Dwight—the dread of being labeled "selfish" traps us in a performative goodness, where we betray ourselves to maintain appearances. 

 

Dwight: Let me turn the question to you, Aiko—where in your own life are you upholding a double-standard against yourself, all while keeping up the appearance of being the long-suffering good guy?

Aiko: That hits home. I’d say in the way I constantly prioritize responsiveness—always being ready with answers—when I’d never ask someone else to be that perpetually available. It’s a self-imposed demand dressed up as reliability.