Why is: "I'm only human" an excuse for bad behavior?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Usually, when someone says: “I’m only human”, they actually mean: “So I behaved badly, but you know what? Too bad. What, you want me to be PERFECT?”. It seldom seems to mean: " I have tried and will keep trying to better myself, but occasionally, there’s a glitch. I’m sorry".

I have wondered about this. Especially in therapy, where I am starting to wonder how hard I should be on myself, and at what point I should accept myself with my quirks, even when those quirks cause pain or at least annoyance to myself or others.

Where is the line between self-acceptance and a cop-out?

2

Yesterday I was having a conversation with my 12 year old daughter. She was lamenting how most of the girls at school were constantly gossiping. I asked her if she also engaged in gossip and she sheepishly replied, “Well, yes. But… but… I can’t help it.”

Not sure where she got the idea that she has no control over her actions.

I told her she is responsible for *all *of her actions and words, and she *must *learn to control them.

3

Huh? That’s what it means when I say it. My mother, for example, holds me to impossibly high standards. I have no idea where she got this idea that I’m superhuman from, but every mistake I’ve ever made has upset her, and/or led to colossal disappointment. So, sometimes I have to say to her, “I don’t try to be bad, but I am not God, and sometimes make mistakes.” Come to think of it, she’s the only person I have to explain this to. I’m not a chronically shitty person, and when I err, I apologize, and most people accept this. Perhaps I am strange in this regard, or perhaps that’s the way “I’m human” is usually meant, but you’re one of those my-mother types, and everything short of perfection bad, and any response to such other than “I’ll get perfect” is interpreted as cop-out.

4

A “mistake” is when you accidently add sugar instead of flour to a recipe.

Most poor decisions are not mistakes; they are due to lack of character, moral failings, poor judgment, and/or an inability to accept responsibility.

I’m not riding a high horse here; I have made *many *bad decisions in my life. But I am careful not to call them “mistakes.” I also accept complete responsibility for them.

5

I think “poor judgement” could be considered a mistake.

6

I usually take the ‘‘I’m only human’’ approach in one of two circumstances:

  1. I made a mistake and I’m making myself feel disproportionately awful for having made it.
  2. I made a mistake and feel someone else is trying to make me feel disproportionately awful for having made it.

As MeanOldLady suggests, the need to make this statement comes more often from people with irrational standards for human behavior. To use an extreme example, when I was growing up, my mother had a tendency to send me to a relative’s house whenever she felt she wasn’t being respected, and she wouldn’t let me come home unless I promised to change my behavior. I once lived with my grandparents for two weeks because I refused to agree to her standards.

What had I done? Robbed a liquor store? Kicked a puppy? Stolen a baby? Done drugs? Had friends over without permission? No, I was a straight-A student and a devout Christian. The unforgiveable sin was talking back. My thousand and one apologies were not sufficient to cover this sin. I was only permitted to live at home if I agreed to stop talking back forever. In fact, when I did finally come home, it was to a three-hour lecture about how I had one year to stop acting like a normal teenager or else I would be thrown out on the street by my 17th birthday. Eventually I realized, SHIT, I don’t actually want to live here anyway, and left of my own accord at 17.

If that were the end of the story, it wouldn’t be relevant to this conversation. But the fact is sometimes the standards placed upon you by others have a tendency to rub off. Sometimes I find myself saying the same nonsense my mother said to me, ‘‘Well, olives, you’re a worthwhile person if and only if you never do X again.’’ That’s when the reasonable me has to step in and say, ‘‘Waaaait a minute. I’m only human.’’ I’d even take it a step further. I have a right to be human.

I’ve made plenty of mistakes, and I’ve always been willing to own them, to correct them, but what I am no longer willing to do is grovel for them.

Maastricht, there is a common belief among humans that ‘‘being too hard on oneself’’ is necessary to change behavior. It’s not. It’s completely possible to acknowledge you did something problematic, or that you have a problematic behavior, without labeling yourself as a person worthy of scorn and derision. A lot of mental health problems stem from the one’s inability to make this distinction. Often, people don’t want to accept the ‘‘shame’’ of imperfection and therefore do nothing to fix the problem, or they bludgeon themselves repeatedly for every slip-up.

A happier life is a more balanced one, one where we can say, ‘‘Damn, there I go ‘being human’ again. I certainly behaved badly, but that doesn’t make me a bad person. Fortunately I am blessed with the free will to avoid making the same mistake in the future.’’

7

Who said anything about not taking complete responsibility? Nobody likes to be harangued for a lapse in judgment, is all. We all have them. People who repeatedly have them with no discernible effort to learn from them are called shitheads. The rest of us are called human.

Edit:

What she said.

8

I’m not sure about ‘excuse’ being the right word–sometimes people use ‘excuse’ to mean ‘something I can say to weasel out of the consequences’. This puts the excuse incident into a kind of unequal superior/inferior relationship, rather than a relationship of two equal adults.

I agree that ‘I’m only human’ is a reaction to impossibly-high standards, even if they’re only momentary. We can’t be Heinleinian über-competent supergeniuses all the time, after all. We are also weak, distracted, and damaged by our histories.

9

We can all ‘try’ to do the right thing, all the time, but in the end we all have bad days, when we’re tired, or grumpy, or cross, or distracted - that’s being human, in my eyes, and a cross word when you’ve had a really bad day doesn’t make you a moral failure. That’s a whole heap different from intentionally setting out to the do the wrong thing.

I find the ‘lack of character/moral failings’ comment a rather loose way to describe someone’s failings - what’s the bar you’re setting people against here? And I would regard ‘poor judgement’ as a perfectly common human failing - I wouldn’t regard it as moral bankrupcy. Inability to accept responsibility is another thing entirely.

10

I have never in my entire life heard anyone use “I’m only human” as a serious excuse, and I’ve never known a person who would for an instant accept it as such.

11

That’s a really good question. Maybe it’s the same line I use for evaluating assertive behaviour - I have every right to defend my own toes, but I have no right to step on anyone else’s. If your behaviour hurts someone else, you need to dial it back and not excuse it by saying you’re just human, but if your behaviour doesn’t hurt anyone else, then you’re free to have your quirks.

12

Social tests like Abstinence Only or Communism fairly well demonstrate that humans are humans and trying to impose some false, idealized state is going to fail. The Bible and Confucianism mostly just produced a cluster-fuck of people finding ways to legitimize the course that history took by selective quoting and interpretation of their religion or philosophy, rather than becoming (respectively) saints and gentlemen.

Now that doesn’t mean that one can’t argue for more moral or less selfish behavior, just that a method for directing human nature in that direction is just as necessary. You need to develop new ideas of economics or politics to accomplish them.

There’s also the question of what really is or isn’t moral. For thousands of years, people taught that the pursuit of financial comfort or financial gain was a sin, they also taught that sodomy, homosexuality, sexual equality, etc. were all sins. It’s probably fairly likely that polygamy and suicide will become acceptable “sins” within the next 100 years.

Ignoring all of that though, whenever someone says, “I’m only human”, most likely they aren’t being philosophical, they’re just bluffing their way around behavior they knew was assholish. If they thought that they were in the right they’d be a bit more creative in their response.

13

I think “I’m only human” explains bad behavior, but doesn’t excuse it.

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14

IMHO we were never intended for perfection, just to do the best we can with what we are, sometimes that means we mess up, sometimes we are sloppy. We are God’s children, children are suppose to make mistakes and make messes. We have to, and we are suppose to, depend on God to cover our mistakes and the like. Trying to be perfect is trying to do God’s job which we can’t.

As for using it as a cop out, perhaps, but many people actually can not accomplish what seems like they should be able to do. Yes they may be able to do it once, but if it’s a repeated thing, like being ontime, if one can’t then they have to seek out the root cause, struggling against it will hurt them in other ways because the root is not dealt with.

15

It’s an explanation, not an excuse.

16

I don’t know that being hard on yourself ever does any good. You can give the matter serious thought and resolve to change this part of your ways or revise what you do in some way. Forgive yourself as you would anyone else and just do better.

A word about poor judgment: A person’s brain chemistry affects their judgment. People with clinical depression may have their judgment and perceptions clouded by what is going on in their brains. That is not a character flaw. Neither is ignorance unless it is willful.

17

I wish it were that simple.
If my quirk is overstressing about minor problems, then I am mostly hurting myself, but I am not exactly pleasant for my co-workers either. And if there’s an over 50 % chanche that, when I’m PMS-sing, I will not be able to keep from snapping at coworkers or a spouse, then how far does my obligation go to prevent this from ever happening? using up sick days and staying home? Therapy helps somewhat, but not enough.

I completely agree with you. Applied to my OP, and reading all these responses, self-acceptance should not be acceptance of imperfection as a state - then it is a cop-out; it should be self-acceptance during the process of trying to better oneself.
In other words, an atheistic version of what **kanicbird **said, only I turn to psychology and therapists instead of God and my priest. And I agree with Zoe that biochemistry is an awful force for us humans to be up against. In which fight knowledge is our best weapon. Knowledge brougth us Prozac, and books like the one I’m currently reading about how our food affects our brain chemistry, Potatoes not Prozac.

18

I dunno. I seem to hear “I made some bad choices” far more often than “I’m only human” lately. Is making bad choices just a more modern version?

19

I agree that it isn’t that simple; a husband shouldn’t divorce a wife just because she snapped at him once when she was PMSing, but a wife doesn’t get a free pass to be a bitch every month because of PMS, either. Maybe the answer is in the effort - trying not to hurt other people with your human weaknesses and failings, and other human beings seeing that you’re honestly trying, that you fail once in awhile, and forgiving you anyway.

20

Well I’ve never heard the exchange “Why did you do Bad Thing X?” followed by “Because I’m human.” That’d be a pretty crappy exchange. The human bit is usually followed by endless badgering about something that is bad, but doesn’t make you Hitler. There are, of course, some habitual screw ups who attempt to shrug off their poor behavior with the human excuse, but for the most part, I’ve seen it as the exasperated throwing up of arms, “All right, will you let it go already, you relentless harpie? I’ve erred. I’m human!”