Uniquely Senseless Acts

 

In life, there are manifestly good actions with good outcomes, like when you buy a bunch of flowers for someone who needs some support. And there are manifestly bad actions, but with perceived good outcomes for one of the agents, like when a thief steals a bicycle and believes their life is better because they’ve gained a bicycle (although at some point they may learn that it isn't). 

But there is a third set, which I’d call self-defeating idiocy, which are manifestly bad actions with bad outcomes – that is, when someone does something that causes harm, inconvenience or loss to others, but derives no pleasure or increase themselves, probably even incurring detrimental outcomes (net losses), at least psychologically.

Examples of the third kind would be things like gross acts of vandalism: graffiti tags, wrecking a children’s playground area, setting fire to a communal bookcase for village book swaps, walking past a row of parked cars and breaking their wing mirrors, etc – the kind of thing we see reported too frequently in local newspapers.

Other things that spring to mind would be spiteful gossip, trolling strangers online without meaningful dialogue, malicious mockery or character assassination, that sort of thing.

There are lots of things that humans do that are bad, but done for some superficial gain – theft, reckless indulgence, fraud, manipulation, status seeking cruelty, tribal spite, etc. But acts of self defeating idiocy are uniquely senseless, because they harm everyone involved, confer no benefits to anyone, impress nobody, and only serve to humiliate and diminish the perpetrators, even if they are blind to it at the time.