“But that’s not what happened, because her aggressive tattletale move immediately threw my Primitive Mind into a rage, plummeting me down the Psych Spectrum. This banished my Higher Mind to the closet of my subconscious, allowing my Primitive Mind to come up with a genius-yet-psychotic plan for revenge. Which worked, and made my Primitive Mind feel deeply satisfied in a very not-grown-up way.”
His entire point is that the average person acts like an asshole some of the time and like a kind person some of the time, and that it is incredibly easy to cherry-pick examples to paint someone in a bad (or good) light.
Which is exactly what you have done here, proving his point!
And I differ a bit with your reasoning. Follow the rules because most passengers believe they must be important? Not because, say, the airline thinks they must be important?
I mean if rules say you need to report your fellow Uighurs, you should follow them because other will?
If everyone reports on their fellow Jew/Uighur, you should follow along? I mean not doing so might cause distress to your neighbor.
I'm not interested in this particular case, but in general.
At some point we have to put a cap on how much we value other people's feelings. There are neurotic personality types that by nature literally make up asinine things to worry about, and you'd have to run an infinite treadmill conforming to their nonsense. Empathy is an important value but its not an idol to be worshipped, and it should not be a rhetorical superweapon.
Not the main point of the article obviously but man, the writer makes himself sound like a bit of an asshole with this story. Didn't encourage me to listen to his other opinions.
Edit: I kinda regret making this comment since I think it detracts from discussion of the article itself, which is very thorough and thoughtful in general. Maybe this is a meta Psych Spectrum commentary.