We think we hate unsolicited advice.

In fact, what we hate is schadenfreude disguised as benevolence.

Schadenfreude does not need to be asked; it leaps at every opportunity.

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Unsolicited advice that is genuine, respectful, intended to help, carefully considered, delivered with caution and open ears — which provides you with something you really can use to resolve a painful problem… Doesn’t gratitude follows automatically with no conscious effort?

Thoroughly good advice, solicited or not, is extremely rare and precious. The most reliable litmus test of the quality of advice: the gratitude or irritation of the advised.

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If you run out of gas in some uninhabited region of west Texas, what you need is some gas.

What you’ll get is detailed driving directions to the nearest gas stations, the closest being 60 miles away.

You’ll get people with full tanks of gas pulling up beside you, saying “Follow me, and I’ll lead you to the gas station.”

You’ll get people telling you about the gas station you passed hours ago where you could have and should have gotten gas, despite the outrageous prices.

You’ll see people zipping by in hybrids or on motorcycles or bicycles, shaking their heads at your stupid choice of vehicle.

You’ll get all kinds of driving tips.

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A policy: Whenever gratitude is expected, default to suspicion; when gratitude is demanded, default to hostility.

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When your own advice is rejected or reluctantly accepted with ingratitude, resist the temptation to demand gratitude, or to explain away or otherwise invalidate the response. Instead try asking: “How much of what I am doing is motivated by goodwill, and how much of it is pure self-gratification?”

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Gratitude and love cannot be directly willed. There is not point in demanding them. Yet, they are eternally demanded.

The same is true for belief, and even disbelief. You cannot decide to believe something. There is not point in demanding that someone believe some fact, theory or doctrine.

You also cannot decide to doubt something.

“Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.” – C. S. Peirce

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What can we decide and directly will? What can we ask of another person? What can we legitimately demand?

We need to get clear on what is ethically possible and what is mere fantasy, what is beneficial and what is harmful, what is a reasonable appeal and what is a lever of manipulation.