Curb Your Disgust: Keep Your Standards Without Losing Your Soul
Why dehumanization feels clean; and how to stop liking it.
Anger argues. Disgust sneers.
Whilst anger can be a powerful motivator, it still wants to win you over. Disgust wants you gone. Erased. Obliterated. The moment the lip curls, something shifts inside us. We stop trying to correct a problem and start trying to erase a person. It feels righteous. Like moral cleanliness. But it is a dirty tool: it strips dignity from others and clarity from us. If you have ever felt that sudden surge of “Ugh, these people,” you have touched a switch you absolutely do not want to flip often.
I am not making a case for softness. Standards matter. Boundaries matter. Consequences matter. I am saying disgust is a blunt instrument that turns people into categories and categories into targets. It is efficient, but it is dangerous.
Why Disgust Feels Powerful
Disgust hands us a story we love: This is beneath me. This behaviour is sub-human. With that one thought, the world simplifies. No nuance, no curiosity, no messy causes. Just a quick rinse in contempt. It is also contagious. Your tribe, whoever they may be, will usually applaud it. The applause rewards the reflex, and so the reflex gets stronger.
That is why disgust feels cleaner than anger. Anger can still negotiate. Disgust bypasses problem-solving and compassion, and jumps straight to expulsion: “Get it away from me.” In biology, that instinct protects us from spoiled food and disease. In social life, it tempts us to treat people like pathogens, which ought not to be done.
The Slide from Deed to Person to Kind
Dehumanization does not arrive with marching bands. It sneaks in through grammar.
“That act is foul.” (Accurate and useful.)
“You are foul.” (Identity attack.)
“People like you are vermin.” (Category-level contempt.)
Once someone is filed under infestation, cruelty starts to feel like hygiene. Mockery feels like cleanliness. Exclusion feels like maintenance. We do not experience ourselves as being unkind; we experience ourselves as being pure. We engage in cruelty that masquerades as protection of those closest to us from harm. We will believe this lie. Because it will tell us exactly what we want to hear.
That is the trick: disgust lets us do harm while feeling moral. It greases the rails from disagreement to dehumanization.
The Bill It Sends to You
Disgust promises power but invoices your better self.
Clarity collapses. You stop seeing causes and constraints; you see caricatures. Solutions do not survive caricature. Only slogans do.
Decency dulls. Your jokes sharpen. Your empathy thins. You start collecting roll-call votes for your contempt and calling it “standards.”
Self-respect erodes. You begin to like the worst parts of yourself. The part that enjoys the righteous fury we experience when we decide that a thing, or person, is “beneath us.” The part that confuses being numb with being strong.
Competence drops. Disgust is problem-avoidant. Solutions require contact; disgust demands distance. You cannot repair what you refuse to touch.
In short: the more disgust you pour on the world, the more you dissolve your own judgment.
"Disgust is a solvent: pour enough and you’ll dissolve your own judgment.”
Keep the Edge, Lose the Rot: Practical Ways to Curb It
I am not asking you to holster your standards. I am asking you to sharpen them intelligently. When you feel your lip begin to curl, consider following the simple eight-point plan outlined below.
1) Name it early. Say (aloud or inwardly): “This is disgust.” Naming interrupts momentum. If you can name it, you can aim it.
2) Carve with precision. Condemn the behaviour in nouns: “the lie,” “the theft,” “the breach.” Avoid identity absolutes: “You are filth.” Standards attach to conduct. Keep them there. That is where they belong.
3) Install a time fuse. No emails, posts, ultimatums, or policies while your lip is still curled. Take ten minutes, three breaths, or one sleep cycle. Clean decisions require clean hands and a clean mind. You would not cook in a filthy pot, so do not seek to engage in rhetoric with a sullied mind.
4) Humanize on purpose (without excusing). Ask for one concrete detail about the person’s constraints or incentives. “What did they think they were protecting?” Not to absolve, but to explain; so you can intervene where it helps.
5) Argue standards, not status. “This violates the standard; here’s what compliance looks like” is stronger than “You’re beneath me.” The former teaches; the latter scorches.
6) Design a ritual reset. Pick a sentence you can say under pressure:
“I’m condemning the act; I’m not erasing the human.”
“What’s the smallest fix that moves this forward?”
“Name the standard. Show the breach. Propose the remedy.”
7) Create exit ramps. If disgust persists, do not let it become your craft. Delegate the decision, escalate to someone with more distance, or add separation. Distance can protect standards from your state.
8) Rehearse before you need it. The time to practice is not during a live fire. Run the script on low-stakes annoyances. Build the muscle memory before your values are tested under load.
Micro-checklist (spot the sneer):
Lip curl.
Nose wrinkle.
“ugh” words.
Category language (“these people”).
The urge to mock instead of solve.
The temptation to go public for applause.
Where Disgust Belongs
Disgust is not evil; it is simply dangerous when mis-aimed, yet there are places where it helps.
Hygiene and safety. Mouldy food, infection control, workplace hazards: disgust keeps you alive.
Practices, not populations. Aim revulsion at rot you can define precisely: the practice of falsifying results, the process that rewards cruelty, the policy that punishes honesty. “We will not tolerate this practice” beats “We will not tolerate these people.”
Your own betrayals. Turn a bit of disgust inward. Not at yourself as a human being, but at the part of you that breaks your word. Then trade disgust for discipline and make the fix.
What This Looks Like in the Wild
In teams: Someone repeatedly misses deadlines. The disgust reflex says, “Dead weight.” The standard says, “Our commitment is X; your misses are Y. Here is the plan, the support, the timeline, and the consequence.” Clean, specific, human, defensible.
In public discourse: You see a headline that confirms your worst story about them. The disgust reflex drags you to the comments. The standard says, “Am I sharing to solve or to sneer?” If it is to sneer, close the tab. If it is to solve, write with evidence and civility. Or do not write at all.
In leadership: A policy backfires. The disgust reflex hunts for a scapegoat. The standard asks, “What was the mechanism of failure?” Fix mechanism first, blame last (if at all).
“Cruelty dressed as cleanliness is still cruelty.”
A Word on Strength
Some hear “curb your disgust” and assume “go soft.” No. This is about force discipline. Think of it like carrying a blade: the point is not to swing it at everything that moves. The point is to be dangerous and choose restraint. To be capable of contempt and aim for remedy instead. To keep your standards sharp without sharpening your teeth or withering your soul.
There is a different kind of power available when you stop using disgust as your primary tool. You become the person who can condemn precisely, correct effectively, and walk away clean. People trust that. Even your opponents will sense it, fear it, and respect it.
Close: The Clean Edge
Let disgust judge the deed, not erase the human. Keep your standards tough enough to bite and your humanity tough enough to hold them. When you feel your lip start to curl, take it as an alarm, not a green light. That is the moment to reach for the sentence you rehearsed, the standard you named, the remedy you designed.
The world does not need fewer standards. It needs fewer sneers.
Maxim — “The Clean Edge” Let disgust cut the deed, not the human.
Damna mores, non homines.
— Dr Stephen D. Jones
#Leadership #Ethics #EmotionalIntelligence #MoralPsychology #DecisionMaking