{"id":33370,"date":"2026-04-17T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/?p=33370"},"modified":"2026-04-02T03:43:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T10:43:33","slug":"cant-say-something-nice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/cant-say-something-nice\/","title":{"rendered":"If You Can\u2019t Say Something Nice\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Who remembers \u201cthe Thumperian Principle,\u201d also known as \u201cThumper\u2019s Rule?\u201d If you ever saw the Disney film <\/span>Bambi<\/span><\/i>, you already know the answer.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the movie, Thumper the young rabbit remarks, in a loud voice, that the fawn Bambi \u201cis kinda wobbly\u201d and that \u201che doesn\u2019t walk too good.\u201d Thumper\u2019s mother and father\u2014two much wiser rabbits\u2014tell him \u201cIf you can\u2019t say something nice, don\u2019t say nothing at all.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"bambi-and-thumper\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

If you were raised the way I was, you instantly recognize that principle.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My grandmother must\u2019ve told me \u201cIf you can\u2019t say anything nice, don\u2019t say anything at all\u201d five hundred times as I grew up, as she attempted to teach me to be courteous and kind to others. I take that back\u2014at least a thousand times. I can still hear her gentle admonitions ringing in my ears, although she went on to her eternal reward many years ago, God rest her sweet soul. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RELATED: The Human Brain: Which Part Contains the Conscience?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To her, no one had any right to speak in a derogatory way about anyone else\u2014it just wasn\u2019t done where she came from. If you did ever insult, backbite or somehow offend another person, she believed, an immediate apology was in order\u2014and then, a period of somber reflection<\/a> to consider what gross defect in your character would make you want to purposely hurt someone else\u2019s feelings. She believed that people with what she called \u201cgood breeding\u201d simply didn\u2019t ever proactively try to hurt others\u2014and that when they did, it constituted a major spiritual flaw. It didn\u2019t matter if you did it intentionally or not\u2014what mattered, she taught me, was the inner quality of kindness and how I practiced it.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So as I grew up, I came to think of Thumper\u2019s Rule as a kind of verbal Golden Rule. I quickly learned, as most kids do, that a person\u2019s words can do actual harm to others\u2014and to themselves. Your words, Grandma taught me, can be weapons. You\u2019ve heard of karma\u2014the idea that all your actions, good and bad, eventually come back to you? Well, Thumper\u2019s Rule describes a kind of verbal karma, which tells us it\u2019s our job to keep what we say positive, truthful and kind; unless, sooner or later, we want to hear things that aren\u2019t so kind repeated right back to us.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thumper\u2019s Rule taught me that if I have something to say, I need to first internally ask myself whether it will hurt or insult or injure anyone. I haven\u2019t always managed to faithfully follow that rule\u2014sorry, Grandma\u2014but I\u2019ve tried. When I became a Baha\u2019i<\/a> as a teenager, and began to read the Baha\u2019i writings, I discovered that powerful rule of verbal karma all over again. The Baha\u2019i teachings express that kindly behavioral admonition even more strongly than I\u2019d ever heard it before:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should any soul become the cause of grief to any heart or despondency to any soul, it is better for him to hide himself in the lowest strata of the earth than to walk upon the earth. Should any soul desire the abasement of his kind, undoubtedly his non-entity is better for him, for his non-existence is better than his existence and his death better than his life.<\/span><\/p>

Therefore, my advice to you is, endeavour as much as ye can to show kindness toward all men, deal with perfect love, affection and devotion with all the individuals of humanity. \u2013 Abdu\u2019l-Baha<\/a>, Star of the West<\/em>, Volume 1, p. 2.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Yikes! When I first read that, I thought back on all the times I\u2019d heedlessly violated that verbal Golden Rule, and I cringed inwardly. You\u2019ve heard the expression \u201cI felt like crawling into a hole\u201d? Well, as I thought about the hurtful things I\u2019d said in the past, whether consciously or unconsciously, I truly did feel like hiding myself \u201cin the lowest strata of the earth.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RELATED: What Does it Mean to Be \u201cReligious?\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which brings me to the idea of political correctness and our insult-laden cultures. Some people blame social media for the rampant spread of \u201cinsult culture,\u201d but it certainly existed before we had Facebook and Twitter. Some point to the friction caused by our increasing diversity and heterogeneity as the proximal cause; but insults and put-downs have been around much longer than those societal trends. Some would say that insulting others, especially those on the opposite side of a social issue or a political battle, is somehow cathartic, \u201ctruth-telling\u201d or a way to vent our frustrations.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That happened to a friend of mine on Facebook the other day. He posted something kind and thoughtful on the issue of racial unity; and someone who read it called him a nasty anatomical name I won\u2019t repeat, in print and in public. Others challenged the insulter on his use of the epithet, but he said, in effect: \u201cHey\u2014it\u2019s how I feel, so too bad if you\u2019re offended. In fact, I hope you are.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What has brought us to this stage in the development of human society? Are we losing the kindness and politeness\u2014the basic regard for others\u2014that we were all (or at least some of us) taught as children? Are we descending quickly into a dark pit of anger, calumny and open hostility toward people who don\u2019t agree with us?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this series of essays, I\u2019d like to challenge the notions that have led us to believe such things, and humbly ask that we all consider stopping the verbal and written carnage we see every day now on social media, in the press and in the open human interactions we all encounter. Ungoverned by any constraints, we tend to descend to that lowest level the Baha\u2019i<\/a> teachings describe, insulting one another until we begin to sound like first-graders on the playground, saying \u201cYou stink!\u201d and \u201cNo, you stink!\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our public discourse, rather than elevating itself to new levels of intelligence and insightfulness, has begun to descend far below the gutter, into the lowest strata of the earth.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s how wars begin\u2014first the insults, then the anger, then the shouting, and then the killing.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who remembers \u201cthe Thumperian Principle,\u201d also known as \u201cThumper\u2019s Rule?\u201d If you ever saw the Disney film Bambi, you already know the answer. In the movie, Thumper the young rabbit…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":72108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2946],"tags":[3433],"series":[939],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33370"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89185,"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33370\/revisions\/89185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33370"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=33370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}