Why Need A Reason To Be Good And Nice?

I was discussing the father / landlord character in the Hindi serial Mere Dad Ki Dulhan with a friend of mine. The dad, a widower with a daughter, is depicted as an egoistic, sarcastic, introverted person who can't stand social interactions. (The story in the serial seems just a bit like the movie You've Got Mail).

Of late, the dad has started getting close to a lady in a dating app, who incidentally is his own tenant, a lady who lives upstairs. Neither the lady nor the gentleman realizes who their dating app partner is in real life, that they are actually neighbors. As neighbors they detest each other.

The man recently had been behaving extremely crankily even by his own standards and has ended up messing up his own daughter's career.

The daughter who loves her father is pained by his behavior and tells him that she has lost respect for him and that she is sick and tired of the mess that he, her father, has been creating in her life. 

This is the background. And no, I haven't watched this serial. My friend told me that the father is so like me. And hence my interest in the serial. My friend updates me about the events after each episode. The daughter's anguish at her father was in yesterday's episode of the serial.

Now let's come to the crux of the matter.

Let's now assume that a doctor told the daughter TODAY that her father actually had Parkinson's or that his brain has tumor that caused his behavior to be weird. And that there is no cure.

What would the daughter think of her father TODAY (= meaning after hearing doctor's diagnosis)? How would her behavior or response towards her father be TODAY?

Most daughters (even sons!) would show a lot more compassion towards their father NOW after they understand their father's medical condition. 

Now here is my question: 

WHY should our (=daughter's) behavior depend on knowing the medical explanation? Why should we be nicer towards our father just because we have now learnt that he has an incurable disease that causes him to behave in a very unacceptable way? Why can't we, even when we don't know of any extenuating reason, accept someone's unacceptable behavior? Why do we need to know some good reason to be just human and nice? 

I explained to my friend - it took me an hour to explain this question in the previous para to my friend.

The human mind has a set quota for accepting unacceptable behavior. This quota is like management quota for college admission seats.

Very limited quota is available and the quota is released against (= in response to) a good reason such as mgmt quota or doctor's diagnosis of my father.

In such exceptional cases the daughter (or I) would make an exception and accept our father's unacceptable behavior and be more kind to him. 

It is not humanly possible to be kind to every dickhead. We need a reason to be kind to such a person. Sad, isn't it? And this is why we all give reasons. In the hope that MY reason will be good enough for you to be nice and tolerant towards MY unacceptable behavior. 

Social interactions expect us to accept such reasons and make exceptions and be kind while ALSO behave in an unacceptable manner ourselves and give reasons.


The winner is the person who comes up with such reasons more frequently and gets away with it.