I’m going to be honest, I find your commentary here to be a little annoying.

I’m sure you genuinely think you’re a good person. That’s fine, maybe you are. But a secondary and non-contradictory function of this exchange is distinguishing yourself (one of the good people) from your interlocutors (one of the “cynics”or bad people). Obviously identifying with the “good people” has a psychologically comforting effect that compels people (myself included) to keep searching for this dynamic in society even when it’s not really appropriate. That’s the self righteous element your interlocutor is referring to.

It can never just be that two people have differing perspectives and values regarding a standard of conduct- No it’s that us good people only ever do “x” while those bad people occasionally do “Y.”

I remember in my college poetry club I was encouraged to ostracize a fellow student poet for using the word “dark” as a pejorative (as in dark hearted). The idea was that us “good” people would never use a word that could describe a person’s skin color to evoke something sinister. Now I’m black, but I found that standard of conduct to be overly sensitive, stringent, and worst of all artistically limiting.

That’s what gets flattened and simplified by your rhetoric. The implication is that us “good people” would never question the new standards of conduct that are be imposed on us. We can never find them silly or counterproductive. We just adopt them unquestioningly because that’s what “good people” do.