About insults
April 25th 2011 04:43
Written on this before, but here's another look.
Say someone calls your mother a dog, and you're insulted.
Why are you insulted?
If the allegation is false, both literally and metaphorically, couldn't you simply say, "No, she isn't," and shrug it off?
Or if the allegation is true, couldn't you simply say, "Yes, that's right," and shrug it off?
The fact that most non-Stoics don't, or even can't or don't want to, shows that there's something more that's involved than straightforward propositions.
Emotional cause and effect
The first thing to mention, as obvious as it may be, is that we're not computers, and we don't process language simply in terms of truth value. Words have effects on us, thoughts have effects on us. Ripples in a pond. We don't hear "rape", "Holocaust", "God" and "love" and remain in neutral gear.
From this perspective, it's unstrange that what you say to me activates a causal chain, gets my mind working, with some emotional result, or something that could be called hurt or distress.
This also goes for supposed scenarios. Consider the way that most of the acting techniques out there are based in some sense on "what if". If I imagine that I love my father dearly and that he's just been killed in an accident, that might well depress me, might well have this emotional consequence, though in actual fact I might hate my father and the bastard is very much alive.
"Unstrange", but still mysteries here -- why is it hurtful to consider your mother a dog, or for her actually to be one? And there are also more general questions like: why don't we process words like computers?
An answer presumably will have something to do with what emotions are, why, evolutionarily speaking, we have them, how the causal levers come to be formed, and how they're activated; and an answer will also be individual-dependent -- who knows what experiences, trauma, physiology led to this reaction in you?
Conditioning
Expanding slightly, a few ideas on the role of conditioning.
-- Conditionings must have their basis in something prior. Dispositions must have their basis in predispositions. Presumably there are at least practical limits on what I can get you to be insulted by. Is it mere coincidence that insults have common patterns across cultures?
-- Are insults more nature or more nurture? Impossible question, of course. But it should be observed, on the nurture side of the discussion, that, though there's commonality, there's obviously a great deal of cultural relativity in what counts as an insult and in what causes mental distress.
In one culture, when someone says "you're a son of a goat", it might be time to get the knives out. In another culture, the expression might seem ridiculous.
The issue is related to the untranslatability of words -- the exact place that "goat" holds in a language and culture -- all the associations it's accrued, all the proverbs and well-known quotes it occurs in, all the idiomatic ways (difficult for any dictionary entry to spell out) in which it's used and not used...
-- Again on the nurture side of the discussion, insults are tied up with culturally specific values and beliefs, especially moral beliefs. Associations and complexes of ideas. Whether "homosexual" is an insult in part depends on the homophobia of the culture.
So you can't treat insults purely in a propositional way, but neither, often, can you entirely exclude propositional meaning.
Power
I've mentioned two main ways to think about insults: (1) as sound-images that, by genetics or conditioning, you just respond to; someone calls you a "prick" or a "bastard" and you automatically see red; (2) as propositions whose truth value is significant (as with the example of "homosexual", or as with any case where something is more hurtful when it's true).
But there's a third way to think about insults -- as speech-acts, as acts of power, especially within the space of social rules, whether or not anyone else is around to witness. That is, the insult is an attack or a challenge or a flexing of biceps.
Thinking of an insult as an action, again it could be either something to which you automatically respond, like a punch or a slap, or something that should also be understood in terms of conscious awareness of social rules and consequences.
Basically, when I insult you, I diminish you or raise myself. I gain status in the pack. And this is especially true if you don't respond.
For instance, the act could imply any of:
-- I have skill at insults (such skill is itself socially valued, admired, particularly if it gives others the pleasures of laughter or a sense of their own superiority);
-- or I have wounded you (and I'm therefore powerful and you're therefore vulnerable -- your armour has holes in it);
-- or I have wounded or tried to wound you without retaliation (you're so weak or I'm so strong, in terms of insult skill or social power, that you can't attack me or are afraid to do so);
-- or I have enough confidence in my status to engage in this sort of hostile act in the first place (which reaffirms or boosts my status).
Of course, all this talk of power is simply to verbalize what every kindergarten student already knows.
One more thought: what is the remedy for an insult?
Well, whether you understand insults as social acts or mental distress, regaining social standing seems often to kill both birds with one stone. If you win the battle of words, or you demonstrate superiority or power in some other way, or external forces act to diminish the aggessor (an asteroid drops out of the sky on top of them), then the emotion of insult (not that it's a simple emotion) seems also to vanish (though the scar of it might remain). You simultaneously free yourself of the mark, the stigma, and alleviate your mental distress.
This leads to another topic: apologies. An explanation of what insults are and how they work obviously bears on what apologies are and how they work.
Notes
-- Moments after writing this, I realised something stupidly obvious that I didn't touch on: insults don't have to be verbal at all. I could insult you by cutting ahead of you in the line, by not asking your permission before I date your daughter, by smoking in public.
-- Monday 13 June 2011: The broader category, of which insult is a subset, is offence. Why do some things offend some people and not others? Why are you offended by x but not y? Etc.
Say someone calls your mother a dog, and you're insulted.
Why are you insulted?
If the allegation is false, both literally and metaphorically, couldn't you simply say, "No, she isn't," and shrug it off?
Or if the allegation is true, couldn't you simply say, "Yes, that's right," and shrug it off?
The fact that most non-Stoics don't, or even can't or don't want to, shows that there's something more that's involved than straightforward propositions.
Emotional cause and effect
The first thing to mention, as obvious as it may be, is that we're not computers, and we don't process language simply in terms of truth value. Words have effects on us, thoughts have effects on us. Ripples in a pond. We don't hear "rape", "Holocaust", "God" and "love" and remain in neutral gear.
From this perspective, it's unstrange that what you say to me activates a causal chain, gets my mind working, with some emotional result, or something that could be called hurt or distress.
This also goes for supposed scenarios. Consider the way that most of the acting techniques out there are based in some sense on "what if". If I imagine that I love my father dearly and that he's just been killed in an accident, that might well depress me, might well have this emotional consequence, though in actual fact I might hate my father and the bastard is very much alive.
"Unstrange", but still mysteries here -- why is it hurtful to consider your mother a dog, or for her actually to be one? And there are also more general questions like: why don't we process words like computers?
An answer presumably will have something to do with what emotions are, why, evolutionarily speaking, we have them, how the causal levers come to be formed, and how they're activated; and an answer will also be individual-dependent -- who knows what experiences, trauma, physiology led to this reaction in you?
Conditioning
Expanding slightly, a few ideas on the role of conditioning.
-- Conditionings must have their basis in something prior. Dispositions must have their basis in predispositions. Presumably there are at least practical limits on what I can get you to be insulted by. Is it mere coincidence that insults have common patterns across cultures?
-- Are insults more nature or more nurture? Impossible question, of course. But it should be observed, on the nurture side of the discussion, that, though there's commonality, there's obviously a great deal of cultural relativity in what counts as an insult and in what causes mental distress.
In one culture, when someone says "you're a son of a goat", it might be time to get the knives out. In another culture, the expression might seem ridiculous.
The issue is related to the untranslatability of words -- the exact place that "goat" holds in a language and culture -- all the associations it's accrued, all the proverbs and well-known quotes it occurs in, all the idiomatic ways (difficult for any dictionary entry to spell out) in which it's used and not used...
-- Again on the nurture side of the discussion, insults are tied up with culturally specific values and beliefs, especially moral beliefs. Associations and complexes of ideas. Whether "homosexual" is an insult in part depends on the homophobia of the culture.
So you can't treat insults purely in a propositional way, but neither, often, can you entirely exclude propositional meaning.
Power
I've mentioned two main ways to think about insults: (1) as sound-images that, by genetics or conditioning, you just respond to; someone calls you a "prick" or a "bastard" and you automatically see red; (2) as propositions whose truth value is significant (as with the example of "homosexual", or as with any case where something is more hurtful when it's true).
But there's a third way to think about insults -- as speech-acts, as acts of power, especially within the space of social rules, whether or not anyone else is around to witness. That is, the insult is an attack or a challenge or a flexing of biceps.
Thinking of an insult as an action, again it could be either something to which you automatically respond, like a punch or a slap, or something that should also be understood in terms of conscious awareness of social rules and consequences.
Basically, when I insult you, I diminish you or raise myself. I gain status in the pack. And this is especially true if you don't respond.
For instance, the act could imply any of:
-- I have skill at insults (such skill is itself socially valued, admired, particularly if it gives others the pleasures of laughter or a sense of their own superiority);
-- or I have wounded you (and I'm therefore powerful and you're therefore vulnerable -- your armour has holes in it);
-- or I have wounded or tried to wound you without retaliation (you're so weak or I'm so strong, in terms of insult skill or social power, that you can't attack me or are afraid to do so);
-- or I have enough confidence in my status to engage in this sort of hostile act in the first place (which reaffirms or boosts my status).
Of course, all this talk of power is simply to verbalize what every kindergarten student already knows.
***
One more thought: what is the remedy for an insult?
Well, whether you understand insults as social acts or mental distress, regaining social standing seems often to kill both birds with one stone. If you win the battle of words, or you demonstrate superiority or power in some other way, or external forces act to diminish the aggessor (an asteroid drops out of the sky on top of them), then the emotion of insult (not that it's a simple emotion) seems also to vanish (though the scar of it might remain). You simultaneously free yourself of the mark, the stigma, and alleviate your mental distress.
This leads to another topic: apologies. An explanation of what insults are and how they work obviously bears on what apologies are and how they work.
***
Notes
-- Moments after writing this, I realised something stupidly obvious that I didn't touch on: insults don't have to be verbal at all. I could insult you by cutting ahead of you in the line, by not asking your permission before I date your daughter, by smoking in public.
-- Monday 13 June 2011: The broader category, of which insult is a subset, is offence. Why do some things offend some people and not others? Why are you offended by x but not y? Etc.
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