• Philosophy and Spirituality
    Welcome Guest
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Threads of Note Socialize
  • P&S Moderators: JackARoe | Cheshire_Kat

Why do people care about insults?

C

cowardescent

Bluelighter
Joined
Jun 29, 2017
Messages
404
I've always wondered this. When it comes to being an outcast behaviours like being suicidal, having committed a crime, or even using hard drugs, society uses pejoratives like "weak", "selfish", "ill", "cowardly" etc..

The reason I'm confused is that I thought the mantra/trope of "don't listen to insults"/"don't care what others think". was something people repeated.

Now people will argue that we live in a society and need to obey social laws/norms but where's the line?

For example, I think the base that someone needs to follow is law unless they want their job prospects and freedom to be irrevocably diminished.

When it comes to think like using drugs or suicide, why do many care so much if you're "weak"/"selfish"? So what if someone is that? Is it human ego craving for acceptance?? Ah being a social animal is shit. I envy the tigers on the planes of Africa that don't can live on their own...lol. sorry for the rant but what do you think?
 
You're right to point out the hypocrisy. I think it's a combination of two things. First, society uses shame to try to keep people in line with what the general social mores are. It works because people tend to fear what they do not understand. For drug use, propaganda has been circulated ever since drugs first became illegal to try to demonize them and also their users. Think Reefer Madness, where people were told that marijuana users become out of control rapists and murderers. A lot of people believed that so it's not hard to see why people looked down on drug users. They knew nothing about marijuana, except the lies they were told, which were specifically designed to produce fear. Although things have improved a lot (especially for marijuana), these ideas born from a lack of understanding are still affecting people today. For suicide, it makes even more sense, because suicide is terrifying for people who love those who do it. Someone who is not suicidal cannot understand why someone would do that to the people they love (that is their perception anyway), so there is a lot of fear involved. It's the kind of fear that causes people to forget their nice ideals about how one should act. It's easy to tell your child who is being bullied at school to not listen to the bullies. It's not so easy to have compassion for someone who has caused you or someone you care about a lot of pain, be it through drug addiction, suicide, or anything else.

I think another aspect that is a factor for some is the same schoolyard mentality that causes bullying as children. People aren't satisfied with their own selves/lives, and a quick and easy way to feel better is to compare yourself favorably to some other person or group of people. So I think some people that treat drug users like scum are using it to make themselves feel better about their own life... ie, "yeah, but at least I'm not a fucking druggie".
 
The judgments are for them, not for you. It lets them off the hook from truly having to connect with a deeper problem or really practicing empathy. It helps them feel secure in who they are. In helps them feel "right". Take your pic.

As far as laws go... they are mostly for stupid people. Ones who are children that don't know how to self-govern whatsoever. Most of society doesn't need laws to govern its morals. Arguably the existence of government has made people abdicate their self-governance, rendering them lesser able to evaluate their own moral compass.
 
I think it was richard hell who said some of the people he had known who used heroin were some of the most searching people on earth.
 
Because people are pussies and actually care what others think. Most people only know themselves on the surface level IMO. Once you've dived deep enough you'll know exactly who and what you are so what another person who isn't you says means nothing because they'll never truly know one hundred percent who you are. People rely on others but many people abuse and misuse that trust. Only you truly know though and only you can choice to let others OPINIONS affect you... You are autonomous. You make your choices. Surely there are things we can all agree on as a whole. Murder not in self defense, rape, etc etc are wrong. Personal choices like drugs or suicide? No one has the right to tell you if that's right or wrong. That's for you to decide. Everything in this world is subjective. It's just easier to believe things are black and white because it requires mess thought. People rarely want to think. They'd rather be told.
 
Last edited:
In the primitive environment where homo sapiens developed, any sign of not being respected by others was also an alarm sign of danger of getting killed. That's why it is not easy to ignore even vague signs of insults from others.
 
We are animals. After all, we are a tribal, group-orientated hierarchical species of relatively hairless monkeys. I think we just like to think of ourselves as not having social interactions that are based on our DNA as a species, as it were. (Tbc, I'm aware that heredity isn't an interspecies thing, but we have a lot of genes that are similar or the same as other primates.)

Hierarchical dynamics play a big role in shame because those on top are freer from it and those on the bottom are sorted into different bins of "why this is your fault". Our concepts of shame might have changed, but the reason (survival of the species) is the why of its evolution.

But yeah, it's weird.

And yeah, words can definitely hurt.
 
humility, deprivation, confidence, shame, ego, emotional stability, state of mind, whether we're having a good day or bad day, how jaded we are, how open to others we are, how stressed out we are; these are things that are considered when we interact with other people whether or not we are going to succumb to a negative interaction or a positive one. having thick skin or not is one too. this is in addition to our mammal like behavior with the rest of our species.

there is also an energy that we all share (that is not generally accepted by all as being evident) and when we interact with other people a type of transference happens. a give and take. it can go all good/bad in one direction or another, it can be bad both ways or good both ways or it can be neutral with very lil of anything being passed between two or more people.

other than that it is a means of controlling people. how we control others with it depends on our intentions, who we are and the desired outcome. someone makes us happy when they give you a compliment or share their affection with you. they make you feel bad when they decide to control you for the wrong reasons or are not being mindful of other people. society creates this machination and does not take responsibility for it thereby upsetting the balance of the power dynamic that sustains itself and we get situations where people easily succumb to apathy, affluence and focus too much on the self.

idk, i haven't done enough drugs today maybe.
 
The human body is tender..and can easily sense the nefarious nature of insults...it is in fact compartmentalized in the wave packet formula..or the data that the sound of the word conveys..

That's if you hear insults directly.. via the waves of sound..

If you are just reading insults..or hearing about them..then the data of a negative portion of the word..can effect and put stress on the brain..and body system..
 
I think there’s two sides to the coin. For example, bullying I believe is both traumatic and endearing. I was bullied practically my entire life until my second semester of college. Not because I was the odd ball out and had no friends, but because I’m genuinely nice to everyone and hardly ever get upset so because of this people will pick and bully you because they know you’re not going to fight back or to see how far they can go to get a reaction from them, which I never let happen. But either you learn to fight back and stand up for yourself or you somber in it and let it take over your life. Given, the internet makes it a little more intense with naming and shaming and public humiliation especially if you’re at the stage of childhood where you think your worth is defined by kids on the play ground. Me personally, I was rocking sketchers way too damn long, I blame my mom lol but eventually I stopped taking shit from people and now I just talk my shit rite back or ignore them when necessary. But again, now with the generations of video Taping and seeing who can go viral at the hands of another complicates things which is why I make an attempt to always talk to the kids who are always alone at school or looks sad because you never know what someone is going through and a simple hello can impact someone’s life in more ways than none. But that’s just me, bullying toughens you up because it occurs in every level of life, look at the whitehouse loll
 
cowardescent said:
I've always wondered this. When it comes to being an outcast behaviours like being suicidal, having committed a crime, or even using hard drugs, society uses pejoratives like "weak", "selfish", "ill", "cowardly" etc..

The reason I'm confused is that I thought the mantra/trope of "don't listen to insults"/"don't care what others think". was something people repeated.

Now people will argue that we live in a society and need to obey social laws/norms but where's the line?

For example, I think the base that someone needs to follow is law unless they want their job prospects and freedom to be irrevocably diminished.

When it comes to think like using drugs or suicide, why do many care so much if you're "weak"/"selfish"? So what if someone is that? Is it human ego craving for acceptance?? Ah being a social animal is shit. I envy the tigers on the planes of Africa that don't can live on their own...lol. sorry for the rant but what do you think?
Click to expand...
I think getting savagely mauled to death on the Serenghetti (probably spelling it wrong but not going to search it right now) is something shitty.

Hey that is the animal kingdom though.

I thought I just posted something asking you something obvious (social animals meaning humans, of course you meant this but I don't believe humans are merely social animals) but it vanished so here is this sentence in this post.
 
Animals are social guys. Humans are more than animals. Leave you to it then.

My last thought about this is take nothing personally but also hold yourself accountable.
 
Safety 1st said:
Ok but truly what does heroin help them find?
Click to expand...

Usually misery. But I think the meaning of that statement is that highly searching people tend to deal with more internal pain, and opiates are fantastic at soothing internal pain... at least until they aren't. It's the same reason why a lot of psychedelic users eventually end up addicted to opiates or GABAergic drugs, I think.
 
I think we evolved to care excessively about the opinions of others. We are predominantly social beings, we need other people to survive, we cannot do it alone- we've evolved to believe such a thing. Our brain doesn't really know the difference between a stranger saying "you're a piece of shit" or a close friend. Its all a threat to ones place in the hierarchy and so we treat an insult very seriously. Back in the day, there was a fine line between being a 'bit of a weirdo' and being totally outcast from your society; our brains have not changed significantly since those days so we still hold on to insults as a possible threat to wellbeing. Deeper than that though, because being cast out of a society is a threat to actual survival.

For some reason, drug use became a moral issue. For some reason, intoxication is seen as weakness or self-indulgence; the general view of our christian society is that we should punish the self, not reward it- feeling good? We are sinners, there must be something wrong with the agency that makes us feel good.
 
Insults usually contain imagery of the target experiencing or doing something unpleasant:

- disgusting things, e.g. shit-eater, pig-fucker
- failure, e.g. loser, idiot, junkie
- loneliness, e.g. psycho, incel
- undesired sex acts, e.g. motherfucker, asskisser (also includes most homophobic insults)
- dysmorphia (feeling ugly), e.g. neckbeard, lardass
- fear/cowardice, e.g. nerd, wimp
- [others]

The more popular metaphorical ones -- asshole, bitch, jackass, cuck, douchebag -- usually combine several of these in a single "trope" which is referenced from the popular consciousness.

People don't like to think about these things, which is really the point of an insult: to inflict pain through verbaige.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top