|
|||
|
Back to the Forum 2006
Archives It's all grist for the mill. I just encountered another of those times when an exchange of insults gave me a good idea and the lead in material for an essay. I have learned to be alert to these things. I do tend to treat everything that happens to me, good and bad, as grist for my mill. This one came about because a relative of mine asked me for information I knew he already had. I sent him an email with the information he requested along with a few facts presented in a sardonic tone. That prompted a rather vigorous response from him which included this sentence. "I sometimes wonder if you insult people accidentally or take great delight in doing so?" I loved it. That's about as good as one can get for a straight line. Another person who's name I forgot said something like this. A gentleman is a man who never insults someone by accident. I wish I could claim that degree of sophistication, but it is beyond me. So, why do I insult people? I do occasionally insult or do hurtful things to people by accident. It is invariably people I love who suffer this way because on my errors. These things are regrettable and I most surly regret them when I realize my error. Unfortunately, for me at least and I think for everyone who writes, this problem comes with the territory. It is a result of an inability to always be clear and precise. I sometimes leave room for misunderstanding. Sometimes that misunderstanding can cause disappointment or emotional wounds. Since I graduated from gainful employment many years ago writing is mostly what I have been doing. I have written nine books and hundreds of essays. I have learned one thing for sure. In writing, if you leave room for misunderstanding, some people will misunderstand and others will choose to misunderstand. I believe that is a problem impossible to avoid for us imperfect souls. I just have to live with it and make what repairs I can when I can. I also do not take great delight in insulting people even when I do it deliberately, which is not all that often. The simple fact is, I insult people on purpose when they annoy me. Like my mother, who was my main adversary and my mentor, my sarcasm usually has the intent of waking people up. I try to give them enough of a jolt to cause their mind to begin functioning again. This is a delicate thing. Too much of an insult will usually just enrage people and cause them to react vigorously and then shut down. The perfect insult will cause them to get angry and then begin to think. I always strive for perfection. I get annoyed with people for many reasons, but most have to do with some form of mental laziness. This sometimes takes the form of someone asking me to do something they could easily do for themselves. That was the case with my relative. My sarcastic remarks were in the way of pointing that out. In this case, the sarcasm failed in its purpose. At least for the time, it did not wake him up, but ticked him off. Way it goes! He had the same problem with my mother. When she told him the truth, he got angry. He could not handle it from her and it appears he has not changed much. The fact is, the insults he objected to were really nothing more profound than facts. I have found statements of pure fact, when carefully done, can be more sarcastic and devastating than any generalized insult or fabrication could possibly be. Because they are facts, they become even more frustrating for the mentally lazy target person. Mental laziness has become, I think, an epidemic in our culture. It invariably takes the form of trying to get someone else to do what we ought to be doing ourselves. It's really about transferring responsibility. We attempt it continuously with our government. Cradle to grave and all of that. We don't want to bother so we ask for or demand help before we have even begun to exploit our own resources. As I have said many times before, it beats the heck out of thinking. Some people carry this to such an extreme it appears to be a character type. We have all encountered people who exhibit the characteristics. They appear, in a way, to be inept. We often call people like this scatterbrained, flakes, or the more insulting airhead. They always seem to need help of some kind. I believe, like many other behaviors, this is a learned pattern. I prefer to think of these people as mentally lazy. We have all encounter these fringe type people. One example is the person who often needs a jump start for her car. She is driving with an almost dead battery and has no idea of why her car is that way. This person will eschew normal maintenance and the auto reflects that. This is the same person who will ignore the red light on the dashboard until the engine seizes up. Then she will feign anger with the auto manufacturer when they are reluctant to repair damage that has been caused by carelessness. Some of the most dangerous of these people are the ones who claim to be intuitive. They will pretend they do not have to think or plan because they are gifted. When they come to a problem they will know intuitively what they need to do. For most of them, we need only look at the chaos of their lives to know that is BS of a most odoriferous sort. In the long run, you cannot escape the effects of your behavior. This is just as true of mental laziness as of any other behavior. Another concept that is common to all of these people is the notion that successful people are successful because they are lucky. While the rest of us work toward some kind of goal, these people will usually sit around waiting to get lucky. Common expressions from them are, "I wish I had his luck," or, "If I had his money." You can identify them by these kind of phrases. They are always looking for the easy way, easy street, the quick kill. These kind of people often try to think of themselves as right brained spiritual people. They will quickly acquire the trappings of the latest religious fad, be it born again or Zen Buddhism. We need only talk to them for a moment to realize they are spiritually clueless. Many of them will also flipflop from one food fad to another while parroting the health food party line. Again, they generally are clueless about nutrition. It is typical of these people that they will attempt to blur the line between lack of wit and laziness. It's an attempt to make us believe they are helpless. They generally do not lack wit. They use it constantly in their ruses to get other people to do their work. What they lack is emotional energy or will. A favorite ploy of this type is to try to lay a guilt trip on the person they are attempting to victimize. It's really a reversal game. They will try, in one way or another, to claim we are evading our responsibility to them when we point out their dishonesty. They will pretend they have been hurt or betrayed by us. They make us the bad guy! This can be a good index of the accuracy of our criticism of them. The more accurate the criticism, the more vigorous will be this pretense of being victimized. When we provoke the perfect pout we know our shot has been right on. The best response to this guilt trip game is an exaggerated "You have wounded me!" reaction. We give them back, in buffo style, what they just threw at us. Here is a truth about this airhead dependancy behavior which proves my point. It will only manifest to the extent that we support it. If our help is not forthcoming, the airhead must look for other options. First, of course, they will try to find another victim. To do that, they actually have to think about who they will victimize. If that fails, guess what? This poor airhead will usually buckle down and solve his own problem. I have seen it enough times to be sure of that. If I had used the right level of sarcasm, that could have happened with my relative. The whole idea was to interrupt mental laziness and I failed at that. It's not that I did not know about the theory of interrupting a bad behavior pattern. I learned it long ago. Applying it is another kind of ball game. My mistake was in giving him the information he wanted. Instead, I should have told him he already had it. Then he would have had to think about it. That's what my mother would have done. She was not high on doing for others unless there really was a need. When the need was real she was generosity personified. Otherwise, no one could be more sarcastic than she. I know, I deal with it every day. You see, my mother did not die when her body wore out. She
simply up and moved into my mind where she still resides much
to my chagrin. She takes over my mouth or my pen whenever she
pleases and uses about half of my brain. She uses the left side
of my brain which I have not had much need of since I stopped
being a computer programmer. Being a woman, she gets on fine
with just half a brain. It's all she needs to outsmart most men.
And yes, she still nags me to death. "Why did you do that?
What's wrong with you? Why don't you act your age? For God's
sake get a haircut! Who do you think you are? Quit that scribbling
and do something useful! Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera..."
|