Joe's Jottings

Category: psychology

Moral relativism and evil

moralityFirst of all, for anyone unaware of the news stories about the two pre-teen thugs from Edlington who tortured and abused two little boys, here’s a link to the story. Now, I passed a comment online that I regarded the two perpetrators as evil. I didn’t state they should be hung, drawn and quartered, thrown to wild animals, etc. Just that they were evil.

Now, the definition of evil from a dictionary I have nearby is “morally bad or wrong; wicked; depraved; resulting from or based on conduct regarded as immoral”. I think that the behaviour of the thugs could be described as evil under that definition. And I’m sorry, I may come over as a roaring thunder-lizard of reactionary, non-politically correct thought but I’m afraid that someone who does evil things is, until they reform, evil. And there appears to be no indication that these boys have shown any regret, repentance or even any sort of apology for what they did. From past evidence, it would appear that the only emotion they have felt is the dismay at being caught.

I was quite surprised (whether I should have been or not) when someone came back and questioned whether it was right to call them evil, and other suggestions were made about whether the boys themselves were victims of their upbringing and background. I have to say that the upbringing of these individuals is shocking depressing, but the one thing that separates human beings from animals is that between stimulus and response we have the capacity for choice. And it is in that moment of choice – that instant where civilised behaviour, conscience and sense of right and wrong operates – that the determination to be evil is made.

The fact that some folks believe that whether a behaviour can be evil or not based purely on circumstances I find to be rather disturbing. The idea that different moral truths hold for different people is called Moral Relativism, I don’t have any time at all for it. Not too long ago I posted on here about the dangers of peering in to the Abyss. These boys seem to be the products of such an activity, aided and abetted by our own culture. Whatever the cause, I don’t honestly see how anyone can look at their behaviour and say it is anything other than evil, and a moral relativist approach to these matters helps no one except the perpetrators and apologists for them. I’d go further; it actually promotes repeat behaviour; by failing to come down firmly about an issue and say that ‘that behaviour is wrong’ or ‘that behaviour is evil’ we provide a moral and ethical grey area.

I don’t believe we should be ashamed to state that something is evil. As CS Lewis pointed out in his work of Christian apologetics ‘Mere Christianity’, the vast majority of human beings seem to have a built in feel for what’s right and wrong, what’s good and evil. As a Christian I try not to judge; I’m far from perfect, after all, but I do believe that there is a ‘line in the sand’ which we can draw in absolute moral terms, and it’s the edge of the abyss I wrote about above. Moral Relativism takes away the sharp drop, building steps for us all to walk down in to the abyss. And for that reason it should be shunned.

January 24, 2010
Online Exhibitionists affect privacy for us all…

I came up with the title for this piece after reading this article on the BBC Website about people who the authors of a paper called ‘online exhibitionists. The idea is that much privacy legislation is based around the idea of what levels of privacy someone can reasonably expect to have when out and about in public. So, if we live in a world where people are relatively circumspect, photography and publication in public places is rare, then we can expect to have some right to privacy based on a reasonable expectation that you won’t be photographed. If you’re a celebrity, then your expectation can be less because you might reasonably expect to have people taking pictures and hassling you because the nature of your work has put you in the public eye. Right or wrong, that’s the way it’s tended to run over recent years.

Of course, with the rise of Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites, everyone has effectively become a ZZ List Celebrity within their own group of friends or the town in which they live in. In fact, it might be said that by the very act of registering an account with something like Facebook, we’re actually turning our backs on our right to privacy – and that’s wrong. I recently covered this sort of ground in my post ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’.

In my original plan for this piece, I was going to elaborate on this issue – but then a Tweet made me aware of a quote from Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook – “The Age of Privacy is Over”. Here it is. He states that were Facebook being set up now he’d default all our privacy settings to Public. Now, I quite like Facebook and have taken my privacy settings to a level with which I’m happy – but I can see Facebook losing users if they start regarding our lives as ‘entertainment feed’ for the real time Web.

Well, given that Zukerberg’s company rely on us letting go of a bit of privacy to communicate with each other, I can see that, in the words of Christine Keeler, ‘He would say that, wouldn’t he?’

But what has scared the bejabers out of me this morning is to see comments from some digital media folks along the lines that they feel it might be rewarding for us to ‘hide less’. I’m sorry? I can only imagine that those who say such things have never been on the receiving end of online stalking, have never been harassed for their sexuality expressed online, have never suffered a rock through their window from thugs because of their politics or race.

It may appear to be ‘hiding less’ for people in the business but it can be a matter of staying alive for some. Even when these people do not have online profiles, their privacy can be breached accidentally or deliberately by others who do.

Maybe the world of Big Brother has come 25 years late and is being self-inflicted. Just how many people out there right now are echoing in their attitudes the final chilling words of ‘1984’:

“But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

January 10, 2010
Get the habit!
If you take a look at the section of this blog that lists posts by the month in which they appear, you’ll see that whilst recent months have been pretty regular, there have been some hiatuses in the past. Looking back over them I can identify the fact that at the beginning of the period of silence, something happened in the ‘day job’ or in life in general that broke me away from writing the blog post. And I stayed away from the blog for a while after that for the simple reason that I hadn’t really become habituated to blogging.

I remember reading somewhere that you have to repeat a course of action a few thousand times before your mind and body really begin to treat something as a truly ingrained habit. Well, I hope that’s not entirely correct because I’m working on making a daily blog post a positive habit in my life.

Here are some techniques that I’ve adapted from other places and that I’ll be using to get the blogging habit in 2010.

Publicise what you’re doing!

A friend of mine set up a Facebook group where we could publicise our New Year Resolutions to other group members and see whether we could keep them! It’s always good to have an audience of people waiting for you to drop the ball! 🙂 You’re making a promise now to others as well as yourself; many people find it harder to disappoint others even in small ways than let themselves down.

Set a time and a place

Stephen King, in his excellent book ‘On Writing’, suggests that any writer needs to make sure that they’re at their writing desk / writing place at teh same time every day. Excellent idea! It effectively makes an appointment with yourself to be in a place with all the conditions just right for writing.

Remove Distractions

Make that appointment with yourself in a place and at a time where it’s possible to remove distractions. This doesn’t mean working in Monastic silence in a plain white painted room, bare except for a desk, chair and laptop. It’s more a state of mind – whatever might give you cause to prevaricate – despatch it. Don’t schedule your writing time around the time that your cats need feeding, the postie arrives, or when you might expect to get phone calls. If you like to work to music, get your music on your computer so you don’t go grubbing around to find it. If you like a lot of tea or coffee whilst you blog, get a thermos if you need it.

Set a SMART target

I set a target of a minimum of one blog post of between 400 and 600 words a day. It’s a SMART target because it’s:
1. Sustainable – I reckon I can do this day in, day out.
2. Measurable– it’s easy to see if I’ve hit the target. 400-600 words.
3. Action-oriented – you gotta DO something, not talk about it! I will have at least one blog post to point at.
4. Relevant– the target you set yourself should be relevant to your ultimate goals. It’s relevant to my aim of generating a popular blog.
5. Timely – should have a timescale attached to it. It happens every day.
So – there you go! Join me in making good habits in 2010!
January 6, 2010
When does a Jedi play a banjo?

Some years ago I worked for a large UK bank-assurer as a contract software developer. One project that I became involved with was to provide a bug tracking / change management system. As with all software systems, we decided to give it a ‘cool’ name and someone in the team suggested ‘Jedi’.

After stifling an inward sigh and wondered how I, a Star Trek fan, had ended up in a world full of Star Wars geeks, I asked the chap who originated the name why he’d thought it was a good name. The answer was simple; in this context, Jedi was going to stand for something. Jedi actually stood for Just ‘Effing Do It! After that I had no problem with the name at all.

Just ‘Effing Do It – as one of the world’s great procrastinators, anything that helps me kick the habit has to be worth thinking about, and as an acronym JEDI is great. In the intervening years I’ve called upon JEDI many times, and I think that it has helped me break at least part of my procrastination habit. By analysing my activity on projects (one reason why I keep a log book) I found that the actual time spent on various tasks is quite often significantly less than the time I think I might spend upon them. However, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about doing the job, planning it, worrying about it, determining that I haven’t the time to do it, doing something that’s urgent but not important, doing something that’s neither urgent or important, drinking tea and, in extremis, having a bath. In other words, the way of the procrastinator can be strong in me!

Procrastination is probably my biggest time-bandit; the putting off of tasks for some indeterminate and usually inadequate (and often non-existant) reason. I now recognise that some of the tasks I put off are tedious, some just seem overwhelmingly difficult, and others – well, some are just so unpleasant that I want to ignore them altogether. The latter tasks can just keep nagging away at you, though, and this is where the concept of a banjo playing Jedi comes in useful…

Banjo stands for Bang A Nasty Job Off – in other words, if you have a stinker of a job to do, that you find unpleasant for any reason, the best way to get it out of your life is to get on with it as effectively as possible – in other words, Jedi.

So there you have it – you want to get ahead in this world, then start contemplating banjo playing Jedi knights.

And on that note…where’s that code I have to write today?

December 30, 2009
Will no one rid me….

On 29th December, 1170, four knights of King Henry 2nd killed Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, and thus created a martyr of a man who’s principles had forced him to behave in a manner that was anathema to his King and his one time friend. It’s usually accepted that the King hadn’t actually ordered this assassination, but that the knights took it upon themselves to dispatch the Archbishop after they’d heard him utter those now infamous words ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest’.

(Actually – it’s likely the King was more long winded than this – his actual words are thought by contemporary historians to have been “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?”, which whilst not as punchy as the short version to me indicates more of his anger with his knights and household.)

Becket eventually became a Saint to both the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches, and it might be said that King Henry began the still practised political and military doctrine of ‘plausible deniability’. After all, why run the risk of getting caught telling someone to ‘Go kill the beggar’ when you can just as easily say, whilst winking your eye and coughing theatrically, “I sure hope that the UN Weapons Inspector doesn’t have an accident and fall off that balcony…cough!”

Whilst we might not personally be in the big politics bumping off game, I do wonder how often people second guess each other and get themselves in to a world of trouble? One of my resolutions for 2010 is to take people much more at the value of what they explicitly say, and in return I intend saying exactly what I mean (whilst staying within the boundaries of polite and civilised discourse, of course!!). I’m not sure that some of my acquaintances will like this too much, though, and I’m bracing myself for a bit of a backlash.

After all, one of the great advantages of playing the plausible deniability game with your friends and family is that by being suitable circuitous in what you say you can absolve yourself of all responsibility when people try and read your true desires and act accordingly. If it all goes well, you can congratulate yourself on your subtle hints; if it goes pear-shaped you can simply tell yourself and anyone who’ll listen that ‘Oh dear, I didn’t mean that at all…’

So come on, folks – let’s get back to being straight talking, in a polite and civil manner, with those we love and care for. It shows respect for them, and exhibits honesty in your own behaviour.

Let’s all get back to calling a spade a spade, and not a manually propelled vertical earth slicing appliance.

December 29, 2009
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas? Not necessarily…

Long before it was the title of a movie, it was a fairly well known saying.

In the UK it was more likely to be ‘What happens in Blackpool, stays in Blackpool’, or, as time passed, what happened in Estonia stays in Estonia. I was a mark of secrecy that was usually associated with the ceremonials of secret societies; it didn’t matter that you’d abseiled down Blackpool Tower naked except for a sock on your head, carrying a crate of beer and singing ‘Unchained Melody’ at 3am. If you found your boss in flagrante delicto with Myrtle from accounts, playing strip-poker, well, that’s something you were not going to be allowed to use in blackmail. Because of the simple, unwritten law of the hard playing world of the works outing / stag weekend / hen weekend / mate’s trip to Skegness.

‘What happens here, stays here’.

It used to be up there with the other rules of social nicety. Basically, if you did get up to alcohol fuelled high jinks on one of these events, you were OK. It wouldn’t get home or back to the office (unless you contracted some social disease, got pregnant or turned up in the local Magistrate’s Court or A&E). You might have shown yourself to your friends and colleagues as a hypocritical, deceitful, lecherous alcoholic but you were given the ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card of the event falling under the rule of ‘What happens here, stays here.’

Just to be serious for a moment, there are even ‘legitimate’ versions of the rule – self-development weekends, religious retreats, etc. What happens there, stays there, unless you want to share your OWN experiences – but no one else’s.

It’s an incredibly sensible rule for the latter type of event, and to be honest I reckon it can be a reasonably sensible code of behaviour to abide by for participants in the other events mentioned above.

And it’s a way of life and social behaviour that is slipping away. Whenever you go out these days there will inevitably be someone taking photographs which within 30 seconds show up on Facebook. I’m one of those people who hate having a photo taken – apart from looking 20 pounds heavier than I am, I always get photographed with a stupid expression on my face or doing something daft. That sort of thing showing up online is OK to deal with – it’s the other stuff that gives the running commentary of what happened, who spoke to who, who sat next to whom – even for a few minutes, etc. The minutiae of a social event that to be honest is of fuck-all relevance to anyone who wasn’t there. Those who are there, know what happened. Those who weren’t there, rarely need to know what happened except out of vicarious curiosity (OK…nosiness!)

I don’t necessarily want to be photographed when I’m slightly drunk at a non-work related, social event when I take a quick trip and spill drinks. What would once have been a momentary source of amusement for all who witnessed it that you probably wouldn’t even have remembered the following day now becomes a cast in stone moment on Facebook. If you’re REALLY unlucky and surrounded by geeks, it will also be Tweeted – which isn’t as bad as the Tweetstream is pretty ephemeral – but you get the idea.

Please people – just go back to taking and posting a nice big group photo at the beginning, share any candid snapshots between you and people who were there directly rather than through your 200 friend Facebook page, and let what happened in the pub, stay in the pub, in 2010.

December 28, 2009
Playing the game of War

One of my ‘guilty secret’ films is the 1982 John Badham movie ‘War Games’, in which a teenager inadvertently starts the countdown to World War 3 by hacking in to a military computer system. He thinks he’s playing war games, but the computer thinks that it’s the real thing and starts counting down to a real missile launch. At the end of the film, the youth and the computer’s inventor manage to convince the machine to stop it’s attempts to launch the missiles by telling it to try out various game scenarios in which the result is always the same – mutual destruction. The computer, smarter than most politicians, remarks that nuclear war is an interesting game; the only way to win is not to play.

Shame General Jack D Ripper didn’t get the message….(left)

I was reminded of this film the other morning when I read on the BBC’s web site that a couple of Swiss human rights groups have published a paper in which they protest that it’s possible to commit war crimes in many modern computer games. Now, the fact that this is deemed newsworthy in a world in which war crimes of varying magnitudes are committed every day of the year is quite depressing of itself; perhaps these chaps need to look up from playing ‘Call of Duty’ and see what’s happening and what has happened in the last 15 years in the world – not just in Iraq and Afghanistan but closer to ome in Sarajevo and Kossovo. Seriously, the fact that games are discussed in this context brings little credit to academia and belittles the true war crimes that go on. Does this mean we should re-visit films like ‘Platoon’ and ‘Full Metal Jacket’? Should we ban ‘Star Wars’ with it’s depiction of whole planets being zapped out of existence? Do we purge episodes of Star Trek and Stargate from our collective media experience because of their story lines?

There is little evidence to suggest that playing these military oriented games desensitizes young men; many Western soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will have played games like these and are still traumatised by what they see. War crimes have been a feature of warfare from days immemorial; we can go back to places like Lidic and Malmedy in World War 2, the use of gas warfare in Iraq in the 1920s to subdue local guerillas, etc.

The academics comment that the games ‘permit’ war crimes to be carried out in the game scenarios; I wonder if they’re suggesting that the games should somehow prevent this. Some games do have game play that ‘punishes’ such activities in terms of the chance of ‘winning’ n the game, but are the academics suggesting that the games actually forbid activities that are war crimes in the real world? I hope not….and here’s why.

The gamers have free will within the context of what the game allows them to do. They will almost certainly behave in a way that they wouldn’t behave in real life, and I do think that most people playing ‘Call of Duty’ will realise that there is a difference between Xbox mediate pixel slaughter and real world combat. If the activists are suggesting that the ability to commit a war crime in game is more likely to encourage people to do the same thing outside of the game, then there are two options; some sort of modification to the game play that punishes such activities in the game by a modification of the game scenario, or some sort of total block that restricts the course of action of a player in these scenarios. Now, if the academics believe that gamers might suffer from blurred reality when they commit a game based war crime, logically they must also believe that that other game events also might affect their view of reality.

So….where the game scenario is loaded against war crimes, a player may take the decision that they can do it anyway and live with the game consequences. There is no moral judgement here by the player; they’re operating purely within the game mechanics and dealing with the consequences of their activities in a game theory scenario rather than the more complex world of free will and morality. By the academic logic, the gamer would behave in a similar way in real life, ignoring the morality of the decision in favour of some vague ‘live with the consequences’.

The second scenario is even worse – by the logic of the academics it would appear that a gamer attempting a real world war crime will be somehow prevented from doing so by a kind of ‘deus ex machina’. That hand of God? Friendly aliens? Just in time intervention from a superior officer? Who knows….

Whether folks like it or not, a game is a game is a game. Whilst I find some game scenarios morally repugnant, if you accept that the lack of controls in war games to stop people doing certain acts may encourage them to do those acts in real life, you also have to accept that the ability to do any action in a game will encourage that act in real life. The result, therefore, should be to ban everything with the exception of ping-pong. If you don’t accept this, then you need to leave well alone and accept that freedom of will in the game world reflects freedom of will in the real world, and that what truly matters is the character and moral compass of people.

November 26, 2009
Are you a ‘but’ man?

I was reminded earlier today, whilst reading a book called ‘Life 101’, of a useful piece of advice from one of the more under-rated personal development gurus of the mid 20th Century – Sergeant Ernest Bilko of the United States Army. Let’s listen to what he has to say on the topic of a three letter word…

You said, “but.” I’ve put my finger on the whole trouble. You’re a “but” man. Don’t say, “but.” That little word “but” is the difference between success and failure. Henry Ford said, “I’m going to invent the automobile,” and Arthur T. Flanken said, “But . . .”

And so it was, according to Bilko, that Ford remains in history whilst Flanken doesn’t even make the footnotes.

‘But’ is indeed one of the words in the English language that fills me with trepidation. During my years in consulting, hearing someone agree with what you were proposing, and then adding the word ‘…but’ (complete with pause) to the end of a sentence was the equivalent of telling me that I was as likely to get cooperation as I was to win the Nobel Prize for Physics and Literature in the same year.

There some occasions when it’s valuable to pull someone up short before they thunder off and implement some plan or other that at best can be described as ‘unwise’. And there are times when the use of but can provide a useful reminder for folks that their master plan requires a few tweaks before it will work properly. But often ‘but’ is used as a prelude to a road-block.

Rather than ‘but’ I now try and use ‘and’ or ‘or’ instead of ‘but’ – then rephrase the part of teh sentence after the old ‘but’ to look towards solutions. For example:

I’d like to buy a new computer, but it costs too much.

becomes

I’d like to buy a new computer, and in order to give me time to save the extra money, I’ll put the purchase off for a month and see if I can do some overtime in the meantime to help raise the extra cash.

The first sentence becomes, in the but-less second sentence, an intention with a timescale and a partial solution to the problem of money. As the guys at Honda say, ‘and’ is a great little word – it opens up opportunities for solutions, rather than closing things down.

Don’t be a but-nik!

November 7, 2009
All hail the scapegoats!

In ancient Jewish society, the scapegoat was a normal goat that was ceremonially loaded with all the sins of the community, and then driven from town in to the wilderness, as part of the ceremonies around the Day or Atonement. The goat would almost certainly die in the desert, and with it would die the sins of the community. The term has passed in to general usage, as we all know, to refer to someone who gets to carry the can when the crap hits the fan.

Earlier today I blogged on the topic of Philip Laing, the student in trouble here in Sheffield, and was reminded of a comment made by my better half about whether the venom being expended towards this fellow was actually a form of scapegoating. We’ve had over two years of miscellaneous nonsense here in the UK – the banking crisis, MP’s expenses, the Recession, the War in Afghanistan and Iraq – the list goes on. Then conveniently along comes someone who we can all have a go at, who isn’t rich and powerful and who’s actually done something that is pretty damn stupid and manages to annoy vast numbers of people.

In fact, the perfect scapegoat!

Here’s a quick guide for you to help you play ‘Spot the Scapegoat’ – a useful parlour game for this winter preceding a general election when we can expect the Government and Media to try and blame anyone and everyone – except the genuine culprits – for the wrongs of the world.

Plausibility

A scapegoat must be plausible. there’s little point in picking on someone totally innocuous. You need someone or a group of people who’ve been bad, been caught out, and for whose behaviour there can be little excuse. Little old ladies caught exceeding the speed limit by 5 miles per hour don’t really meet the requirement.

Powerless

An ideal scapegoat would be suitably powerless. After all, we don’t want them coming back at us, do we? Really powerful people will rarely become scapegoats unless they’ve upset some even more powerful people. The media don’t want to upset someone with muscle who could make the media look like horse’s bottoms.

Scalability

Having found a plausible, powerless person to act as scapegoat, their bad behaviour has to be ‘scalable’. Scalability is a technical term for the ability of a system to cope with heavier loads than expected without needing a lot of work. So, if we want a good scapegoat on which we can unload a pile of public anger, the scapegoat’s behaviour must be something that can be ‘worked up’ in some way. So, Mr Laing’s offence can easily be used to indicate that it’s the start of the end of Western Civilisation as we know it as respect for all that is good in society declines, etc.

Publicity

If you want a good scapegoat, they have to be public figures or elevated in to the rank of public notoriety by the media or the Internet. If you can get a good gossipy campaign going, apparently driven by the general public, you’re in clover.

No apologies

Your perfect scapegoat should ideally be photographed with a black cloak and a Victorian moustache, eating babies and shouting that they are sorry for nothing. If this ideal scenario can’t be achieved, then a lack of apology will do. If the scapegoat attempts a half-arsed apology, all the better. But if they go for the genuine apology, their value as a scapegoat is diminished.

Have something ready to sneak out

Apart from deflecting blame from the real culprits, the exposure and persecution of a good scapegoat can offer the Government and other people of power and influence the opportunity to sweep other things under the carpet. If you have a scapegoat, never waste the opportunity to get a few bad-news stories out at the same time.

November 6, 2009
Get a life!
Being a discussion on the Etiquette of the Insult for the 21st century…

I was recently fortunate enough to have this old chestnut of an insult thrown at me online in a discussion about some news item. It’s a strange thing to say to anyone; the fact that I’m typing indicates I do indeed have a life, and to be honest I think with my achievements I’ve managed to fit 2 and a half lives or so in to things so far. 🙂

The intention of this piece is not to name and shame, however tempting that is…it just set me thinking about insults and abuse in general. I think in recent years the unpleasant behaviour of insulting folks – especially online or via text – has become much more frequent. I think a lot of it is that it’s easier to be abusive anonymously, and the extra mileage placed between insulter and insultee does make a smack in the mouth or a slap across the face harder to deliver back to the insulter. So, here we go. A 21st Century Guide to insulting Etiquette.

Of course, gentlemen and ladies do not insult each other…as I know very few of either (and doubt I am a gentleman myself) this is hopefully useful stuff for the rest of us!

Consequences

When I was a kid, you tended to bite your tongue before insulting someone because there was a serious risk of being thumped. In previous centuries you would have had a serious risk of being shot in a pistol duel or scarred or killed in a sword duel. If you ‘knew the right people’ you could have your insulter beaten up. Now that you can insult anonymously and from outside arm’s reach, it has made people more willing to insult people than ever before, and for less good reasons. Which moves us on to point number 2 – have good reason to insult.

Insult escalation

George Orwell once commented to the effect that if you reviewed a book and found it ‘outstanding’, and then three weeks later found an even better book, then you couldn’t really write ‘even more outstanding than the last outstanding book’. I guess these days it’s ‘ratings inflation’. But in days when there were potentially serious consequences for insulting people, all involved were careful about the insults thrown and the reaction taken. I might easily let a mild insult go by if the consequence to my following it up were to be a duel. I would think twice before slapping someone across the face after he’d called me a moron for wearing black shoes when we all know that brown was the de riguer colour of teh day. Today, there are fewer consequences and it’s easier to get in to a verbal pissing match. So, if you feel teh need to insult, be proportionate – don’t go over the top and push the other person in to a corner from which they may lash out. And, if you’ve been insulted, think hard and long before escalating.

It was only a joke…

Oh dear – the well worn phrase of the coward, the moron or the child. If you insult someone, have the guts to stand there when you’re called on it and either repeat your insult or wholeheartedly apologise for your behaviour. Bleating that ‘it was only a joke’ is the defence of three groups of people:
1. The child – it works to some degree in the playground but once you’re over 12 years old you should start leaving this phrase behind. It’s continued use indicates you may have the mental age of an infant, and should therefore not be out and about with the grownups.
2. The moron – the sort of slack-jawed suburban yokel who believes the Jeremy Kyle programme to be current affairs and Wayne and Waynetta Slob to be fine role models can hardly be expected to know better.
3. The coward – falling back on this defence when one doesn’t fall in to category (1) or (2) above indicates cowardice.
Falling back on this phrase after being called on your insults thus catapults you in to one of three groups of society unfitting for a mature adult. So don’t do it.

I was drunk / stoned

Some hold this to be a mitigating circumstance, others regard it as making matters worse – as well as you being insulting it indicates you can’t hold your drink / drugs. Again – don’t fall back on this – either repeat your insult or wholeheartedly apologise. This is a weasel response.

Water off a duck’s back

Very few insults are worth getting your blood pressure elevated over. Even fewer are worth engaging in wit and repartee with the insulter. Remember that by the very fact they’ve insulted you, they’re not ladies or gentlemen. Therefore they’re unworthy and engaging with them, even to the level of ‘And your mother wears army boots’, simply brings you down to their level. Sometimes the best response is to behave as if you hadn’t noticed it. Online this can be most satisfying, as the truly dim insulter will carry on making louder and more ridiculous comments until they prove to the rest of the world what you already know…

So, ignore where possible!

Graceful Acceptance

Sometimes the recipient of an insult can carry out the graceful acceptance manoeuvre in which there is an apparent agreement with teh sentiments of the insult. This isn’t always applicable but when it is it can totally disarm the insulter.

Full and wholehearted apology

The original insult may have been triggered by what you consider to be a genuine wrong, and in that case you still need to deal with the original problem. But if you do find yourself in a position where apology seems to be the most sensible, adult and mature way forward, then apologise for the insult fully, whole-heartedly and publicly. A non-public apology after you’ve denigrated someone in public is, to be honest, a little weaselly.

With luck, the person you insulted will be gracious enough to accept your apology and walk away from the whole palaver. At which point you’ll probably both be wondering how the Devil you got in to the mess in the first place….
October 31, 2009