#390： Why Insults Sting and How to Handle Them
Episode Stats
Summary
Bill Irvine explores the philosophy of insults in his new book, A Slap in the Face: Why Insults Hurt, and Why They Shouldn t. In this episode, we discuss how to deal with verbal slights, and how to be less sensitive to them.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. Insults are a part
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of the human experience. We insult others and we get insulted back. Social media has only amplified
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our tendency to ridicule one another and increase the likelihood of being on the receiving end of a
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barb. Yet we don't typically understand the dynamics of insults very well. Why do we throw
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insults at each other and why do they hurt so much? Is there anything we can do to reduce the mental and
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emotional sting of these verbal affronts? My guest today has explored the philosophy of insults in
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his book, A Slap in the Face, Why Insults Hurt and Why They Shouldn't. His name is Bill Irvine and I
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had him on the podcast about a year ago to discuss his book on stoic philosophy. Today on the show,
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Bill and I talk insults. We begin our conversation discussing all the ways we can insult one another,
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from direct insults to passive aggressive ones. Bill explains why we often resort to backhanded
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compliments when we're praising people and why you don't have to intend to insult someone
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to insult them. Our conversation then dovetails in the rise of PC culture and how it's made us all
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more sensitive to small slights and unintentional snubs. And we end our conversation with tactics
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you can use to be less sensitive to social slights with many of Bill's insights coming from the stoic
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philosophers. In a day and age when we seem to be in perpetual outrage mode, this podcast provides
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some fortifying balm for the soul. After the show's over, check out the show notes at
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aom.is slash insults. And Bill joins me now via clearcast.io.
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So we had you on the show a few months ago to talk about your book about stoicism,
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the art of stoic joy, and we got a lot of positive feedback on that. But you've written another book,
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a while back ago, right? Shortly after you wrote this book on stoicism about insults and why they
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sting so much. It's called Slap in the Face. I'm curious, was this insults book, was this an
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offshoot of your stoicism book? Like after you'd wrote the stoicism book, you decided to explore
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the topic of insults because of your research in stoicism?
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Yeah, I had kind of a curious triple pregnancy going on here. I originally wrote a book called
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On Desire, Why We Want What We Want, thinking that I would use that book as a way to pursue an
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interest in Buddhism. And of course, I could also get academic credit toward tenure and promotion by
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doing that. So it's two for the price of one. And in the process of doing the research on Buddhism,
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I decided I needed to explore other philosophies of life. One of them was stoicism. And after looking
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into stoicism, I decided it, I was much better suited to become a stoic than to become a Buddhist.
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So then, a follow-up was, I also decided to write a book on the stoics. And in the process of doing
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that, discovered that they had extensive, they'd given extensive thought to insults, to the role
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insults play in society, and to how to prevent insults from disrupting our tranquility, from
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upsetting us. So I decided once I finished the stoic book that I would do a book on insults. And
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this is that book. So it's kind of a follow-on to the stoic book that I wrote.
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Yeah, I think that's interesting. You went from Buddhism to stoicism, or from desire to Buddhism
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to stoicism to insults. It's funny where things can take you if you just follow those paths.
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Yeah, it's an adventure. It's a kind of an intellectual adventure. And you just find out
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where the road is leading, and you follow it along. And surprising things can happen as a result.
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Well, so you start off the book discussing the different types of insults that are out there.
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I think we all know them intuitively, but when you made it explicit in the book, I was like,
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boy, there's a whole host of ways you can insult people. So you start talking about sort of direct
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insults. What are some examples of direct insults that we see on a day-to-day basis?
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A direct insult, you can walk up to somebody and simply say something abusive to them. You can say
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it's an ugly haircut. You can say they're an ugly person. You can say they're ignorant. Those are
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verbal insults, and there's not a lot to say for them, but they're one step better than physical
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insults. You can walk up to somebody and punch them in the face. Now, of course, that's also a
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form of violence, whereas the other is just verbal abuse. And then the interesting thing is, that's
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what you think of when you think about insults. But when you get deeper into the whole insult process,
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you realize how much human brain power can go into an insult, how clever and subtle they can be.
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And it turns out to be its own little genre, you know, that the whole set of insults that are
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possible. Right. So besides sort of direct proactive action, either verbally or through
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actions insulting, you talk about how you can insult people just by not doing anything at all or not
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saying anything at all. Suppose you walk up to me. Suppose I have some dispute with you in the past,
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and as a result have formed a bad opinion of you, and you walk up to me and hold your hand out. I can
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refuse to extend my hand to shake your hand. That's a big insult. Even worse, I can turn my back to you
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and walk off. So those haven't said a word, haven't touched you, but that can be a truly cutting insult,
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depending on the nature of our relationship beforehand.
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Right. Or shunning is another example of that, or sort of an offshoot of that, where you just
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Yep. So I can go on an extended period when I simply refuse to respond to anything you say.
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You know, and in some religious groups, shunning is a way of punishment. And so if you want to
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communicate with the person who's shunning you, you have to find a third party to act as intermediary
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there between you and the person who's shunning you. And it's brutal. I've read accounts of being
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Yeah, it sounds like it could be worse than sort of the direct insult, because with the least,
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with the direct insult, the person's acknowledging that you exist when you're shunned, like you just,
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Yes. You are written out of that person's social life. It's like you say, it's as if you don't even
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exist. And what could be more painful than that?
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Yeah. And then you talk about, you know, say we, oftentimes the way we insult is not directly to
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the person, like one-on-one. I mean, that does happen. You know, we call them a bad name,
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flip them the bird, do something else like that, or we shun them or don't give them the silent
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treatment. But oftentimes you talk about in the book, the way people go about insulting others is
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through third parties or indirectly. So let's dig into that. What are the sort of the indirect ways that we
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Well, you can say bad things about somebody to someone else, and you can do that with two different
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kinds of plans in mind. I mean, all of this becomes very cunning and very strategic. But one thing you
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could do is do the insult to a third party, an outside party, on the assumption that that party
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is going to report the insult to the person you're trying to insult, which is bad. You weren't there when
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the insult happens, but it's a bad thing. But the other thing you can do is spread this campaign
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of a poisonous kind of campaign behind the person's back where you're going around saying
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mean things and insulting things to everyone else. And then you, the person who's the target of this
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attack, kind of grow aware of it in a subtle way. It's just that everybody seems to be treating you
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differently. And that can also have disastrous consequences.
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And this is called backbiting, right? Where you talk behind people's back.
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All right. And besides these indirect approaches, you also highlight other subtle ways we insult people,
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even just to their face, without them even knowing. So example, like backhanded compliments
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Yeah. So I could tell you that, you know, you're the best player on our team. And that sounds like
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a compliment. But if you think you're the best player at a certain position in the entire league,
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that can count as an insult. It's a curious thing about insults. They're in the mind of the
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beholder. And you can play against whatever self-image somebody has in order to insult them,
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where what you're saying isn't directly insulting. And to an outsider, it sounds like you're
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complimenting them. But to those people themselves, it comes across as an insult,
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because you're not acknowledging their self-image.
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Right. And we often see this too with like comparisons, right? You can say, oh, you did better
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than Jimmy in class. But like, Jimmy's not particularly bright. Well, okay. That's not much of a...
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Jimmy's the worst one. No, it's damning with faint praise. And the thing is, we're programmed by our
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evolution to care very much about our social standing. So we go through life playing what I
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call the social hierarchy game. And one of the ways we play it, and we can play it with, you know,
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if you look at animal groups, there'll be actual fights that break out in order to determine who's
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where on a social hierarchy. But we humans have evolved beyond that. So we do it with words,
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with insults, with these subtle interplays between, you know, individuals and the conversation they have.
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My favorite subtle insult that you highlight in the book is the ambush insult. Because it just made me
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laugh. It's like the ambush insult is when you start off with something that sounds like praise,
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but then you go right to just being as insulting as possible. I think you gave an example of Groucho
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Yeah, he had a friend who had written a book that was supposed to be, you know, have a humorous
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element, but other elements as well. And so when Groucho wrote him back a response saying,
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so when I picked up your book, I laughed so hard I couldn't believe it. And then I put it down,
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which sounds like a compliment, but then followed by the remark that someday I plan to actually read
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it. So, which is a great insult and very clever. And that's the interesting thing. So with one of
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these setup insults, you're kind of trying to increase the amount of harm you inflict by first
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making them think it's praise, because then they have this sense of heightened expectation for
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what comes next. And then you lower the boom with the insult.
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Right. And Winston Churchill was a master of this as well.
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Yeah. So lots of examples of that. So he had, I mean, I'm not thinking of any off the top of my head,
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but he was very good at his insults. Ah, the lady, what Nancy Astor said to him,
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Winston Churchill, if you were my husband, I would put poison in your coffee. And he replied to her,
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and Nancy, if you were my wife, I would drink it. So that's a classic, classic Churchill line.
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Right. So there is sort of a sense of gamemanship with the insult. I mean, like the more clever and
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subtle your insult can be, I don't know, it seems like it's more insulting that way than compared to
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just call him a jerk or whatever. Yeah. And you want to do it with style. And, you know, where this
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comes across most vividly is when it's typically involving men who imagine themselves to be highly
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intelligent or highly articulate. Women have a different kind of form that their insulting can
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take. But with men, it's often simply this kind of male showing of your power, showing that you're
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high up in the hierarchy. And, you know, it descends also in athletic contests of various kinds.
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It's no longer there. It's not the high-flown intellectual kinds of insults, but it's
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the coarsest insults you can imagine that the players, even on their own team, will hurl at each
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other. Some kind of curious male bonding thing. And then you reply with an equally crude insult back.
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And for some reason, that cements the group together. You wouldn't think that. But I have,
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I'm a competitive rower. And so I have teammates and, you know, people I play with and compete with.
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And it's really remarkable the extent to which our conversation consists in put-downs and responses to
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put-downs. And it's a lot of fun. And, you know, I try to explain it to my wife. And she, you know,
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always is just a little bit puzzled of, well, why would that be fun? But it is. And I'm not sure I
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Right. But that's a very uniquely male thing. It seems like men use aggressiveness as a way to
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nurture and to foment bonds between each other.
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But that raises a question. So you talk about teasing. And teasing is, it is sort of a social
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lubricant that we use. We even do with men between women, right? Like husbands and wives tease each other.
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It's an important form of, in a relationship between a man and a woman. Once you spend a lot
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of time with another person, they invariably are going to start doing things that you find annoying.
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I mean, simply because they have a different way of going through their lives, going about their days
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than you do. And so there are things that you find annoying. And very quickly find that the worst thing
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you can do in terms of the relationship is to go up in a very factual way. Say, you're doing the
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following. I find it very annoying. I'm asking you to quit right now. Because it doesn't work out that
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way. You know, within relationships, there's that same kind of jockeying that goes on, you know, where
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nobody wants to be taken advantage of or looked down on by the other party to the relationship.
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So in the case of a husband and wife, you turn it into a kind of a tease, into a kind of joke,
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what you regard as their shortcoming. And that puts a comic spin on the suggestion you're trying
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to make to them. And so then it has a greater chance of it getting through. I mean, suppose
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you think that your wife has just been running up a huge bill at some store and you're worried about
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that. And one way you can do it is say you can't spend any more money. Probably not the best strategy.
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But a second way is, well, are you sure you're going to not melt that credit card? And there's all
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sorts of cute, funny kind of ways of putting it where they'll get the message, but they won't feel
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directly attacked by it. My wife does precisely the same thing back at me about the things she wants
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me to change. So it's a nice way to make a suggestion.
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But there's some people who would hear that sort of humor suggestion, but get really offended by it.
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And so, I mean, that's the funny. Teasing, there's like a fine line with teasing where,
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okay, it's fun and playful and everyone's in on it. But then at some point it crosses to like,
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this is no longer teasing. This is actually vindictive and mean.
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Yeah, it's a fine line. And that's only one of many fine lines because insults can turn into
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bullying too. So you have that whole spectrum that starts with a gentle tease and ends with
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outright bullying. And it's a function of the intention of the person doing it.
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But the downside is you can say something with the best intentions in the world. And if you're
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dealing with a particularly sensitive person, they can react in a really extreme manner.
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So you kind of learn, well, you know, you might have relatives, for instance, and you know,
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there are some people that when you're around them, you know, the saying is you walk on eggshells.
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That is, you're very careful. You know, they have many sensitive topics and you don't want to set
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them off on that. So they'll interpret all sorts of things as insults. So what you need to do
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is say very little and be very guarded in what you do say. And even then, you can end up triggering
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some kind of response. And the best way to deal with that is simply to humbly apologize and retrench
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even more. And it's unfortunate for people who are that way. You know, it's evidence of a fragile
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kind of ego. And by being that way, you open yourself up to a world of hurt that could easily
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be avoided if only, if only you started thinking in terms of, you know, a lot of the people,
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things people say that I find offensive, they don't really mean to insult me. And you know what,
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even if they did, consider the source. So one of the interesting things among the Stoics that I found
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was, you know, their own approach to insults and how to deal with them. And one of their brilliant
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maneuvers was when somebody insults you, you simply ignore it. You simply carry on as if they hadn't
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said anything, which turns out to be a really effective way to deal with insults. Because the
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person who insulted you will at first think, gee, maybe he didn't hear me. And they'll repeat the
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insult. At which point you can say, no, I heard you. And then you just carry on talking. Because
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here it was, they hit you with your best shot, and they didn't even phase you. So, but it takes a
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certain amount of self-esteem for you to do that, for you to just say, you know what, I'm not going
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to let this insult phase me. I know there's no, it's not a substantial kind of factual claim they're
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making. So I'm just going to pretend like something didn't, that nothing happened.
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All right. So yeah, again, this reiterates the point that insults are in the eye of the
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receiver, right? Like the receiver of the insult is what determines whether something's an insult
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or not. Someone can intend something to be an insult or not intend to be something an insult.
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And it can either, as long as the person takes it as an insult, then it's an insult.
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Yeah. I mean, we can argue the semantics of it, but for me, you've insulted someone if someone
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feels insulted by something you've said or done. And it's sort of a social thing. That gives other
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people a lot of power, though. And, you know, we've kind of emerged into a stage here of our own
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culture where people are rewarded in a curious fashion for being hypersensitive to what other
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people say. And so we have the whole PC movement and we have trigger warnings and we have a variety
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of things along those lines. And suddenly, if you're a very sensitive person, you have been given the
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green light to silence a conversation in a large group because you might say, well, you know, what
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you're saying is upsetting me. Whoops. Well, then we got to stop. And that's one way to deal with that,
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that there are other ways as well. You know, one way is, well, guess what? Become less sensitive.
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Some people will find that hard to do, of course, but others could if they wanted to. But they found
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their source of power and they're sticking with it. Yeah. That was an interesting chapter that you
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go into the book, sort of talking about the rise of the PC culture, the PC code, and then what we had
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before, which was a code of etiquette or a code of politeness. Right. From what I gathered,
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the code of politeness was sort of, it was this informal code that we, no one really sat down to
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agree upon, but it was an informal code that we agreed that these certain things are insulting
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generally for anybody, no matter who you are. What happened with the PC thing is that now what is
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determined as offensive and insulting is determined by each individual. Right. So each individual now can
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have, you know, a sub list. You know, when your parents teach you manners as a kid, what they're
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really teaching you is how not to insult somebody because your parents know what it takes to insult
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somebody and then they know how to avoid doing that. So always say, please, always say, thank you.
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So there was this broad kind of cultural thing that said, well, if you do the following, if you do the
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following, if you behave in the following way, you know, no one can hold it against you. You're fine.
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There will be some, some very sensitive people. Just be very careful when you're in their presence or
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don't say a lot. But insult, but the whole notion, the PC movement tried to sensitize people to what
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other people were saying. And so an unintended side effect was, it made it much easier for some
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people to feel insulted, to take very personally something that you said. So it's an unfortunate
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side effect because some people are miserable because of it. You know what? If somebody calls you
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a racial, hurls a racial epithet at you, the person's an idiot. And the best way to respond is to realize
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this is an idiot. This is the human equivalent of a dog barking at me. And if a dog barks at me, I don't
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take it as deeply cutting. I don't take it as an attack on my very existence. But people were led to
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view it in those ways. And so I'm suspecting that in many lives, there are people who have been made
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miserable by it. Now, you know, but the intent was just the opposite. The intent was to create a world in
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which none of this stuff went on. And that would be a wonderful world to live in. It isn't clear we
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can get there in this manner. And when you study the PC movement and the kind of language, you also
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can sense in some way the futility of trying to outlaw insults. So for instance, at one time,
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people who had physical handicaps were referred to as crippled individuals. And then it was realized
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no, that's an insult. So we can't call them that. So we need to call them handicapped
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individuals. And then there were people who took offense even to that. So we had to call them
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disabled individuals. And then there were people who said, no, no, that's also an insult.
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So we finally, at least for the time being, seem to have arrived at differently abled individuals.
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I mean, I'm fine with that. You know, it's not the language. It's just the thing is that if you're
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dealing with a hypersensitive individual, then whatever you call them, there's a good chance that
00:25:06.020
they're going to take some kind of offense. Same thing happened with respect to race.
00:25:12.900
So there was a time when blacks were referred to as colored people that started being viewed as an
00:25:20.420
insult. So that was changed to being called blacks, which was considered an insult. So the name was
00:25:27.820
changed to Afro-Americans. And then people commented that Afro was a style of haircut, not a race. So it
00:25:36.020
became African-Americans. And the last I heard that had been supplanted in many areas of life by the
00:25:43.680
phrase person of color. So it kind of gives you a feeling for the futility of it. We start with
00:25:51.500
colored people. And after a hundred years, in our effort to flee from possible insults, we've come
00:25:58.040
around to persons of color. So that doesn't seem like a lot of progress to me. And again, bottom line,
00:26:07.240
a racist is probably ignorant and probably crude. And best way to respond is simply to ignore. Now,
00:26:17.860
the people on the other side of the debate will say, well, you know what, if you ignore them,
00:26:22.320
then they're going to spread because they're being ignored. I suspect it's just the opposite,
00:26:28.200
that one of the things they're out for is attention and they're out for shock value. And if we have it in
00:26:34.820
our power to remove that from them, in which case they might start changing their minds about
00:26:40.420
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Sign up today. And now back to the show. Yeah, I thought that was an interesting point. So you talk
00:28:49.740
about how this PC culture, in America, we have a very robust sense of the First Amendment. So laws to,
00:28:54.860
you know, make certain words, language, illegal, haven't passed, but it's been happening in
00:29:00.860
Canada. But then you talk about one case where they wanted to pass some law, where they want to
00:29:07.260
make illegal, hateful speech, whatever that means. But they got shot down by the Supreme Court. And in
00:29:13.480
the case, the judge or the justice wrote about pre-Nazi Germany as an example of when there's laws in
00:29:20.920
place that prohibit hateful speech, quote unquote, that the Nazis, the Nazi party, before they came to
00:29:27.140
power, used those laws to their advantage by drumming up attention to their cause and their party at the
00:29:33.980
trials, where these, you know, guys who were saying anti-Semitic things and doing anti-Semitic actions were
00:29:39.880
put on trial for violating these laws. And it actually helped ferment and increase their, their following.
00:29:45.820
Yeah, and hate speech has become a big topic of discussion. In Canada, hate speech is outlawed. In the United
00:29:53.700
States, it's been tested, gone all the way to the Supreme Court, and it is allowed. I am a vigorous, in my
00:30:01.640
defense of free speech, and that includes, that includes hate speech. So, and you know, I don't regard myself as a
00:30:10.100
hateful person. But free speech is, is extremely important, because once we start cutting corners,
00:30:17.460
then things can, can go astray. And I also think that this concern with hate speech, we're dealing with
00:30:25.120
symptoms instead of the underlying cause. The underlying cause here is you have people who are
00:30:32.720
sensitive to insults, whose feelings are easily hurt. And then my counter-suggestion is, well, let's help
00:30:40.240
those people. Let's help them develop a, you know, a healthy sense of self and a, and a healthy self-identity
00:30:47.180
so that these, we, we can make the pain go away that way. It's a different approach of, you're kind of
00:30:54.480
more subtle, kind of more roundabout. But I think given a choice between censorship of various kinds,
00:31:02.360
that approach, that, that approach is, is better. And you know, it would affect not only how they
00:31:07.100
respond to political speech, but it would also affect how they respond to the kinds of things that
00:31:12.400
happen in just regular relationships. Yeah, there was a great phrase that I remember reading in law
00:31:19.060
school. We were discussing the tort of intentional affliction of emotional distress, which is this
00:31:25.900
tort, this, you can sue somebody for this. If you, if someone intentionally caused you emotional
00:31:31.980
harm. And so the question is like, okay, what is, what's a reasonable emotional harm, you know,
00:31:38.220
for a reasonable person. And this jurist said that, you know, basically said it has to be pretty,
00:31:43.720
pretty high, like really, really, the bar has to be really, really high because in the course of just
00:31:48.140
interacting with people, rubbing shoulders with people, you're going to, people are going to say
00:31:52.900
rude, offensive things. It's just part of life. We have to accept that. And that to counter that,
00:31:58.060
we just need to, there needs to be a certain toughening of the mental hide, which I thought
00:32:02.700
was a great phrase. I've used that a lot. So in order to, for civil society to function,
00:32:06.880
and so we're not caught up in the courts all the time, we need to toughen our mental hides a bit.
00:32:11.140
Yeah. And in, in the PC movement, you had a kind of a race to the bottom of who can be most
00:32:16.660
sensitive, right? And so then we had these things called microaggressions that emerged. So for
00:32:23.800
instance, if you're in a group of men and women and you say, Hey guys, let's go to a bar. You have
00:32:31.320
just committed a microaggression because there's a chance that one of the women there will think
00:32:35.740
she's excluded because she's not a guy in one sense of the word guy. So somebody's feelings will be
00:32:41.540
hurt. And this isn't the direct intention of PC language, but it's a, it's a consequence. It
00:32:48.260
actually increases the amount of sensitivity and therefore has, has the potential to increase the
00:32:55.520
amount of emotional suffering that people experience. So if you're fighting emotional
00:33:01.380
suffering, it's just a bad way to go. What's the better way to go? Teach people how to take
00:33:07.900
insults and simply assess the source of the insult and then respond accordingly. So there are people
00:33:16.520
that when they say something insulting to me, I know it's part of a friendship, you know, and if I
00:33:21.700
spent 10 minutes with them and they didn't insult me, I would say, gee, what's wrong? Is something
00:33:26.940
going, going wrong in your, in your life? There are other cases. There are people who insult me simply
00:33:32.260
because they don't like me for whatever reason. I can live with that. There are people who, when they
00:33:38.860
make a remark critical of me, I listen very carefully because I've given those individuals what I call
00:33:45.800
mentor status. I regard them as mentors. Now, if I pick somebody out as a mentor, I don't necessarily
00:33:52.040
inform them of such, but these are people who have just figured out some aspect of life and I can learn
00:33:58.960
a lot just by listening to them. So if a person has, for me, mentor status and they make a critical
00:34:04.800
remark of it, I don't fight back. I take careful notes. I give it a lot of thought. You know, but if I were
00:34:10.960
a hypersensitive person, that would be ruled out. Somebody who said, you know, you're doing the following
00:34:17.640
thing wrong, it would be like, oh, boo-hoo-hoo, why don't you like me? Another thing that's come along to
00:34:25.080
increase our sensitivity is we've had certainly in grade schools, it's sort of starting to spill over
00:34:33.840
into colleges, but this whole notion of praising everybody for almost nothing. We have competitions
00:34:41.340
in which everyone gets an award. We have everyone ending up the high school valedictorian. And if
00:34:48.160
you're raised in that kind of environment and go out in the real world where there are going to be
00:34:52.940
people who are critical or people who are going to insult us, it stings so much worse if you've never
00:35:00.140
had an insult. So it's counterproductive in that sense. Right. Yeah. The whole self-esteem movement
00:35:07.340
were basically created very fragile, fragile psyches in kids. Right.
00:35:13.400
So we know the stoic approach, which is just not care. Here's an interesting thing I thought was
00:35:18.780
you highlight in the book with insults is that praise, praising someone when done a certain way
00:35:26.300
can actually be insulting. So how can praise be insulting? Yeah, you can praise something for
00:35:33.560
something they don't think is particularly praiseworthy or praise them in a way that they
00:35:38.500
think there's even more better praise coming. So, you know, if I say, if a woman that's wearing
00:35:46.480
a dress of a certain kind, and I say to her, you know, that, that I actually, I would never do this
00:35:52.720
to a woman. So it's a bad example. But if you say, boy, that, that makes you look thinner. Right.
00:35:59.480
Oops. It was intended as praise. But then it also comes out as a revealing that apparently I think
00:36:07.460
this is a person in need of looking thinner. Otherwise, I wouldn't be praising it, meaning by inference
00:36:13.500
that this person is overweight. So what I intend as praise can come out at the other end as an
00:36:18.700
interesting kind of insult. Yeah, it's kind of the backhanded compliment. But you also highlight,
00:36:24.260
you can, you can give praise sarcastically and make someone feel really bad and make feel
00:36:30.780
something, because I remember that, you know, like, oh, you're such a genius. I was like, no,
00:36:34.560
that's, that's an insult. Yeah. So somebody does something really crazy, really awkward,
00:36:40.000
really, uh, take just something really awkward. And you can say, you know, nice move, Nijinsky,
00:36:46.500
right? Meaning just the opposite. And what you said was literally a praise, except that it's going
00:36:53.040
to be taken as an insult. And, and you fully realize that at the time you do it, you know,
00:36:58.660
on the whole praise thing, the Stoics were nicely consistent. So the Stoics said, when somebody
00:37:05.300
insults us, we should, uh, simply turn a blind eye, uh, ignore them. They also had, and we can,
00:37:12.640
we go into this in more, more detail here in a second, but they also talked about a great way to
00:37:17.460
respond to an insult was by insulting yourself even worse than the insulter just insulted you.
00:37:23.120
But switching over, they were consistent because they said, not only should we not put a whole lot
00:37:28.940
of value on the insults that people direct our way, but we should not put much value on the praise
00:37:35.820
they do either. So, uh, and again, you know, I would, in my own mind, I've got two classes of
00:37:42.760
people. I've got ordinary people and I've given a mentor status to some people and somebody in the
00:37:47.840
last category, in the mentor category, when they praise me, that's, makes my day. That's a wonderful
00:37:52.980
thing. Cause that means this person who I've decided has a lot of insults, insights, and a lot to
00:37:58.620
teach me thinks I'm doing something right. But there are a whole bunch of other people who praise
00:38:03.780
you and there can be all sorts of motives for the praise and the praise can be more or less
00:38:09.940
meaningful. And so besides becoming an insult pacifist, I've done my best to become a praise
00:38:17.040
pacifist. So if somebody praises me, typically what I'll do is I'll say, oh, thanks. And then carry on
00:38:24.320
as if nothing had happened. Cause I found out the hard way. If somebody praises you and you say
00:38:29.460
nothing, that that's taken as an insult, that that's your way of indicating to them that you
00:38:35.580
feel that you're above their praise somehow. So you respond to it as simply as you can and then
00:38:42.820
carry on as if nothing had happened. Cause the problem is praise is such an incentive. You get such
00:38:49.860
good feeling on hearing praise that it can have a dramatic impact on your, on your behavior. I was
00:38:59.100
just reading an article today that a friend sent me of a woman who had come to realize how much
00:39:05.320
on her Facebook page, and she was writing things and posting things. And she had become a thumbs up
00:39:12.500
addict where what she sought was to say things that would get her a lot of thumbs up. And then
00:39:19.740
realized that, that it was even changing the way she thought about things, simply the effort to gain
00:39:26.220
that praise. Sometimes in life, the things you do that have the most impact, the most meaning can have
00:39:34.940
the greatest impact on the world are things that people aren't going to want you to do. If you get
00:39:40.720
their praise, you blew it. If they aren't happy with what you said, but it brings about an interesting
00:39:46.660
change, you've, you've done your work. Uh, so praise and the quality of what you've done do not
00:39:55.780
Did you raise an interesting point there that with praise, that's another way you can insult people is
00:40:00.040
by denying their praise and just ignoring it. So accept it with graciously, but don't make a big deal
00:40:06.500
about it. Right. Okay. So let's get into ways to, we can respond to insults. You mentioned one way,
00:40:14.300
the stoic way, which is simply to ignore it. Another tactic you just mentioned briefly was
00:40:20.740
another stoic example was actually take the insult and insult yourself more. I guess this is using
00:40:26.180
self-deprecating humor. Yeah. Self-deprecating humor. Number one, it's, it's great fun once you get
00:40:32.200
into it. And number two, they just don't see it coming because they've spent their life, you know,
00:40:39.120
when they've insulted someone, unless it's just a friendly, uh, insult when they've insulted someone
00:40:44.860
that it's supposed to cause pain, a certain degree of, of pain. But when you engage in response to an
00:40:52.480
insult, well, let me give you an example. So suppose someone comes up to me and describes
00:40:58.500
some characteristic of mine and, uh, and makes it clear that, that they, um, disapprove of that
00:41:05.300
characteristic. One self-deprecating remark is, yeah, yeah, I know I got to work on that, but to
00:41:11.120
tell the truth, that would be number three on the list of bad characteristics I have to overcome on my
00:41:17.340
own personal list. So what just happened? There's a good chance that they thought they were hitting you
00:41:24.260
with their best shot. And what did you do in response? You punched yourself even harder than
00:41:29.160
they did. So it is from the insulter's point of view, it's an utterly demoralizing thing to have
00:41:37.320
happen. And, you know, from the Stoic point of view, it actually is in some way a sincere response.
00:41:45.160
If you're a Stoic, there's this ongoing project to try to turn yourself into a better version of you.
00:41:52.200
And it's difficult to do when there's lots of backsliding. And, and then, so you're very much
00:41:59.660
aware of your own shortcomings. So, you know, sometimes if, if somebody has mentor status and
00:42:06.340
they tell you, you've got a shortcoming, you take notes. But a lot of times it's just, it's, it's
00:42:12.400
people, you know, and, uh, these whole social interactions are incredibly complicated things.
00:42:19.800
And then when I look at myself, sometimes I catch myself, I try not to do it, catch myself
00:42:25.900
insulting other people, usually in subtle ways. And then sometimes I'll think about it. Why did I do
00:42:32.300
that? And oftentimes it's envy that triggered the insult. You know, it's a feeling that, gosh,
00:42:39.000
that person seems to be succeeding in ways I'm not. Gosh, I don't like that. And then before you know it,
00:42:46.940
out has come an insult. And, um, and that's pretty sad. Now, I don't know if other people
00:42:52.600
have that same motivation. I suspect they do, but I can't read, uh, their minds.
00:42:59.220
So it's just bad business. And if you can insult yourself more than someone else has insulted you,
00:43:05.380
like I say, give it a try because it's great fun. It's not as easy as what I described as insult
00:43:11.920
pacifism. That's where you do nothing in response to an insult. Someone lying there in a coma can do
00:43:19.180
insult pacifism. In fact, they don't have any choice in the matter. They're lying there. If you
00:43:24.700
insult them, they're going to say nothing. So one level up from that, particularly if you, if you think
00:43:29.940
of yourself as a clever person, is this, this idea of responding to insults with an even bigger
00:43:35.480
self-insult. But that, that, again, there's a fine line there because it can backfire where you, you,
00:43:41.540
you pile on yourself and then people just pile on you even more and you become a punching bag. I think
00:43:47.280
you give the example of Kierkegaard. This happened to him. He got insulted and then he made sort of a
00:43:52.320
self-deprecating remark and then became the laughingstock of Denmark. Yeah. And you got to know,
00:43:56.880
you got to know who you're dealing with. There are people who are bullies and they're out to inflict
00:44:03.100
this kind of pain. If you try these techniques on them, then probably they will fail and probably
00:44:10.540
will pay a price for it. So you think about the person who's, who's doing it. And, and, and again,
00:44:19.640
if the goal is to, to try to modify their behavior in some way, then you think about the clever way to
00:44:25.540
do that. But there are exceptions to these, to these cases. But this is just talking in broad terms
00:44:32.740
about what I've found in my own life seem to have worked. And of course I didn't discover this.
00:44:38.100
What I did is simply take close attention to this aspect of stoicism, the whole insult response,
00:44:45.100
bit of advice they had to offer. So yeah, I thought that was an interesting point too,
00:44:48.400
you just made about our, our insults being driven by envy. I mean, I think we haven't really talked
00:44:53.740
about why we have this tendency to insult and be insulted. And you go into depths about this,
00:44:58.560
going into evolutionary psychology, how we all have this innate drive for status and social standing
00:45:04.240
because that was essential for our survival. But the Stoics recognized that we had this,
00:45:09.260
they probably didn't have an evolutionary reason that we had this drive. They recognized the drive,
00:45:13.860
how it can cause unhappiness. And our, our, the goal in life was to overcome those drives using
00:45:19.580
stoic practices. Right. So, and in the last decades of the 20th century, this whole field of evolutionary
00:45:27.800
psychology arose, you know, it points to things like, you know what, your, your ancestors who cared
00:45:33.280
about their social standing, guess what? They got to eat first and they got to mate first. And those
00:45:38.520
who didn't care about that, guess what? They didn't leave any offspring because they starved to death or,
00:45:43.620
or failed to reproduce. And what we are is we're the descendants of the ones who cared very much about
00:45:51.860
their social status. And so we've acquired the wiring that makes us care very much about our
00:45:59.060
social status. I have that wiring too. It's a curious thing. So I'm aware simultaneously, you know,
00:46:05.740
I'm, I'm trying to kind of find a way to work around the wiring and at the same time am subject to the
00:46:12.840
wiring. So I mentioned before that I'm a rower. So one of the things that I row in is a quad and
00:46:19.400
that's a boat with four people in it. And they all each have two oars and it gets a little bit
00:46:24.920
complicated. But I remember once when I was coming to practice and I was going to be in the boat and,
00:46:30.860
and, and it was late getting there. And then when I got there, saw that the boat was full of four
00:46:36.220
people and they had simply replaced me with another person. And what was striking is I experienced what
00:46:44.200
are called hurt feelings and the intensity of the hurt of the hurt was, was mind boggling to me. It was
00:46:53.360
very real and almost physical in how painful that it was. And then if you analyze it, you know, in a
00:47:00.700
sensible way, well, no, you know, they wanted to go for a row and I wasn't there. So that probably
00:47:06.080
wasn't a permanent replacement, blah, blah, blah. And yet, despite having studied insults and psychology
00:47:12.620
and evolutionary psychology, I felt the sting of it. So it's a really important characteristic of us.
00:47:21.520
So the Stoics though, didn't know about evolution, but they were the preeminent psychologists of their
00:47:27.640
time. You know, we think of them as a philosophy, as philosophers and they were, but back then
00:47:32.600
philosophy was widely construed. Philosophers would normally be doing natural science. They would be
00:47:39.140
doing psychology. So just from their own observations, they came across this. They said, okay, we're
00:47:46.280
interested in having lives that are as tranquil as possible. So we're interested in avoiding negative
00:47:52.340
emotions like anger and fear and anxiety. And we're interested in welcoming and having as many
00:48:00.740
positive emotions as we can. And the two I like to pick out as examples of that would be feelings of
00:48:07.320
delight, which are absolutely wonderful and they're plentiful if you know where to look for them, and
00:48:12.820
feelings of joy. And notice I didn't say physical pleasure because that wasn't their goal, but it was
00:48:19.620
other positive feelings. And then they realized, okay, so what does disrupt people's tranquility?
00:48:27.360
And one of the big things is being insulted by other people. And so then they put their analytic
00:48:33.280
powers to work. And the question was, well, how can we avoid that? How can we avoid having those
00:48:41.380
negative emotions that come with being insulted? And hit across, I hit upon these really wonderful
00:48:47.340
solutions. The easy one is the insult pacifism. You just pretend like nothing happened. I've tried
00:48:56.200
it. It's quite effective. Not perfectly effective, but quite effective.
00:49:01.760
So we've been talking about some of the techniques that the Stoics have developed to manage our own
00:49:08.580
sensitivity to insults and our own sensitivity to praise. I'm curious, do the Stoics have anything to
00:49:13.840
say about helping others? Do they have anything to say about not proactively trying to insult people?
00:49:22.500
Or should you avoid praising people so they're not put in that situation where they have to manage that
00:49:30.120
So Stoics would make a point of not insulting other people, but there would be exceptions.
00:49:37.080
So it depends on who you're dealing with and what your point is in dealing with them. So Seneca,
00:49:45.240
the Stoic philosopher, talks about how you deal with an unruly servant, you know, that that's a
00:49:51.400
special case because that person probably isn't all that, you know, intellectually involved and isn't
00:49:58.160
quite sure why they're doing what they're doing and hasn't learned any manners. So to be insulting in
00:50:04.460
certain context is acceptable. You know, in life, the interesting thing is when you're dealing with
00:50:12.020
somebody else, what's your goal? What are you trying to have happen? Stoics believed in being
00:50:18.080
socially useful. So they thought they had a duty to try to help others. And that didn't necessarily
00:50:25.120
mean help others get what others wanted to get, but to help others get what the Stoics, and you know,
00:50:32.200
this is going to sound kind of strange, but what the Stoics thought other people should have,
00:50:36.700
and one of the principal things would be avoidance of these negative emotions. So that if you're a
00:50:43.080
practicing Stoic, as I happen to be, when you see somebody who's miserable, then it's an interesting
00:50:50.140
question. Is there anything I can say or do that can potentially lessen the misery of their life?
00:50:56.740
And so one really easy thing to do is, you know, you tell somebody who's been chewed up by getting
00:51:03.100
insulted, you just say, hey, you know, the guy's an idiot. Why are you paying such attention to an
00:51:08.280
idiot? And that can be very, very effective because it gives them something quick and easy to use.
00:51:15.520
And, you know, deep down, they sort of realize, well, yeah, yeah. So that would be one Stoic
00:51:22.500
angle is, how can I help other people? And in particular, do I possess psychological techniques
00:51:29.420
that can help other people avoid negative emotions?
00:51:33.140
Well, Bill, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about
00:51:37.800
Well, online, on Amazon, they have a bunch of interviews. Unfortunately, one thing I found out
00:51:44.160
was that if you write a book on insults, people take you as fair game for insults, for better or worse.
00:51:50.720
I've got a personal website, williambiervin.com. That's the letter B as in boy. And I've also got
00:51:58.680
another website where I was doing a blog for an extended period, and it has gone dormant,
00:52:05.120
but that's 21stcenturystoic.com. And that's 21st21stcenturystoic, all one word, .com.
00:52:14.800
And so those are two places that they can track down some information about me.
00:52:20.440
Fantastic. Well, Bill Irvine, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:52:24.960
My guest today was Bill Irvine. He's the author of the book, A Slap in the Face,
00:52:27.820
Why Insults Hurt and Why They Shouldn't. He's also wrote the book, The Art of Stoic Joy.
00:52:31.500
Check it out. They're both on amazon.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is
00:52:35.420
slash insults. We can find links to resources. We can delve deeper into this topic.
00:52:38.620
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
00:52:54.780
make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. If you enjoy the
00:52:58.180
podcast, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. It helps
00:53:01.800
us out a lot. If you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend
00:53:05.420
or family member who you think would get something out of it. As always, thank you for your continued
00:53:08.780
support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.