The Art of Manliness - #390： Why Insults Sting and How to Handle Them

00:00:00.000 This episode of the Art of Manliness podcast is brought to you by The Strenuous Life. The

00:00:03.300 Strenuous Life is an online platform that we created to help you put into action all the

00:00:06.560 things we've been talking about on the podcast and writing about on The Art of Manliness for

00:00:09.340 the past 10 years. We've done that by creating a series of 50 different badges based around 50

00:00:13.240 different skills, hard skills like wilderness survival, self-defense, first aid, soft skills

00:00:17.480 like personal finance, public speaking, social skills. We also provide weekly challenges to

00:00:21.620 help you push yourself outside of your comfort zone, as well as accountability for your physical

00:00:25.260 fitness, doing a good deed, thinking outside of yourself. We just had enrollment wrap up

00:00:29.500 a few weeks ago in June. Our next enrollment is in September. If you'd like to be one of the first

00:00:33.580 to know when enrollment opens up, head over to strenuouslife.co, get your email on our waiting

00:00:37.660 list, and we'll send out an email about the first part of September to let you know when enrollment

00:00:41.320 opens up for The Strenuous Life. Strenuouslife.co, hope to see you there. This episode of The Art of

00:00:45.760 Manliness podcast is brought to you by Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is much more than just

00:00:49.520 another greens product. It's the most complete whole food supplement available with 75 ingredients

00:00:53.560 working together to help with 11 different areas of health. It's been developed over 10 years by

00:00:57.520 doctors and nutritionists. One scoop of Athletic Greens is like having 11 supplements in one. I love

00:01:02.600 it. Best of all, it tastes great. Unlike a lot of other greens products, it doesn't taste like you're

00:01:06.200 licking the floor of a barn. Athletic Greens has a nice sweet taste to it. It's great. Got a special

00:01:10.080 offer for my listeners. You can get 20 free travel packs valued at $99 with your first purchase. To do

00:01:14.900 this, you have to go to athleticgreens.com slash manliness to claim your special offer today. Again,

00:01:20.160 athleticgreens.com slash manliness for 20 free travel packs valued at $99 with your first purchase.

00:01:25.680 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. Insults are a part

00:01:44.780 of the human experience. We insult others and we get insulted back. Social media has only amplified

00:01:50.240 our tendency to ridicule one another and increase the likelihood of being on the receiving end of a

00:01:54.580 barb. Yet we don't typically understand the dynamics of insults very well. Why do we throw

00:01:58.780 insults at each other and why do they hurt so much? Is there anything we can do to reduce the mental and

00:02:03.040 emotional sting of these verbal affronts? My guest today has explored the philosophy of insults in

00:02:06.940 his book, A Slap in the Face, Why Insults Hurt and Why They Shouldn't. His name is Bill Irvine and I

00:02:11.120 had him on the podcast about a year ago to discuss his book on stoic philosophy. Today on the show,

00:02:15.140 Bill and I talk insults. We begin our conversation discussing all the ways we can insult one another,

00:02:19.380 from direct insults to passive aggressive ones. Bill explains why we often resort to backhanded

00:02:23.580 compliments when we're praising people and why you don't have to intend to insult someone

00:02:27.380 to insult them. Our conversation then dovetails in the rise of PC culture and how it's made us all

00:02:32.300 more sensitive to small slights and unintentional snubs. And we end our conversation with tactics

00:02:36.240 you can use to be less sensitive to social slights with many of Bill's insights coming from the stoic

00:02:40.540 philosophers. In a day and age when we seem to be in perpetual outrage mode, this podcast provides

00:02:44.480 some fortifying balm for the soul. After the show's over, check out the show notes at

00:02:47.740 aom.is slash insults. And Bill joins me now via clearcast.io.

00:03:03.320 Bill Irvine, welcome back to the show.

00:03:05.540 It is indeed a pleasure to be here.

00:03:07.220 So we had you on the show a few months ago to talk about your book about stoicism,

00:03:12.340 the art of stoic joy, and we got a lot of positive feedback on that. But you've written another book,

00:03:17.720 a while back ago, right? Shortly after you wrote this book on stoicism about insults and why they

00:03:24.180 sting so much. It's called Slap in the Face. I'm curious, was this insults book, was this an

00:03:28.700 offshoot of your stoicism book? Like after you'd wrote the stoicism book, you decided to explore

00:03:33.940 the topic of insults because of your research in stoicism?

00:03:37.400 Yeah, I had kind of a curious triple pregnancy going on here. I originally wrote a book called

00:03:43.880 On Desire, Why We Want What We Want, thinking that I would use that book as a way to pursue an

00:03:50.980 interest in Buddhism. And of course, I could also get academic credit toward tenure and promotion by

00:03:57.680 doing that. So it's two for the price of one. And in the process of doing the research on Buddhism,

00:04:04.340 I decided I needed to explore other philosophies of life. One of them was stoicism. And after looking

00:04:10.960 into stoicism, I decided it, I was much better suited to become a stoic than to become a Buddhist.

00:04:17.860 So then, a follow-up was, I also decided to write a book on the stoics. And in the process of doing

00:04:25.960 that, discovered that they had extensive, they'd given extensive thought to insults, to the role

00:04:32.380 insults play in society, and to how to prevent insults from disrupting our tranquility, from

00:04:40.540 upsetting us. So I decided once I finished the stoic book that I would do a book on insults. And

00:04:48.560 this is that book. So it's kind of a follow-on to the stoic book that I wrote.

00:04:54.280 Yeah, I think that's interesting. You went from Buddhism to stoicism, or from desire to Buddhism

00:04:58.600 to stoicism to insults. It's funny where things can take you if you just follow those paths.

00:05:04.820 Yeah, it's an adventure. It's a kind of an intellectual adventure. And you just find out

00:05:09.020 where the road is leading, and you follow it along. And surprising things can happen as a result.

00:05:15.080 Well, so you start off the book discussing the different types of insults that are out there.

00:05:19.540 I think we all know them intuitively, but when you made it explicit in the book, I was like,

00:05:25.620 boy, there's a whole host of ways you can insult people. So you start talking about sort of direct

00:05:31.680 insults. What are some examples of direct insults that we see on a day-to-day basis?

00:05:38.260 A direct insult, you can walk up to somebody and simply say something abusive to them. You can say

00:05:43.420 it's an ugly haircut. You can say they're an ugly person. You can say they're ignorant. Those are 1.00

00:05:48.740 verbal insults, and there's not a lot to say for them, but they're one step better than physical

00:05:53.800 insults. You can walk up to somebody and punch them in the face. Now, of course, that's also a 0.99

00:06:00.680 form of violence, whereas the other is just verbal abuse. And then the interesting thing is, that's

00:06:06.600 what you think of when you think about insults. But when you get deeper into the whole insult process,

00:06:11.900 you realize how much human brain power can go into an insult, how clever and subtle they can be.

00:06:18.920 And it turns out to be its own little genre, you know, that the whole set of insults that are

00:06:24.940 possible. Right. So besides sort of direct proactive action, either verbally or through

00:06:31.840 actions insulting, you talk about how you can insult people just by not doing anything at all or not

00:06:36.720 saying anything at all. Suppose you walk up to me. Suppose I have some dispute with you in the past,

00:06:43.700 and as a result have formed a bad opinion of you, and you walk up to me and hold your hand out. I can

00:06:49.840 refuse to extend my hand to shake your hand. That's a big insult. Even worse, I can turn my back to you

00:06:57.500 and walk off. So those haven't said a word, haven't touched you, but that can be a truly cutting insult,

00:07:05.840 depending on the nature of our relationship beforehand.

00:07:08.520 Right. Or shunning is another example of that, or sort of an offshoot of that, where you just

00:07:12.360 totally ostracize.

00:07:13.760 Yep. So I can go on an extended period when I simply refuse to respond to anything you say.

00:07:21.440 You know, and in some religious groups, shunning is a way of punishment. And so if you want to

00:07:27.460 communicate with the person who's shunning you, you have to find a third party to act as intermediary

00:07:33.500 there between you and the person who's shunning you. And it's brutal. I've read accounts of being

00:07:39.680 shunned, and it's absolutely brutal.

00:07:42.600 Yeah, it sounds like it could be worse than sort of the direct insult, because with the least,

00:07:45.920 with the direct insult, the person's acknowledging that you exist when you're shunned, like you just,

00:07:51.740 you cease to exist in a weird way.

00:07:54.140 Yes. You are written out of that person's social life. It's like you say, it's as if you don't even

00:08:00.640 exist. And what could be more painful than that?

00:08:03.260 Yeah. And then you talk about, you know, say we, oftentimes the way we insult is not directly to

00:08:09.840 the person, like one-on-one. I mean, that does happen. You know, we call them a bad name,

00:08:14.560 flip them the bird, do something else like that, or we shun them or don't give them the silent

00:08:19.420 treatment. But oftentimes you talk about in the book, the way people go about insulting others is

00:08:24.060 through third parties or indirectly. So let's dig into that. What are the sort of the indirect ways that we

00:08:29.980 insult people?

00:08:31.960 Well, you can say bad things about somebody to someone else, and you can do that with two different

00:08:38.900 kinds of plans in mind. I mean, all of this becomes very cunning and very strategic. But one thing you

00:08:45.260 could do is do the insult to a third party, an outside party, on the assumption that that party

00:08:51.560 is going to report the insult to the person you're trying to insult, which is bad. You weren't there when

00:08:59.440 the insult happens, but it's a bad thing. But the other thing you can do is spread this campaign

00:09:06.880 of a poisonous kind of campaign behind the person's back where you're going around saying

00:09:13.260 mean things and insulting things to everyone else. And then you, the person who's the target of this

00:09:20.760 attack, kind of grow aware of it in a subtle way. It's just that everybody seems to be treating you

00:09:27.720 differently. And that can also have disastrous consequences.

00:09:32.120 And this is called backbiting, right? Where you talk behind people's back.

00:09:35.900 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:09:36.220 All right. And besides these indirect approaches, you also highlight other subtle ways we insult people,

00:09:43.680 even just to their face, without them even knowing. So example, like backhanded compliments

00:09:49.660 or an example of that.

00:09:51.860 Yeah. So I could tell you that, you know, you're the best player on our team. And that sounds like

00:09:59.980 a compliment. But if you think you're the best player at a certain position in the entire league,

00:10:05.680 that can count as an insult. It's a curious thing about insults. They're in the mind of the

00:10:11.120 beholder. And you can play against whatever self-image somebody has in order to insult them,

00:10:18.180 where what you're saying isn't directly insulting. And to an outsider, it sounds like you're

00:10:23.500 complimenting them. But to those people themselves, it comes across as an insult,

00:10:29.760 because you're not acknowledging their self-image.

00:10:33.940 Right. And we often see this too with like comparisons, right? You can say, oh, you did better

00:10:40.000 than Jimmy in class. But like, Jimmy's not particularly bright. Well, okay. That's not much of a...

00:10:46.680 Jimmy's the worst one. No, it's damning with faint praise. And the thing is, we're programmed by our

00:10:56.180 evolution to care very much about our social standing. So we go through life playing what I

00:11:03.320 call the social hierarchy game. And one of the ways we play it, and we can play it with, you know,

00:11:09.740 if you look at animal groups, there'll be actual fights that break out in order to determine who's

00:11:16.000 where on a social hierarchy. But we humans have evolved beyond that. So we do it with words,

00:11:22.180 with insults, with these subtle interplays between, you know, individuals and the conversation they have.

00:11:30.560 My favorite subtle insult that you highlight in the book is the ambush insult. Because it just made me

00:11:36.400 laugh. It's like the ambush insult is when you start off with something that sounds like praise,

00:11:41.700 but then you go right to just being as insulting as possible. I think you gave an example of Groucho

00:11:48.020 Marx. Yeah, Groucho.

00:11:49.380 Sort of a master of the ambush insult.

00:11:52.500 Yeah, he had a friend who had written a book that was supposed to be, you know, have a humorous

00:11:57.440 element, but other elements as well. And so when Groucho wrote him back a response saying,

00:12:02.580 so when I picked up your book, I laughed so hard I couldn't believe it. And then I put it down,

00:12:09.440 which sounds like a compliment, but then followed by the remark that someday I plan to actually read

00:12:14.540 it. So, which is a great insult and very clever. And that's the interesting thing. So with one of

00:12:23.160 these setup insults, you're kind of trying to increase the amount of harm you inflict by first

00:12:30.460 making them think it's praise, because then they have this sense of heightened expectation for

00:12:36.080 what comes next. And then you lower the boom with the insult.

00:12:39.540 Right. And Winston Churchill was a master of this as well.

00:12:42.700 Yeah. So lots of examples of that. So he had, I mean, I'm not thinking of any off the top of my head,

00:12:49.240 but he was very good at his insults. Ah, the lady, what Nancy Astor said to him, 0.88

00:12:57.620 Winston Churchill, if you were my husband, I would put poison in your coffee. And he replied to her,

00:13:04.100 and Nancy, if you were my wife, I would drink it. So that's a classic, classic Churchill line.

00:13:11.520 Right. So there is sort of a sense of gamemanship with the insult. I mean, like the more clever and

00:13:18.920 subtle your insult can be, I don't know, it seems like it's more insulting that way than compared to 0.99

00:13:24.740 just call him a jerk or whatever. Yeah. And you want to do it with style. And, you know, where this 0.99

00:13:30.980 comes across most vividly is when it's typically involving men who imagine themselves to be highly

00:13:40.440 intelligent or highly articulate. Women have a different kind of form that their insulting can 1.00

00:13:46.620 take. But with men, it's often simply this kind of male showing of your power, showing that you're

00:13:56.440 high up in the hierarchy. And, you know, it descends also in athletic contests of various kinds.

00:14:04.260 It's no longer there. It's not the high-flown intellectual kinds of insults, but it's

00:14:10.560 the coarsest insults you can imagine that the players, even on their own team, will hurl at each

00:14:17.020 other. Some kind of curious male bonding thing. And then you reply with an equally crude insult back.

00:14:24.940 And for some reason, that cements the group together. You wouldn't think that. But I have,

00:14:31.240 I'm a competitive rower. And so I have teammates and, you know, people I play with and compete with.

00:14:39.800 And it's really remarkable the extent to which our conversation consists in put-downs and responses to

00:14:47.640 put-downs. And it's a lot of fun. And, you know, I try to explain it to my wife. And she, you know,

00:14:54.420 always is just a little bit puzzled of, well, why would that be fun? But it is. And I'm not sure I

00:15:01.140 can fully explain it.

00:15:02.200 Right. But that's a very uniquely male thing. It seems like men use aggressiveness as a way to

00:15:08.760 nurture and to foment bonds between each other.

00:15:12.580 Yeah.

00:15:13.380 But that raises a question. So you talk about teasing. And teasing is, it is sort of a social

00:15:19.620 lubricant that we use. We even do with men between women, right? Like husbands and wives tease each other. 0.99

00:15:26.080 It's an important form of, in a relationship between a man and a woman. Once you spend a lot 0.93

00:15:32.360 of time with another person, they invariably are going to start doing things that you find annoying.

00:15:38.760 I mean, simply because they have a different way of going through their lives, going about their days

00:15:43.560 than you do. And so there are things that you find annoying. And very quickly find that the worst thing

00:15:49.580 you can do in terms of the relationship is to go up in a very factual way. Say, you're doing the

00:15:55.600 following. I find it very annoying. I'm asking you to quit right now. Because it doesn't work out that

00:16:01.160 way. You know, within relationships, there's that same kind of jockeying that goes on, you know, where

00:16:08.040 nobody wants to be taken advantage of or looked down on by the other party to the relationship.

00:16:14.280 So in the case of a husband and wife, you turn it into a kind of a tease, into a kind of joke,

00:16:21.500 what you regard as their shortcoming. And that puts a comic spin on the suggestion you're trying

00:16:28.320 to make to them. And so then it has a greater chance of it getting through. I mean, suppose

00:16:34.200 you think that your wife has just been running up a huge bill at some store and you're worried about

00:16:43.140 that. And one way you can do it is say you can't spend any more money. Probably not the best strategy.

00:16:48.560 But a second way is, well, are you sure you're going to not melt that credit card? And there's all

00:16:55.060 sorts of cute, funny kind of ways of putting it where they'll get the message, but they won't feel

00:17:03.020 directly attacked by it. My wife does precisely the same thing back at me about the things she wants 0.99

00:17:09.840 me to change. So it's a nice way to make a suggestion.

00:17:14.640 But there's some people who would hear that sort of humor suggestion, but get really offended by it.

00:17:21.220 And so, I mean, that's the funny. Teasing, there's like a fine line with teasing where,

00:17:25.940 okay, it's fun and playful and everyone's in on it. But then at some point it crosses to like,

00:17:30.420 this is no longer teasing. This is actually vindictive and mean.

00:17:34.580 Yeah, it's a fine line. And that's only one of many fine lines because insults can turn into

00:17:41.380 bullying too. So you have that whole spectrum that starts with a gentle tease and ends with

00:17:47.800 outright bullying. And it's a function of the intention of the person doing it.

00:17:54.500 But the downside is you can say something with the best intentions in the world. And if you're

00:18:00.720 dealing with a particularly sensitive person, they can react in a really extreme manner.

00:18:07.240 So you kind of learn, well, you know, you might have relatives, for instance, and you know,

00:18:11.720 there are some people that when you're around them, you know, the saying is you walk on eggshells.

00:18:17.200 That is, you're very careful. You know, they have many sensitive topics and you don't want to set

00:18:22.400 them off on that. So they'll interpret all sorts of things as insults. So what you need to do

00:18:27.740 is say very little and be very guarded in what you do say. And even then, you can end up triggering

00:18:35.760 some kind of response. And the best way to deal with that is simply to humbly apologize and retrench

00:18:43.800 even more. And it's unfortunate for people who are that way. You know, it's evidence of a fragile

00:18:51.100 kind of ego. And by being that way, you open yourself up to a world of hurt that could easily

00:18:58.400 be avoided if only, if only you started thinking in terms of, you know, a lot of the people,

00:19:05.200 things people say that I find offensive, they don't really mean to insult me. And you know what,

00:19:10.580 even if they did, consider the source. So one of the interesting things among the Stoics that I found

00:19:17.760 was, you know, their own approach to insults and how to deal with them. And one of their brilliant

00:19:25.160 maneuvers was when somebody insults you, you simply ignore it. You simply carry on as if they hadn't

00:19:31.540 said anything, which turns out to be a really effective way to deal with insults. Because the

00:19:39.300 person who insulted you will at first think, gee, maybe he didn't hear me. And they'll repeat the

00:19:44.720 insult. At which point you can say, no, I heard you. And then you just carry on talking. Because

00:19:51.380 here it was, they hit you with your best shot, and they didn't even phase you. So, but it takes a

00:19:57.000 certain amount of self-esteem for you to do that, for you to just say, you know what, I'm not going

00:20:03.120 to let this insult phase me. I know there's no, it's not a substantial kind of factual claim they're

00:20:09.220 making. So I'm just going to pretend like something didn't, that nothing happened.

00:20:12.880 All right. So yeah, again, this reiterates the point that insults are in the eye of the

00:20:17.060 receiver, right? Like the receiver of the insult is what determines whether something's an insult

00:20:21.180 or not. Someone can intend something to be an insult or not intend to be something an insult.

00:20:26.100 And it can either, as long as the person takes it as an insult, then it's an insult.

00:20:29.760 Yeah. I mean, we can argue the semantics of it, but for me, you've insulted someone if someone

00:20:34.400 feels insulted by something you've said or done. And it's sort of a social thing. That gives other

00:20:43.120 people a lot of power, though. And, you know, we've kind of emerged into a stage here of our own

00:20:50.760 culture where people are rewarded in a curious fashion for being hypersensitive to what other

00:20:56.980 people say. And so we have the whole PC movement and we have trigger warnings and we have a variety

00:21:04.040 of things along those lines. And suddenly, if you're a very sensitive person, you have been given the

00:21:10.720 green light to silence a conversation in a large group because you might say, well, you know, what

00:21:16.860 you're saying is upsetting me. Whoops. Well, then we got to stop. And that's one way to deal with that,

00:21:23.240 that there are other ways as well. You know, one way is, well, guess what? Become less sensitive.

00:21:30.380 Some people will find that hard to do, of course, but others could if they wanted to. But they found

00:21:36.060 their source of power and they're sticking with it. Yeah. That was an interesting chapter that you

00:21:39.900 go into the book, sort of talking about the rise of the PC culture, the PC code, and then what we had

00:21:46.720 before, which was a code of etiquette or a code of politeness. Right. From what I gathered,

00:21:51.840 the code of politeness was sort of, it was this informal code that we, no one really sat down to

00:21:58.300 agree upon, but it was an informal code that we agreed that these certain things are insulting

00:22:04.040 generally for anybody, no matter who you are. What happened with the PC thing is that now what is

00:22:10.200 determined as offensive and insulting is determined by each individual. Right. So each individual now can

00:22:15.900 have, you know, a sub list. You know, when your parents teach you manners as a kid, what they're

00:22:22.920 really teaching you is how not to insult somebody because your parents know what it takes to insult

00:22:28.760 somebody and then they know how to avoid doing that. So always say, please, always say, thank you.

00:22:34.920 So there was this broad kind of cultural thing that said, well, if you do the following, if you do the

00:22:42.180 following, if you behave in the following way, you know, no one can hold it against you. You're fine.

00:22:46.700 There will be some, some very sensitive people. Just be very careful when you're in their presence or

00:22:52.340 don't say a lot. But insult, but the whole notion, the PC movement tried to sensitize people to what

00:23:01.500 other people were saying. And so an unintended side effect was, it made it much easier for some

00:23:09.280 people to feel insulted, to take very personally something that you said. So it's an unfortunate

00:23:16.320 side effect because some people are miserable because of it. You know what? If somebody calls you

00:23:22.400 a racial, hurls a racial epithet at you, the person's an idiot. And the best way to respond is to realize 1.00

00:23:29.920 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 1.00

00:23:36.420 take it as deeply cutting. I don't take it as an attack on my very existence. But people were led to

00:23:44.360 view it in those ways. And so I'm suspecting that in many lives, there are people who have been made

00:23:52.620 miserable by it. Now, you know, but the intent was just the opposite. The intent was to create a world in

00:23:58.900 which none of this stuff went on. And that would be a wonderful world to live in. It isn't clear we

00:24:04.640 can get there in this manner. And when you study the PC movement and the kind of language, you also

00:24:12.260 can sense in some way the futility of trying to outlaw insults. So for instance, at one time,

00:24:20.820 people who had physical handicaps were referred to as crippled individuals. And then it was realized

00:24:28.840 no, that's an insult. So we can't call them that. So we need to call them handicapped 1.00

00:24:34.320 individuals. And then there were people who took offense even to that. So we had to call them

00:24:40.400 disabled individuals. And then there were people who said, no, no, that's also an insult.

00:24:46.580 So we finally, at least for the time being, seem to have arrived at differently abled individuals.

00:24:53.280 I mean, I'm fine with that. You know, it's not the language. It's just the thing is that if you're

00:25:00.500 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 0.88

00:25:36.020 became African-Americans. And the last I heard that had been supplanted in many areas of life by the 0.98

00:25:43.680 phrase person of color. So it kind of gives you a feeling for the futility of it. We start with 1.00

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, 1.00

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 various things. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors. All right. Buying

00:26:44.640 a dress shirt can be a huge hassle. First, you got to find out what your neck size is. You got to hunt

00:26:47.900 down a sales associate and measure your neck. Then you go and you find your shirt. The collar fits you

00:26:51.540 right, but then the shirt's just too billowy or something's off of the sleeves. So you go up a size

00:26:55.420 and everything's perfect on the shirt, but now your collar doesn't fit. Solution to this is get a

00:26:59.500 made to measure shirt. You're probably thinking, Brett, that's going to cost an arm and a leg

00:27:02.200 and even more of a hassle. Not so with Proper Cloth. At propercloth.com, you can easily create

00:27:06.700 a custom shirt size in seconds by answering 10 simple questions, no tape measure required. From

00:27:11.100 there, you can customize your shirt however you want. You have 20 collar styles to choose from,

00:27:14.420 10 cuff styles, and 500 fabric styles from classic to business. The team at Proper Cloth works with

00:27:18.880 the best fabric producers from around the world and only buy fabrics that meet their high quality

00:27:22.420 expectations. Best of all, Proper Cloth guarantees a perfect fit, meaning that if somehow your shirt

00:27:26.140 doesn't fit perfectly, they will remake it for free. I did this with a white Oxford button down.

00:27:30.580 Answered the 10 questions, got the shirt, and it fit me like a glove. And you're probably

00:27:34.060 thinking, Brett, this can cost $100. Shirts start at just $80. Custom and made to measure for you.

00:27:39.000 So if you're ready to try this, got an offer for you. Go to propercloth.com slash manliness today

00:27:43.280 and enter gift code manliness to save $20 off your first shirt. Again, propercloth.com slash

00:27:48.220 manliness, gift code manliness to save $20 off your first shirt. Also by The Great Courses Plus.

00:27:53.380 The key to getting ahead personally and professionally is knowledge. That's why I love The Great Courses Plus.

00:27:56.920 With The Great Courses Plus, you have unlimited access to over 9,000 lectures that you can

00:28:00.320 watch or listen to. These lectures are taught by the world's best professors and experts in their

00:28:03.980 field. They've got lectures on pretty much any topic you can imagine. History, philosophy, art,

00:28:08.300 how to write better, how to take better pictures, business, self-improvement, you name it, they've

00:28:11.740 got it. One course I've been listening to is called Outsmart Yourself, Brain-Based Strategies to a

00:28:15.380 Better You. Just all these things using behavioral science to improve yourself. So one example is one

00:28:19.960 way to beat procrastination is just do nothing for 20 minutes. A lot more there. So again, Outsmart Yourself,

00:28:24.520 Brain-Based Strategies to a Better You. And if you want to try, listen to this lecture, this course,

00:28:28.360 I got a special offer for you. For a limited time only, they're giving my listeners a special

00:28:31.760 free month of unlimited access to all their lectures, but you need to sign up through my

00:28:34.760 special URL. So to get your free month trial today, go to thegreatcoursesplus.com slash

00:28:39.860 manliness. Again, that's thegreatcoursesplus.com slash manliness for a free one month trial.

00:28:45.400 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 1.00

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 0.98

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. 0.83

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

00:39:53.560 necessarily go hand in hand.

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. 0.99

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, 0.78

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 1.00

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

00:49:28.440 status anxiety?

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 1.00

00:51:03.100 insulted, you just say, hey, you know, the guy's an idiot. Why are you paying such attention to an 1.00

00:51:08.280 idiot? And that can be very, very effective because it gives them something quick and easy to use. 1.00

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

00:51:36.400 the book, Slap in the Face?

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.

00:52:23.260 All right. You're very welcome.

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.

The Art of Manliness - March 22, 2018

#390： Why Insults Sting and How to Handle Them

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript