something that Oprah would come up with.  If one has a problem here, refer to the law of defamation.

As far as forums go, if people have their feelings hurt by words, the solution is obvious - they should get away from people who talk.

Kids know that sticks & stones break your bones, but words can never hurt you.   Adults complaining about hurt feelings is pure manipulation in an attempt to get their way by silencing dissent.   Of course this tends to increase stupid decisions, which is the reason it's bad for the community as a whole.  

Yes, there's a time to shut up and act, but by & large, talking and thinking is one hell of a lot cheaper than acting, and especially if you're any good at thinking.

For you Republicans, who failed to pay attention in school and now complain that teachers failed them because they didn't beat them hard enough, I understand the need to learn the hard way.  But your problems are YOUR problems, just don't drag the rest of us along, OK?  

For you Democrats whose self-esteem is damaged, talk to your psychrink.   The rest of us have lives.

Words can hurt, and that's a medical fact.  They raise your blood pressure, cause adrenaline to flow and not stop, put your kidneys under added strain, cause you to grind you teeth, clench  your muscles, put your joints under stress, lower your immune resistence, burn too many calories causing extra oxidants in your blood stream, causing irritation of the arteries and further plaque build up... and so on.  It's as affective on the body as music, perhaps more.

The biological reason why people insult each other is that it causes the person's body to attack itself.  I'll put it like this: it's a covert attack.  

But you're right.  Many times complaining about it is manipulative.  In a discussion forum, it's better to retire from it or rebutt it than to whine about insult.  It's one thing when the person is physically there browbeating you, quite another when you voluntarily read the insult and don't rebutt it.

"Words can hurt, and that's a medical fact... biological reason why people insult each other is that it causes the person's body to attack itself."

I assume you have some sort of evidence for this that you can link to?   Please cite, footnote, etc.

2 things you need to keep in mind - you have to distinguish between medical/organic and psychiatric/psychological, because the 1st is tangible; the 2nd involve social judgments with no certain organic connection.  Psychiatric diagnoses are all purely subjective, not reproducible or reviewable, and thus anybody's opinion.  (Yeah, I didn't believe it either until I saw it repeated and confirmed in many peer psych journals and confirmed by practitioners.)

Next, you have to be careful to distinguish between cause and correlation.  Many MDs are not so careful, and psychs are absolutely terrible about it.

Next, you have to understand that "cause" is also a judgment.   You could easily argue that bad news or even routine words cause oour bodies to wear out faster than normal.  Maybe they do - it's academic unless we decide that the speaker also assumes responsibility for originating or bearing the bad news that gives us heart attacks, etc.

The point is that words are a lot of the way that we relate to each other, and there has to be a lot of freedom in using them, or the community gets constipated and can't function.   Some of the most common examples you see of that is the steno pool or SO which blows a fuse because some guy talks to them as if he were talking to a guy about plumbing.   And some of the biggest facilitators of this corrosive influence in the community are the psychs and social workers who talk as if we were all guarantors of each other's self-esteem.

"Self-esteem" is bullshit, in that it refers to a static POV that is not dependent on any assessment of reality, and leads its holders into error.   Self-confident people have the most accurate and objective assessment processes for their world, and are thus far more effective than the person who has high self esteem without reference to any reality that may support or contradict it.

And that should be obvious to any person who has been around the block, instead of holed up in a psych library.

community the most.

The classic example is civil assault, which is pretty much unchanged since the 16th century:  if a fellow says something to the effect, "if the sheriff weren't in town, I'd cut you up"  there's no assault, because the immediate credible physical threat is conditioned on the sheriff being in town.

Yes, that requires a person to keep their head, listen up and not panic.  I suspect that has to be the way it is, otherwise we have people manipulating our willingness to assume that hurt feelings are real harm, and basis for a lawsuit.

Of course there are also other limits on free speech, and defamation is the most common and clear.   But by & large, free speech has critical political, cultural and commercial value, so much so that we stuck it in the very 1st amendment to the constitution, and IMHO, it's had a lot to do with shaping our nation and its place in the world.

The 2 common problem areas are (1) in politics, where turnabout never seems to be fair play, and of course that seriously gets in the way of people getting to an agreed solution, and stalls the nation.   Personally, I wonder if the stupidest least cooperative people should be allowed to sit in the road, figuratively speaking, and block progress.

The 2nd common area is when boys & girls try to talk.  Men of course tend to be mechanical and talk about specific things; and often blow shit in the same way they roughhouse.   Women do things COMPLETELY differently - talking, for women, is generally to establish or maintain a social relationship.  

This is what baffles the hell out of boys and girls:  they think they speak the same language, but fail to appreciate that they use it for different purposes.   (Of course there are exceptions, but this is what commonly causes all the problems.)

So the result is that women feel hurt when men are blunt, and men think women are manipulative and/or nuts.

Women focus on how they feel about a comment, while men tend to focus more on the message itself.  Yes, there are hypersensitive men - one is the gay stereotype who follows the more feminine pattern; and another is the pathetic, immature, political ideologue, who also gets excited when somebody responds to him in kind.

So when a man says that "you're an idiot because you said something stupid" it's rarely personal, and he's thinking, so what if it is personal?  He's thinking the truth is more important than feelings.   Well, if you're half the size and net worth, maybe feelings are important to you, and especially if you can't influence people any way except by pouting.   You know, whatever works.

So most men can relate stories of trying to deal with female co-workers who are missing the message for their feelings, or refuse to cooperate because they think they should be hurt, etc etc.

And you can't listen to Oprah or NOW very long without realizing that women really don't have the same concept of the 1st amendment that men do; and had it been the Founding Mothers, it's very likely that the 1st amendment would have read more like, "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all", you know?  I mean, that works at Thanksgiving dinner, but that's really about the only time it does.

And now of course we have several industries around the idea of self-esteem, and none of them ever address the idea that it's not how egocentric and fragile we can be as individuals, but more a matter of whether and how we can set aside our feelings to communicate and cooperate.

/rant!

I'm betting that the bulk of the folk posting on this Board enjoy themselves immensely whenever an "opponent"  loses it in response to something posted.

Man, that's more than half the fun of it.

Anybody who has stood subordinate to a drill sergeant shouting insults at him would recognize what I say is true.  You don't even have to go that far.  Insults wouldn't escalate into fights if it weren't activating the adrenals.  You're skepticism, though is quite disciplined.  

So, words are the way we relate to each other.  Can you cite any studies on that?

Psychiatry and neurology are converging on behaviors through tools like PET scans.  Unfortunately, this type of experiment is expensive, so it's going to take some time to correlate behaviors to the physical operation of the brain.  

Already, in psychiatric treatment, with the medications available, the approach has changed.  They now give you a cocktail of several medications.  Each one is associated with a different set of neurotransmtters.  They watch your behavior, and make adjustments.  Yes, it's an art, but it's far better than the lobotomy or ECT.  It's moving out of the stone-age.  

I would agree with you that there has to be a lot of latitude given to speech.  That's where I think the internet is an advance.  People discuss things on these boards that they would never discuss in person.  Also, if you're insulted, you can withdraw.  It's also hard to be personally insulted behind a handle.  You get some emotional protection.  But speech here has to be free.  I just correct you on the issue that words are  innocuous.  That's why it's necessary to have the internet to buffer them.      

About speakers being having to take responsibility for for originating bad news: speakers have done that in the past.  You ever heard the expression: "Shoot the messenger...?"  When a guy wounded his master's self-esteem with bad news, he took his life into his hands.    

I have a contention about self-esteem and self-confidence.  "Self-esteem" though it's not a reflex action, is bullshit in the same way the color yellow is.  Yellow doesn't exist in the universe.  It signifies light of a certain wavelength.  But when you dream that something is yellow, it doesn't even have that meaning.  I think the concept of self-esteem signifies something real going on.  It's probably 90 percent bullshit.  The problem is, we don't know which 90 percent.  The other 10 percent could be very important.

So, "self-confident people have the most accurate and objective assessment [of] processes in their world."  Do you have any studies on that?  You're substituting your pop-science for another.  There's nothing wrong with that.  I disagree though.  I think the most self-confident people have to be a little deluded and a little unaware.  Calling myself a realist, this universe does not inspire confidence.  

Your other point about high self-esteem without reference to reality, that's known as being a fake.  You might scoff at it, but it can be a very successful.  Like a lizard puffing itself up to look bigger.  If a person doesn't have anything else going for him, it makes sense.  But, of course, it's insane, and not respectable.  

The best way to be a fake would be to believe your own bullshit.  The most convincing liars are their own true believers.  

Thus, movements to raise self-esteem actually encourage fakery.  They make that a cultural trait.  That's not to say, self-esteem doesn't refer to something real, otherwise, it shouldn't even have that effect.

if for no other reason than several critical issues are social & cultural, not scientific.

"Anybody who has stood subordinate to a drill sergeant shouting insults at him would recognize what I say is true."

ie, this is your definition of harmful.  1st, you're asking us to fall back on intuition.  Next, obviously you have to define harm.  Finally, I suggest it's not the words, but the body language.  The same words whispered in your ear by your GF would most certainly not cause the same reaction.

And it's not even the idea that you may be some kind of a turd; it's the context that you're afraid of, isn't it?

"Insults wouldn't escalate into fights if it weren't activating the adrenals."

Fighting words, or provocation, is always an issue of fact.  Maligning your parentage is usually fighting words, and I think you would admit that is 100% cultural, and in no way a matter of instinct or science.  Fighting words may vary according to personal history or community, no?

"Psychiatry and neurology are converging on behaviors through tools like PET scans."

It so happens I've been talking to a couple of these (1 psych, 1 neuro) recently who tell me exactly the opposite, that psych & neuro are DIVERGING, and have been ever since they were separated into 2 disciplines about 1948 - neuro focuses on organic issues, while psych focuses on behavior.

Any medical approach to behavior is inevitably determinist, ie, discounts the possibility that a person may consciously do something contrary.  We all know that is not true.  

"You ever heard the expression: "Shoot the messenger...?"

Of course - and it's always said as an expression of stupid, futile & self-destructive approach.
I wouldn't call it a wound to ego so much as anger at having to confront reality.  I think we'd agree that reaction is both immature and self-defeating - maybe that's the same thing.

self-esteem is having a high regard for oneself.  Self-confidence is willingness to believe that you can succeed.  The difference seems subtle, but it is not.

Self-esteem focuses on how you feel about yourself, entirely separate from any real objective connection.  

Self-confidence is the willingness to take a justified risk.

Self-esteem stems from the mistaken assumption that self-confidence is a static thing.  It is not.  It's the invention of psychs & social workers who theorize about how people react, without ever having gone through the process themselves.

The fallacy to the self-esteem shit is that it's a static view not connected to objective observations.  Self-confidence is an entirely different creature, ie the understanding that reasonable risks are often necessary, and the knowledge that if you do the math, you will probably get the same sum; and the knowledge that you sometimes need to take the risk anyway.

VEry different cultural concepts.  One is feeling good about oneself, regardless of justification; the other is believing in oneself.   Very very different.  The 2nd works; the 1st does not.

"movements to raise self-esteem actually encourage fakery.  They make that a cultural trait.  That's not to say, self-esteem doesn't refer to something real, otherwise, it shouldn't even have that effect."

Look at it this way:  self-esteem is feeling good about yourself.   That's certainly a product that will sell.

The problem is, people who don't have it don't understand it's not a veneer.  If you have a lick of sense, you have to understand it must have a logical basis - and of course if you're not good at logic, and feel good about yourself thinking that you're Einstein, that's bound for trouble, because Einstein is in fact dead, and as soon as you rely on the perception, you're fucked.

Likewise, people who have good self-esteem that isn't based in objective fact are headed for trouble.   People who sell (usually it's Oprah) the idea that self-esteem can be independent of the world, require their customers to stay away from anybody who may bring them news of the world.  Like, it Britney Spears thinks she's Steven Hawking, her whole world depends on the assumption that nobody will tell her she ain't Steven Hawking.

There is a whole industry encouraging fragile egos, and they should all be sued for fraud.

But to put a fine point on it: self-esteem to describe the "experience" IMO is quite different than what's marketed as self-esteem.  If it's 90 percent bullshit, it's easy to cut it down even further...  take out the active ingredient.  The psych equivalent of homeopathy.  

It might be a marketing campaign that sells it, but I think it's far closer to being the "opium of the people."  For people who have nothing else going for them, it probably gets them through the day.  

I'm not excusing it, though.  Definitely not.  The problem is, it's hard to go anywhere from that state.  

The reason why I said you substituted one pop-science for another: you didn't define better or worse.  When you look at it empirically, as you are inclined to do, self-confidence becomes as hard to see and measure as self-esteem.

That is if you become empirical enough to actually remove the person and his or her emotional states.

Now, those effects have been confirmed again and again.  I can't look this part up and expect to find much contradiction.  Perhaps you think the weakest link of my argument is connecting their release to being verbally insulted.  I'll admit, that's a weaker link in terms of empirical evidence, and I can't convince you from there, because, yes, I would have to give you anecdotal evidence.  But I think I'm in a good position to have some observations and direct experience about it.  My co-workers and I get verbally insulted every day.  

"'Anybody who has stood subordinate to a drill sergeant shouting insults at him would recognize what I say is true.'"

"ie, this is your definition of harmful."

No, this is not my definition of harmful.  That's an example. My definition given before was this:

"'They raise your blood pressure... put your kidneys under added strain, cause you to grind you teeth, etc. etc ... and so on.'"

Now, in any body human body this is not good.  For a body fighting for survival, it's not as bad as dying.  I think it's provisionally, a pretty good definition of harmful.  

"Finally, I suggest it's not the words, but the body language.  The same words whispered in your ear by your GF would most certainly not cause the same reaction."

You're asking us to fall back on intuition about those "same words."  I find it difficult to believe my GF would tell me that if I do that again she'll gouge my eyes out and skull-fuck me.  (See "Full Metal Jacket")  

No, it's not just body language, though that will raise the urgency of it quite a bit.  People get very angry from insults over the phone.  If you've never seen or had the experience, I have it every day.  The long-term effects of that corticosteroid activation are not good.  However, all I have for that is anecdotal evidence.

"'Insults wouldn't escalate into fights if it weren't activating the adrenals.'"

"Fighting words, or provocation, is always an issue of fact."

I don't know what you mean by this.  It can't mean what it seems to, because many fights are instigated without any support of fact, except things like: "I can take you, and I'm going it let you know who's in control here."  Not stated in so many words, but certainly the reason.  

"Maligning your parentage is usually fighting words, and I think you would admit that is 100% cultural, and in no way a matter of instinct or science."

To the contrary:  Maligning somebody's lineage is  an insult that cuts across all cultures.  Cite just one culture where this isn't a deep insult and an attack on status.  

It has a connection to "instinct" (another one of those ill-defined terms) and is very-well covered by theory and the comparitive method in socio-biology.  Human beings are inclined to recognize their families and identify themselves with them.  Of course, the tendency for this varies a lot, and it's expression varies by culture.  Read Professor Richard Alexander's book: "Darwinism and Human Affairs," and also "The Biology of Moral Systems."  

"'Psychiatry and neurology are converging on behaviors through tools like PET scans.'"

"It so happens I've been talking to a couple of these (1 psych, 1 neuro) recently who tell me exactly the opposite, that psych & neuro are DIVERGING..."

To put a fine point on this, that's anecdotal evidence there.  Also, we need to define: "converging" and "diverging."

However, what they tell you might owe more to inter-disciplinary antagonism than anything factual.  The problem is, with advances in neurology (for which psychiatric *practice* is now dependent), psychiatry is going to have to give way to behavioral neurology, and the latter discipline is going to have to observe behavior.  Now, that is my opinion, but I wouldn't give current *practioners* more credence on this; they might not like it, but it looks like research is taking it that direction.  

"Any medical approach to behavior is inevitably determinist, ie, discounts the possibility that a person may consciously do something contrary.  We all know that is not true."

So, you fell back on intuition there.  That fact that people have choice might not be a sign that it isn't deterministic.  It might be a sign that the researchers don't have the observational power to perceive or control the determined mechanism.  Determined, but not by the researcher.  

Now, I believe free will exists, I just think it's a weak effect.  

"'You ever heard the expression: "Shoot the messenger...?'"

"Of course - and it's always said as an expression of stupid, futile & self-destructive approach.
I wouldn't call it a wound to ego so much as anger at having to confront reality."

That's beside the point.  You could call it all the derogatory names you want, but it has been a literal fact.  In a democracy, it looks futile and immature, and all that.  For a despot, to which the one bringing him the message might be quite expendible, it could be ruthlessly rational to kill the messenger, just to keep his subjects fearfully obedient in the face of a setback.    

Of course, many despots didn't have to think that through.  It just happened to work that way. (Funny how our baser tendencies would.)  In that case though, what was under assault?  Self-esteem.  The 10 percent of it that isn't bullshit but is adapted to a different environment.  


-- Modified on 8/26/2006 10:58:57 AM

(1)  So your claim is that these are the effects of releasing cortico-steroids into the bloodstream; and somebody thinks that insults may cause this release.

OK.  But that misses the point entirely, which is, what is an insult?  This is a situation where a person can obviously insulate themselves from criticism by claims to insult, whether real or not.

The larger question is, should a person be exempt from criticism?  And should the speaker be responsible to guess what might cause the release of what chemicals into the bloodstream of people within speaking range?

(2)  Next, we have the question of "damage" versus  "ordinary wear & tear".  Is high blood pressure something a person needs to be protected from, or is it ordinary wear & tear?  Some people wear cleats on the carpet and it doesn't bother them, others lay plastic on the carpet and still take their shoes off.  

(3) What an insult or fighting words is always an issue of fact, ie depends on the totality of the circumstances.   Let me point out that no phone conversation or forum post offers the opportunity for a physical fight.   My thesis is that the free flow of ideas, even bad ones, is far more important than preserving the egos of the most fragile among us.

(4)  If your posts here, or anything else you do, is a conscious choice, then we know that behavior is not pre-determined.

Do you post by choice, or am I dealing with a 'bot?

I have other pressing matters.  I hate to go while Scriptfixer is on a roll.  See you in a  week or two.

Well, I had several girlfriends, the vapid banalties and inanities which flowed so unendingly from their idiotic mouths, you wouldda been afraid, very afraid.  I sure was  -- afraid i'd lose what little sanity was left to me.

my problem has always been that about half of my dates have been certifiable, I mean real nut jobs that need or are having their heads shrunken.  These are much scarier than merely inane - I will grant that a lot of Oprah's audience seem to be stuck between the 2.