William B. Irvine - A Slap in the Face: Why Insults Hurt--And Why They Shouldnt

Why Insults HurtAnd Why They Shouldnt

William B. Irvine

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William B. Irvine 2013

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Irvine, William Braxton, 1952
A slap in the face : why insults hurtand
why they shouldnt / William B. Irvine.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-19-993445-4 (alk. paper)ISBN 978-0-19-993446-1 (updf)
1. Resilience (Personality trait) 2. Invective. I. Title.
BF698.35.R47I78 2013
155.232dc23 2012021464

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

CHAPTER 1
Introduction

PART ONE
THE INSULT ARSENAL

CHAPTER 2
Words Like Daggers

CHAPTER 3
Subtle Digs

CHAPTER 4
Bludgeoned with Praise

CHAPTER 5
Benign Insults

PART TWO
INSULT PSYCHOLOGY

CHAPTER 6
A World of Hurt

CHAPTER 7
Who Gets Hurt?

CHAPTER 8
Why We Insult

PART THREE
DEALING WITH INSULTS

CHAPTER 9
Personal Responses to Insults

CHAPTER 10
Societal Responses to Insults

CHAPTER 11
Insults: The Inner Game

CHAPTER 12
Insights

IN THE 1920s, a group of writers, editors, critics, and actors were in the habit of meeting for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City. They sat at a round table in the hotels restaurant and, preferably over martinis, swapped witticisms.

Playwright Marc Connelly was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, as the group was known. One day he was sitting at lunch when another man came up behind him, rubbed his hands over Connellys bald head, and said, Marc, your head feels as smooth as my wifes ass. Connelly reached up, felt his own scalp, and without missing a beat replied, So it does, so it does. This is a delightful example of repartee: an insulted person quickly turns the insult back on the insulter. This bit of repartee was sufficiently witty that we are still repeating it eight decades later.

In other cases, the consequences of an insult, rather than being humorous, are horrific. In 1996, for example, Ronald Shanabargers girlfriend refused to cut short a cruise to come comfort him when his father died. He felt sufficiently insulted by this refusal that he apparently hatched a cold-blooded plan for revenge. He married the girlfriend, had a child by her, and

Notice that in this case, what Shanabarger took to be insulting wasnt something his girlfriend said and wasnt even something she did; it was something she failed to donamely, cut her cruise short. Notice, too, that the girlfriend might not have intended to hurt Shanabargers feelings; to the contrary, she might simply have been thoughtless. We should not make the mistake, then, of thinking that only intentionally hurtful remarks can count as insults. Rather, if you find my behavior to be insulting, I have insulted you, perhaps without intending to do so.

Insults are ubiquitous. It may be uncommon for a boss or teacher to insult us by calling us a fool in public, but insults from friends and relatives are commonplace. They might tell us that the glare from our bald head is ruining the group photo they are trying to take. Or they might tell those present, as we are paying for their dinner, that such generosity on our part is astonishing and suggest that we must be experiencing the early symptoms of food poisoning. Curiously, friends and relatives say these things not because they want to offend us but because they like us and want us to like them in turn. Indeed, if we take offense at what they say, they will be surprised. We were just teasing you, they will explain.

Another form of insult is simultaneously more subtle and sinister than this. Suppose I tell you that a mutual friend has told me that you are a pompous fool. The friend has clearly insulted you, albeit behind your back. But besides this insult, there might be a second and arguably more malicious insult. Consider, after all, my motives in telling you about the friends comment. It could be that I did so for your own good: I wanted to let you know that you should not trust this friend. It is also possible, though, that my motives in reporting the insult are anything but benevolent: I might have wanted to inflict the pain of an insult on you without myself being the author of that insult and therefore without laying myself open to retaliation on your part. Indeed, if I dislike you, hearing someone insult you behind your back is cause for celebration, inasmuch as it presents me with the insult-equivalent of a free lunch.