Friday, May 16, 2014

Shame Something Else

Bad Parenting


I try not to insult or shame anyone. I have a personal and religious committment to building people up, rather than whining, insulting, or shaming. But I sometimes break that commitment, and one of the things I've noticed is that almost all of the insults in our culture involve shaming someone for being less intelligent or for having sexual habits we dislike. (Or for their race, but, thankfully I don't hear racial slurs very often.)

As a thought experiment, consider what insults we would use if we shamed people for something other than sexual habits or low intelligence. For example, what if we insulted people about poor citizenship or bad parenting instead?

What insults would be common? Deadbeat, narcissist. What else? I'm sure we would come up with some new ones.

Do you think society itself would be different? What would tabloids report on if we didn't focus on sex or cleverness??


Image by keeping it real. Used by permission.

1 comment:

  1. I don't know about society as a whole, but the next time someone cut's me off in traffic or grabs the last jug of milk, I'm going to call them a "deadbeat narcissist".

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