Re: being an asshole is relative and subjective

David Wieland wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:The funny thing is: can anybody point at somebody and say "asshole" without being an asshole?  In other words, would a perfectly pleasant person ever call anybody an asshole?

That sounds wise, but I keep wondering how to define asshole. Is this one of those "I can't define it but I know it when I see it" things?

Imagine somebody is pointing at you and saying "asshole."  Obviously, they are wrong and all, but what are they really trying to say?  Possibly:

   - you are not obedient to my crazy shit

   - you are violating my standards for decency

   - you are violating a warped set of standards held by "my tribe"

Perhaps this list needs to be extended and then we will better understand our own values of how we will label others to be an asshole?

Anybody that labels themselves as an asshole is automatically far to opinionated for me to even try to reason with

paul wheaton wrote:
Imagine somebody is pointing at you and saying "asshole."  Obviously, they are wrong and all, but what are they really trying to say?  Possibly:

   - you are not obedient to my crazy shit

   - you are violating my standards for decency

   - you are violating a warped set of standards held by "my tribe"

Perhaps this list needs to be extended and then we will better understand our own values of how we will label others to be an asshole?

So maybe it's just an insult in the form of an exclusionary label to say "You're different in a way I find obnoxious"?

Sid Deshotel wrote:Anybody that labels themselves as an asshole is automatically far to opinionated for me to even try to reason with

LOL!

David Wieland wrote:
So maybe it's just an insult in the form of an exclusionary label to say "You're different in a way I find obnoxious"?

Is "obnoxious" relative and subjective?

Another way to put it might be "the things you say or do deviate from what I want you to say or do."

In the words of Anthony DeMello, a Jesuit priest and one of my favorite spiritual leaders - "I'm an ass, you're an ass."

In my view, everybody is an ass at some point. It's part of being human. I guess it all depends upon the degree and type of behavior. And possibly the persistence of that behavior.

"He says he may be an a-hole but he's not — and I'm quoting here — 100 percent a dick."

-Rhomann Dey, Guardians Of The Galaxy

Reading this thread has been pretty useful to me -- having to think about what makes someone an asshole. I think in general, when I've thought someone (including me) was an asshole, it's because they weren't doing the work needed to clean up their messes and someone else had to do labor to make up for it. This could be something obvious like refusing to do the dishes in a shared space, but more often it's been social or emotional. Someone creates unreasonable friction and leaves social harm in their wake that others have to recover from.

And sure, a degenerate might unjustly weaponize this idea in order to yoke others, I've certainly seen that kind of thing. But I don't think it means the very idea of someone being an asshole is useless.

paul wheaton wrote:I was just reading in another thread about how important it is to get rid of somebody who is an asshole. The funny thing is: can anybody point at somebody and say "asshole" without being an asshole? In other words, would a perfectly pleasant person ever call anybody an asshole? ...

I tend to keep the company of people that think I'm cool - and not an asshole.

I have probably never used that word in this lifetime.

I like to keep company with people I feel are cool, kind, and considerate.


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paul wheaton wrote:I was just reading in another thread about how important it is to get rid of somebody who is an asshole....

When we talk about community, I do think it is important to recognize who is making community life sucky...

Frankly, I completely embrace living large and expecting that 90% or more of the population would consider me an asshole.  The idea of living my life under the yoke of "do as I say or I will call you an asshole" is preposterous to me.

This such a great discussion. "I think" that I can disagree with someone without calling them an asshole. There is a difference between disagreement on a particular point(s)and actively working to undermine or destroy the community. Even tribal communities developed processes to ostracize and/or banish troublemakers. For myself I can say that I am here because I like the fact that I don't have to wade through pages of bullshit bickering in order to get to the good stuff. As a side note Paul, I doubt very seriously that SuperGirl has ever cut, hauled, split and stacked a cord of wood. My biggest reason for wanting a RMH has nothing to do with efficiency.

I doubt very seriously that SuperGirl has ever cut, hauled, split and stacked a cord of wood. My biggest reason for wanting a RMH has nothing to do with efficiency.

An extremely good point.

Anne Miller wrote:
I have probably never used that word in this lifetime.

I can't recall when I first heard the word -- probably sometime in my youth -- but it's never been in my vocabulary,  and so I asked what it actually means. My understanding now is that it's simply an insulting label for someone you disagree with.

Think of it the same way you think of your permaculture farm.

Permaculture farming is more interested in long term growth and cultivation, and working together with the whole farm to make everything work well. The opposite is the "one-time use" farm, in which the farmer tills up all the ground, fertilizes it, sprays roundup, and plants roundup resistant wheat. He gets his crop, and next year he does it again. The soil is lousy, but he got his use out of it this year and he is happy with the transaction. The soil thinks he is a real ass, and he doesn't care. Next year he will do it again, and he will keep doing it as long as he gets what he wants out of it. If you treat people this way, you are the problem, not them. There are people like this in your life, and if you keep them at arm's length, you can sometimes manage to work out a deal together that is mutually beneficial. But they are not people you want actively in your life.

The permaculture farmer sees the soil as a permanent feature, and makes decisions to improve it for long term use. This farmer is still using the soil as a transaction, but it is more like an active relationship rather than a one-time-use transaction. This farmer wants to make the soil better while also getting the soil to do a job for him. So they work together. These are the people you want to be, and these are the people you want to be with. Jesus is an example of this, in Philippians chapter 2 in the Bible.

So my definition of an A-hole is someone who treats others as a one-time-transaction, just to get something out of them.

The other analogy is roosters. Roosters are miserable to be around, and they do not even get anything good out of it for themselves. All they do is crow all night and attack you without cause. Then they do it again and again. They learn nothing from it, and gain nothing from it. They are just irredeemable little pricks and there is nothing you can do about it. So you eat them for lunch. I do not know what this has to do with people.

David Wieland wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:The funny thing is: can anybody point at somebody and say "asshole" without being an asshole?  In other words, would a perfectly pleasant person ever call anybody an asshole?

That sounds wise, but I keep wondering how to define asshole. Is this one of those "I can't define it but I know it when I see it" things?

As a compulsively pleasant person, I would not call someone an asshole.  However, I can identify the behaviors that would fit my definition.   I'll take a swing at a definition, feel free to revise it with your own d'oeuvre (auto-correct for "experiences" even though I've never typed that word) and viewpoint:

An asshole is someone who wilfully and intentionally shoves others without listening or attempting to hear answers to clarifying questions.  The ingredient missing in relating by asshole-ness is a measure of humility or not-knowingness.  Like autocorrect.  Sometimes amusing or enlightening, but not really understanding what I've tried to say.

Please understand, Paul,  that I am not saying this is you. I would not... I do not know you and haven't read enough here yet to form any sort of opinion.  If I detected a prevailing culture of asshole-interactions (as defined above)  I would simply and quietly leave the conversation and think about what I want to keep from it and what is not for me at this time.

I think some people really are just assholes.

Even though everyone has ONE, "asshole" isn't really just one thing, except a shorthand label for any number of disagreeable traits. Careless, thoughtless, ignorant, abusive, obnoxious, close-minded, impatient...
It is subjective and relative, but also situational. There are times when being impatient is understandable, for instance, and yet one's actions in response to being impatient could make them the asshole, or maybe just the biggest asshole in the room.

And maybe that's it, it's a snapshot of a moment, without a long history of actions, that would get one labelled as a specific sort of "bad" like a crook, or swindler, abuser, loud-mouth. Asshole is a catch-all name that works as well for someone you don't know (or care to) and also for talking about your brother with Mom, without the need to get into all the details again...

I like this thread.

Kenneth Elwell wrote:Asshole is a catch-all name that works as well for someone you don't know (or care to) and also for talking about your brother with Mom, without the need to get into all the details again...

Sounds like an all-purpose insult. But a word with so many possible interpretations doesn't have much communication value -- other than to indicate the user's attitude to the "asshole".

I think I could justly use it on the guy who swindled me on Craigslist. Am I an asshole for thinking that he is one? A gullible chump, certainly. But not automatically an asshole.
If, on the other hand, I used it on someone who politely expressed a different political view than mine… perhaps I would not be so credible.
As with almost any other insult - jerk, idiot, sleazebag - anyone can say the word about anyone. So, you have to know the person saying it, and calibrate to that. If the person saying it is known to you as a nice, tolerant person, you would think something pretty bad happened to justify the insult coming out of their mouth. If you know them as someone who regularly uses the term for people you know are perfectly ok, it probably says more about them than the person so called.

T S Rodriguez wrote:....He gets his crop, and next year he does it again. The soil is lousy, but he got his use out of it this year and he is happy with the transaction. ...

Which really is more like mining than cultivation.....

T S Rodriguez wrote:.....

The other analogy is roosters. Roosters are miserable to be around, and they do not even get anything good out of it for themselves. All they do is crow all night and attack you without cause. Then they do it again and again. They learn nothing from it, and gain nothing from it. They are just irredeemable little pricks and there is nothing you can do about it. So you eat them for lunch. I do not know what this has to do with people.

Wellllll, it is relevant to people, but I'll have to differ here on one aspect.  *Some* roo's are a-holes to be sure.  And just like their human counterparts, they often take a step too far.  If my wife is fixing food for the other animals, on a rare occasion she gets dive-bombed by a roo who's just gotten too big for his britches....he's on a mission to steal food in addition to being an aggressive, unruly SOB.  He chose the rules of the game, but my wife knows that when he falls in the slop bucket, he can no longer fly with all the goop stuck to his wings.  She dispatches with him in short order.  But other roo's are actually quite 'gentlemanly', -- pairing up with a hen, fending off the a-holes, and showing her where the food is around the yard.

Sometimes I get analytical and explain to my wife that the a-hole roo's, like a-hole humans,  were just the abandoned ones,.....the pariah's with no socialization and support.  To which she replies "I can cut them some slack til they make it personal....then I'm fighting back like any other animal on the blue marble...".    

Leaving the big decisions of community living to a consensus type 'vote' is a sure-fire way to end community living!  <snip>

I'd like to mention - as a data point - that the group I live in has been using consensus for 42 years [our system is called "the one no vote."]  And we certainly have a broad cross section of ability, education, talent & social skills - in fact sometimes we've been known to say that if we can do it, anyone can.

Very cool!  Just looked up the one no vote: http://www.lafayettemorehouse.com/one_no-vote.html.  Had never heard of it before.  Do you know if its use is widespread?  Just curious whether it relies on everyone being well-intentioned, or if the power it gives each person makes folks take their vote very seriously.

How about this:

Schrödinger's Asshole.

Total Aside: (from memory; I can't pin down the source right off)

Obnoxious tourist: "This country is the asshole of the world!"

English Bobby: "And you, I presume, are just passing though?"

Dian Hong wrote:
Very cool!  Just looked up the one no vote: http://www.lafayettemorehouse.com/one_no-vote.html.  Had never heard of it before.  Do you know if its use is widespread?  Just curious whether it relies on everyone being well-intentioned, or if the power it gives each person makes folks take their vote very seriously.

Is it widespread? Perhaps around the SF Bay area. The Lafayette Morehouse people have been teaching classes about communal living for over 50 years now.
The One No Vote is different from many other consensus systems in that it is not required for everyone to agree, it is that no one person strenuously, strongly, disagrees. Usually what happens when you have a proposal is that you walk it around the group - you talk to different people, figure out who the people are who have the strongest opinions about that topic, see what they think.  There is lots and lots of talking, and very little voting.
It took a long time for the group to learn how to do it gracefully, and people are encouraged to look to see if there is anything in a new proposal that they could say 'yes' to.
Depending on who you talk to, something like three 'no votes' have been cast in the group's 50+ year history. If you have a proposal, and people don't like it, what is the point of trying to force it through?

paul wheaton wrote:Imagine somebody is pointing at you and saying "asshole."  Obviously, they are wrong and all, but what are they really trying to say?  Possibly:

   - you are not obedient to my crazy shit

   - you are violating my standards for decency

   - you are violating a warped set of standards held by "my tribe"

Perhaps this list needs to be extended and then we will better understand our own values of how we will label others to be an asshole?

This was interesting to me, and had me thinking of why I might be labelled an asshole myself.

I shared half of an anecdote in the dailyish earlier this week, about how I had a friend, and we would joke that I'm an asshole but not a bully, and my friend was a bully but not an asshole. Seems many in this thread liken the two, but we differentiated them because:
- I can be a bit of an asshole, in that I am very blunt, don't always know or consider what might offend others, and can sometimes take too much space in social situations.
- I am not a bully, because I always do my best to make things generative, and overall kind and not harmful to people.
- My friend was a bully because they were always putting people down to gain social dominance
- My friend was not an asshole because they were always doing a delicate dance to make sure that they were still in everyone's favour.

I find it frustrating to be seen as an asshole, but I can at least feel good that I operate with good intentions, and how others choose to receive that is beyond my control. Maybe I am offensive to some. Most definitely I'm annoying, and talk too much. But I have strong values, and hold myself accountable when I don't live by those values.


I wonder, Paul, how you have felt when people call you an asshole?
And in those situations where you're being called an asshole, do you ever regret how you behaved?

I always reflect, at least, and ask myself what I could have done to make things go a bit smoother. If the answer is something small that I can change in my approach, maybe I will keep it in mind for the future, so things can go how I want them to. But if the answer is "be somebody else entirely, and posture to the wants of others" then I just have to live with that, and keep on keepin' on, lol.

In the end, though, I have changed plenty about how I interact with people so they won't think I'm an asshole, yet some people will always think so, and I'm learning to live with that.
I think if you want to get anything real done, you need an asshole in there somewhere to challenge people. And maybe that's what makes people see somebody as an asshole: Their own ability to handle being challenged.

Margaux Knox wrote:
I wonder, Paul, how you have felt when people call you an asshole?
And in those situations where you're being called an asshole, do you ever regret how you behaved?

When I was 20 I felt it was mean for somebody to call me an asshole.  And it would cause me to evaluate my choices that led me to this moment.

I started this thread 11 years ago.  I suspect that for ten years before writing it, and since, I had not called anybody an asshole.  And when anybody points to me and says it I feel the person saying it is weak in the head.  I feel I am magnificent and they are weak in the head.

What bothers me is when somebody calls me an asshole and they get a hundred upvotes.  Really?  A hundred?  There are that many dumbfucks reading this?


I think 98% of the time when somebody says "asshole" they are attempting to control somebody with cheap words.  So only a fuckwit calls somebody an "asshole".  Therefore, it is as if they stand up and wave a massive flag that says "I'm a fuckwit!"


These are my feelings, at this time, when somebody calls me an asshole.

paul wheaton wrote:What bothers me is when somebody calls me an asshole and they get a hundred upvotes.  Really?  A hundred?  There are that many dumbfucks reading this?


I think 98% of the time when somebody says "asshole" they are attempting to control somebody with cheap words.  So only a fuckwit calls somebody an "asshole".  Therefore, it is as if they stand up and wave a massive flag that says "I'm a fuckwit!"

So I wonder then, what is the difference between calling somebody an asshole, and calling them a dumbfuck or a fuckwit?

Tyler Ludens wrote:

AlchemistGeorge wrote:
the group I live in has been using consensus for 42 years

An intentional community lasting 42 years should get more well-known, as some people don't believe there are any successful examples of intentional communities except maybe the Amish. 

This year [2022] they are 54 years old.

Margaux Knox wrote:So I wonder then, what is the difference between calling somebody an asshole, and calling them a dumbfuck or a fuckwit?

One suggests that they are evil.  The other suggests that are lacking in cognitive ability.

paul wheaton wrote:

Margaux Knox wrote:So I wonder then, what is the difference between calling somebody an asshole, and calling them a dumbfuck or a fuckwit?

One suggests that they are evil.  The other suggests that are lacking in cognitive ability.

Interesting! I think I'd be more offended to be called stupid than an asshole, because as you say, asshole is relative and subjective. As an asshole, I'm only an asshole in the eyes of the beholder, but as a dumbfuck... I'm objectively stupid. But then again, I am dumb as shit, so maybe I'm just sensitive to being called on it lmao.

My 2 cents here....

When you assume, you make ass out of you and me.

This tread is hilarious. Thank you LOL

PAUL WHEATON -You're like George Carlin of Permaculture LOL (It's a compliment!)

We all know what assholes produce. It's up to us to compost that into something productive.

Ben Zumeta wrote:We all know what assholes produce. It's up to us to compost that into something productive.

Positive thinking! I love this. I'm going to use this as a guiding thought in my social relations.

How all Assholes are the Boss by Concensus

THE BRAIN SAID : Since I control everything and do all the work I should be boss.
THE FEET SAID: Since I carry man where he wants to go and get him to do what the Brain wants, I should be boss.
THE HANDS SAID: Since I must do all the work and earn all the money to keep all the rest of you going, I should be boss.
THE EYES SAID: Since I must look out for all of you and tell you where danger lurks, I should be boss.
And so it went with the Heart, the Ears, and the Lungs.
Finally the Asshole spoke up and demanded that he be boss. All the other parts laughed and laughed at the idea of an asshole being boss.
The Asshole was so angered that he blocked himself off and refused to function. Soon the Brain was feverish, the Eyes crossed and ached, the Feet were too weak to walk, the Hands hung limply at his side, the Heart and Lungs struggled to keep going.
All pleaded with the Brain to relent and let the Asshole be boss, and so it happened. All parts did the work and the Asshole just bossed and passed out a lot of shit.

MORAL: You don't have to be a brain to be boss, just an Asshole.

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paul wheaton wrote:And yet ....

human beings are labeled by human beings.  

If we seek to convey a message to a billion people, it seems wise to embrace what humanity is.

The word "asshole" is thrown out.  What does it mean?  What have we learned about the person being pointed at?  What have we learned about the person with the finger?  And, most importantly, how do we move forward from here?

My sister just got a phone scam text about being late to meet up with her, calling her "Brian."  She replied with "wrong number."  It went on for a bit until the scammer complimented her for being "such a nice person."  She blocked the number.   Why?   The intention for manipulation behind the label was pretty obvious in the context of the text exchanges, not recounted here for boredom's sake.  

Her experience reminded me of this discussion.  To me, the important question isn't so much what:  "What constitutes an asshole?" or conversely,  "What can I do to be a nice person?"  My question is Why?  

Why do we call each other names?
Why do we categorize, attempt to control, or manipulate each other -- especially via labels?
Why might I care about labels put on me, and at what time don't I care?

One of my teachers said that humans are pattern seekers.  I like this perspective on many of our problematic behaviors.   We're just trying to make sense of the world, sometimes in ways that make very little sense.

Whether I am going up the ladder or down, my feet are not on the ground.

Negative trait labeling (name calling) has been the subject of numerous studies.  I find it fascinating how it appears to have taken over so many aspects of our society.   “Why”,  I feel, is pretty easy. It is far easier to call someone a name than to have a civil conversation.  

I was recently in a conversation with a friend when a third person invited themselves into the conversation and began referring to the “fascists”.  I was not in the most tolerant mood.   I asked him if he had read Mussolini’s Fascist Manifesto of 1932 ( don’t bother ...it doesn’t say much).   I asked him if he could name even one of 14 points of Fascism.  I asked if he has read Goring’s testimony at Nuremberg.   Of course he struck out.  Giving him some credit he walked away (which is what I wanted) identifying me as an elite communistic fascist.  I am sure I am not the first he has given that label to.

John F Dean wrote:.  "It is far easier to call someone a name than to have a civil conversation" .

I beg to differ. It's because one cannot have a civil conversation with an asshole, hence it is NOT easier to  be insulting, it's simply out of a sheer frustration :-)  
Patience does have a limit.

You're on point!