How not to insult people

If the only bad thing you have to say about someone is that they wear a skullcap or that they enjoy One Direction, chances are they’re probably a very good person.

Good day, internetians (that should so be a word). Sorry about the lull, although I'm sure none of you care.

Today I’m going to talk about something I’m sick and tired of, because, you know, that’s not what most people talk about in articles all the time. Recently a friend said something that really resonated with me: “If I want to insult someone, I insult them, not their sexuality”. This made me think. This is the way in which all people should be insulted.

Of course I’m a very anti-hate person, and I try to stop it wherever I find it. But there are those people who you just have to “criticise” sometimes, mostly because they’re being a bully, or a moron, or a serial killer, and their reign of terror must come to an end.

In the case where you absolutely must insult somebody, use all the profanity you want. Just don’t pick on parts of them that they can’t control or that aren’t bad, like the demographic they belong to, like a gender, a race, a culture, a fashion, a body type, a sexuality or a fandom (even one as cringeworthy as that of the Twihards). If the only bad thing you have to say about someone is that they wear a skullcap or that they enjoy One Direction, chances are they’re probably a very good person. If they aren’t a good person, point out things about them that are actually bad like, say, that they are a narrow-minded idiot who only judges people by what they believe or what they love.

I’ll try to wrap this post up soon. But please, for the love of whatever god/s you worship or nonexistence thereof, if you dislike somebody, ask yourself why, and if it is for one of the seven-or-more reasons in that last paragraph, I think you need to figure out who deserves an insult in this situation.

Or, even better, you could complement them instead. You’re all beautiful, by the way.

Considering every cowardly insult hurled at me on the anonymous question site Ask.fm had something to do with me being gay, I thought I might as well address this head-on, and I know that millions of people are in this situation. I know that so many people in the world have to constantly suffer being insulted for stupid little things they can’t control or that make them happy. Don’t starve yourself just because someone called you ugly. Don’t stop enjoying country music because a friend called it lame. Do I need any more examples?

Bitch about someone because of how they put others down for this type of thing, or because they do some crazy horrible stuff like cannibalism that is considered horrible by everyone.

All of you, stay calm and reduce harm. And I love you especially, Person Who Has Read All The Way Down To Here.

Idealism vs. Cynicism

Let’s talk more philosophy!

Life is all about balance, and lately this is something that I’ve been struggling with. I’ve drawn an idea of the importance of balance from Shakespeare’s Othello, which we recently studied at school. One of the things it deals with, as many tragedies do, are the extremes of binary opposites: white and black, good an evil, civility and savagery, reason and passion. Another of these binaries I’ve noticed among people is that of idealism and cynicism.

Idealism looks towards the infinite. Pure idealists are hopeful, spiritual and noble people who persevere through life with adamant optimism. Pure cynics, meanwhile, are centred in sound reality; that which they understand and know to be true. They know that sentimentality has little weighting in the true harshness of our world.

I find myself constantly caught between these two philosophical dispositions. When I speak of love and hopes and dreams, people think I’m too cheesy and gushy. When I question and criticise our traditional understanding of the world, I’m branded a pretentious left-winger. Life is full of contradiction, and if Othello taught me anything, it’s that a balance these perceived binaries is the way to avoid tragedy.

Such problems arise when an idealistic sceptic and a sentimental atheist decides to share his views. People frown and say he has “double standards” or that he is merely “stirring the pot to create controversy, when things are working well enough the way they are, thank you very much”. “The politicians are doing the best they can, so stop whinging”. “Who is going to listen to you, of all the smarter people in the world?”. By far one of the worst accusations is “evangelist”, as if some kind of new cult of radicalism is being started up.

My more drastic ideas, such as my opinion that gender roles should be discarded, do come into a bad press. But as an idealist, I cannot help but weep to see the devolution of Russia’s human rights or Australia’s xenophobic policies towards refugees. As a cynic, I see all the implications of my speaking out, and how it might put some people off.

But even if I am fighting a losing battle, at least I’m fighting the right one, or at least what I believe to be right (in a hundred years I might be considered completely immoral, but that’s called contextual morality, and it’s a story for another day). At least I am refusing, like all the great people I admire from Dr King to Joan of Arc, to accept the backwards world I live in. At least I am trying, in some small way, to do what I can to help and not sit idly by, even if nobody wants to listen.

And that is my rant for today. If you want to continue the discussion, please comment.

By the way, it gives me the greatest pleasure to announce that Ravenclaw has won the poll on “Which Hogwarts House appeals to you the most?” It seems I am read (or at least skimmed over) by kindred spirits.

I hope you all like this month’s question and I’ll be interested to see what you think!

Everyone stay calm and reduce harm. Assume nothing and question everything. But don’t afraid to stand up, be honest and reach for the ideal.

:)