31–40 of 66 posts
This is the heart of the professor's theory: the jerk culpably fails to appreciate the perspectives of others around him, treating them as tools to be manipulated or idiots to be dealt with rather than as moral and epistemic peers. so, a sociopath? is this theory really new or interesting?
I don't agree that jerks are people who don't care about other people's individual circumstances. Jerks are people who think that everyone else is a jerk, which is how they excuse their behaviour. It's not that they don't care why the waiter messed up their order, it's that they think the waiter messed up because they're a jerk.
"Yeah, but everyone's a jerk. You, me, this jerk. That's my philosophy."
I don't agree that jerks are people who don't care about other people's individual circumstances. Jerks are people who think that everyone else is a jerk, which is how they excuse their behaviour. It's not that they don't care why the waiter messed up their order, it's that they think the waiter messed up because they're a jerk.
This strikes me as circular.
That's a subordinate clause where "jerk" is referring to the waiter, not the main subject, hence it's not circular.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This strikes me as circular.
> the waiter messed up because they're a jerk That's a subordinate clause where "jerk" is referring to the waiter, not the main subject, hence it's not circular.
Try:
the waiter messed up because he's a jerk.
please add 2014 to the title
It is interesting that the meaning of"jerk" has moved very recently from meaning something like "bumpkin" to something closer to "arsehole". As the author points out, this is similar to the change in the meaning of "villain", along with several other words where a class-based insult eventually became moralised. But most of the words he mentions are old words that changed their meaning back in the days when litteral a…
Jerk has been synonymous with "rude person" as long as I've been alive. If there was a shift, it wasn't all that recent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the waiter messed up because they're a jerk That's a subordinate clause where "jerk" is referring to the waiter, not the main subject, hence it's not circular.
And people think singular "they" is OK in writing. Try: the waiter messed up because he's a jerk.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the reason is that if he had used 'she', there would have been a shitstorm. If you do a word-replace of all instances of 'he' with 'she' and 'his' with 'her', it becomes an entirely different article.
Maybe, but actually a masculine avatar is fine here. The whole thing would have worked just as well if, instead of "sweetheart", he'd used the term "nice-guy" as in the claim "nice-guys finish last."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe, but actually a masculine avatar is fine here. The whole thing would have worked just as well if, instead of "sweetheart", he'd used the term "nice-guy" as in the claim "nice-guys finish last."
feminists have totally discredited nice guy though, turning it into a passive-aggressive hanger on who hopes to get rewarded with sex from being nice.
Or do you mean that it is a human eternal, the instinctive reaction of womens' inner bullshit detectors?
One interesting quip I've heard from a psychologist recently, is that communication only really works well going down the dominance hierarchy. (I think it can work across.) I see a lot of the outrage driven viral media of today as being "punching down" by aspirant upper-echelon socioeconomic people onto lower-echelon people. Also, if communication only really works well going down the dominance hierarchy, doesn't thi…
It's known that "communication can only happen between equals." Otherwise it's order giving no matter the semantics.