The release of tensions fused through codes in civic society
Conflict, directionality, flows, and polarity
Insulting has entered lexicon of theory writing and is now being examined in ways it hadn’t since Lacan wrote about it. Now more than ever, people are discovering a technical mechanism behind violent speech. An insult was simple, merely violent speech that that someone uses when they are upset. A snide or rude comment. Looking a bit more into it, an insult is select string of words, pieced together and organized to deliver a distasteful emotion onto someone else. As for the victim, it doesn’t feel like these unpleasant emotions are placed on them but rather elicited from them. Unpleasant emotions were aroused for some nefarious purpose.
Tension
Antagonism are divided between the aggressor and the victim. The aggressor elicits unwanted emotion and the victim is the target of those emotions. We can loosely start by explaining what causes the aggressor to insult a target and then why the target gets offended. We can answer it simply with the category of cause-and-effect: returning the favor. Someone caused someone else to insult. But who uttered the first insult? There must be an unmoved mover here. We can generally say that an insult is a kind of trap or temptation. This is what I call proding. Prodding is a deliberate, calculated, and willful act to tempt someone to react in a negative manner. This is the most obvious and straightforward way to insult someone. A much more interesting question is the “why” to insulting. There’s a tension that is carried inside the mind that makes someone want to release it. The logic of prodding and polking around follows the tendencies of political economy. To tempt someone requires dileberate and calculated poking around. This isn’t a wild relase of unrestraint emotion... yet. Political economy is not dissimilar to psychic magic. And psychological tension of holding & releasing is psychic magic. Frued’s use of the unconscious was used to describe inner mental energy. The psyche is thought of like a reserve storage in which it collects units of energy called “life-force”. People in civic society can collect “life-forces” that is, an energy storage device that is stored and reserved for later use. This life-force is then enjoyed at one’s disposal and discretion at a later time. (Notice how the collection of life-force energy has a tendency to be discharged immediately and involuntary while the enjoyment of life-force is “used” at one’s discresion. We ususally describe people who easily “snap” at ohers with metaphors: someone who “flies off the handle”, a “pressure cooker”, “snapped”, etc.).
Civic codes
When one’s opponent is taking one’s life-force away, it’s a violation of our civic norms. This is how they become rivals. But think about this same situation in terms of culture. Good freinds often insult eachother intensionally with unwholesome words. Far from becoming angry at each other, it strengthens the freindship and solidifies trust.
Civic socity has unwritten codes. A psychic rivalry is programmed to emerge when a proper insult is used. Civic soceity is bound by distance and time. These categories are programmed like codes so that when a conflict ends at a particular place in time, it continues even when enemies depart. Programming make it hard to forget about the conflict that just happened a moment ago or 10 years ago. Conflicts often replay in the minds as if it were an impactful phychological impression. Because time and place are coded in civic soceity, both the agressor and victim think about the other thinking abou them. Like ‘telekinesis’ both enemies harm eachother with words but this time it’s through distance and time. Words and phrases are transmitted like a Wi-Fi signals that connect the two minds thorugh time and distance..
Restoration and natural law
It makes the rival a victim and the rival-opponent a thief by natural law. This psychic criminal uses tension (stressed) which causes it to be released in an atempt to flip the polarity. An insult works as a way “to get back” at a an origional theft/ robbary. The reversal being the resoration of energy levels. The act of passing emotional pain back the rival-opponent serves as catharsis to the victim. The process of restoration, reveals a debtor/creditor relationship like discussed in Neizche’s On the Geneology of Morals. The emotional pain is what pays for the credited lifeforce stollen. The means to acheive this is a barrage of words uttered by the creditor/victim to cause emotional harm. Witnessing emotional turmiol signals that a transaction successfully took place. A transformation of intentions happens when we flip directions polarity. The pain of the debtor is transformed into the pleasure of the creditor and this is what pays for the missing lifeforce.
Like mentioned, prodding is more overt or a clear sign of battle/conflict which is not how most civil exchanges happen. We can say that the “what” of prodding is to get back at someoen with a reaction that is the “signal.” The “why” of prodding are signs and signifiers that point to who is in debt, who is credited, and the which direction transformation goes to itself. The second and most interesting phenomena is what I call the choke.
The Choke
The choke is what I call the genuine return to nature because it is involuntary. This is the result of an insult being thrown at someone almost unexpectedly. Think of a dialogue in which two people get in an argument. The tension begins normally because the direction of the flow is the direction of the power relation. The more powerful receives permitted flows of codes (word-meaning). The intensities have a directionality and is permitted to flow because of nature “pulling” towards the greater in the relationship. Think of the direction of codes (word-meaning) being said between two people flowing up a chain of command, or like a waterfall where water always falls down. A choke is a genuine break in the flow. This is not someone rebelling against authrity. It’s a hiccup or a stutter in the dialogue. This turns the subordinate in the power relationship into a genuine victim; A victim that garners greater support. Think of it when a subordinate stutters and can’t finish their words or someone begin to blush in embarrassment These reactions can’t be attributed to will but rather psychological stress to a stimuli in the environment. What the immediate reaction would be is to have sympathy, kindness and understanding because of politiness to the victim’s nomos. Indeed, most people can suspend the natural tendency to be insulting and it’s usually in the good graces of the leader. It still doesn’t erase the fact that, for a brief moment, the chain of command haulted and broke the flow.
The first insult is the “pre-insult” or the indignation of the break itself. The second part is the involunary return to nature.