I suppose you are thinking about a dirty look or name-calling on the street.
Most likely we will not see the "aggressor" again, so we don't have to worry about what to do then.
We tend to treat people whom we know with kid gloves anyway.
Are you sure about that? I'd say it depends on the culture. Some cultures mold people to be more polite to strangers and some other the other way around.
The rationale for each strategy is...?
For the former, you take the safest approach not to offend the person whose hotspots are unknown to you. For the latter, you take extra care, because someone is closer and matters more to you.
You said last time that we can maintain our dignity by acting as if the humiliating act were a mere mosquito sting; whether the "aggressor" is a stranger or an acquaintance should not matter.
The problem is a bit more complicated if we are more or less forced to have close relationships with the person in question. Neighbors, classmates, colleagues, friends, family members...
Relationships with such people can vary widely, but they are certainly closer than strangers are to us. You were of the opinion that people who are closer to us have a much bigger chance of hurting us, and we are also prone to hurt them more easily. Doesn't that depend on the culture, as you implied earlier today?
I think not. Even when culture codes instruct us to be more careful with people whom we know than with people whom we do not know, proximity makes hurting more of a profound nature.
You also said when someone hurts us badly or frequently, it becomes difficult to trust that person.
It is also very difficult to spend more than a few fleeting moments with a person whom you cannot trust.
I guess I can keep a courteous distance from her/him, if s/he were a neighbor, a classmate, or a colleague.
You guessed it right. It becomes a problem for a family member or a very close friend with a long history, whom we are obliged to see at family or social gatherings. If we skip such gatherings, there will be some blaming going around.
What if the personalities are such that, despite the legal and/or biological relatedness, the parties involved simply do not get along?
Ah, so you have noticed how much people complain about parents, children, spouses, in-laws...
What should we do when our dignity is damaged by one of those people? Your suggestion was to stick to the mosquito-sting interpretation.
I am beginning to think that it may not work with these super-close people. They think they know the other party so well in these relationships, while Operation Mosquito Sting works only if the "aggressors" are observant enough.
These relationships will endure come what may in the foreseeable future, and that makes us less careful and observing about each other. In some cases, people know that they have committed an offense but ignore it, because they know that the other party will come back.
You see that it is truly a toxic mix? Because we are closer, we have more information about each other. Because we are closer, our psychological barriers are lower. Because we are closer, our efforts to restore our dignity may not even be recognized. And, because we are closer, we have plenty of instances in which we are obliged to come face to face.
Do you think Bill ever apologized to Hillary?
Do you think it could have made any difference? Anyway, I do not want to be a serial victim.
Or a serial offender!
When we cough up the courage and finally tell the offender, who happens to be super close to you, that s/he has hurt our dignity, the reaction is usually to play it down.
Not only that. The offender can get angry.
Isn't that curious? Sometimes, we are even told that it is our problem if our dignity has been damaged.
Nobody likes to be criticized, and if a criticism comes from someone they felt comfortable with or they thought were "on their side," it becomes something like a proclamation of betrayal.
By the way, we tend to think that the smaller the number of members involved in the group, the more intimate and the stronger the relationships.
Why not? The vast majority of deep conversations is tête à tête.
We forget that there are occasions when we have to cool off. If it is a big group, we can turn to others whom we do not have conflict with, and that often prevents us from being driven to an irrevocable split. We can stay in the group for the sake of other members, even if we cease to communicate with the offender.
It is not good to belong to a big group that satisfies all our needs because we would stop trying to reach out to more different types of people---didn't you say that?
My focus here is a kind of group to which we have no recourse but to belong, e.g., family. As we all know, "[h]e who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god." It holds not only for society, but for family as well.
Good, old Aristotle.
When the membership is compulsory and for a lifetime, it is best if the group contains diverse members and has the capacity to let off steam. Even as a child, I could see that there are benefits to be part of a bigger family.
How so?
My parents, my siblings and I lived with my grandparents, my two aunts and my grandparents' housekeeper for a while. When my mother denied me ice cream on a hot summer day, I knew I could turn to my grandmother.
It's all about ice cream, then!
Not only that. I could tell that there does not exist anything like "the correct" way for anything, because when I posed the same question to different adults separately, they gave me various responses. I believe that it gave me a more balanced view of the world.
That may be true, but haven't you heard of Aunt We-Are-A-Good-Family and Uncle No-Arguing-In-the-Family-Please heading factions and dividing the big clan?
"Man is by nature a political animal."
Aristotle strikes again!
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