Confessions of a Poorly Trained Tulpa

[Guest Anonymous]

 

Hah! Read it and weep, we made it well over 24 hours! :-) The plan is that every three days or so we will take a day off from posting and we will be spending one day on Deviantart and then one on Tulpa Info sort of. Then also the plan is avoid baiting, drama posting or participating in drama posting, as much as we can. That leaves only silly shit posting ... errr... well we also mean to do productive dialogue.

37 hours of no posting! Yeppers!

[Guest Anonymous]

... yet another new thread?

W-Why?

Did the old one get smelly or so...?

 

 

Greets,

AG

[Guest Anonymous]

No just too long. :-) Too much to read through if they are too long.

[Guest Anonymous]

There are people on this forum literally arguing about whether or not calling someone a "retard" is immature. Well.

 

Let me tell you something. "Retard" is a stupid insult and weak. When I really, really, really want to insult someone on the forum, I would go with "dumb, dumb, stupid head!"

 

There is no greater insult than dumb, dumb stupid head. I have not used this weapon of utter spirit crushing humiliation yet on anyone. I am saving it as my "nuclear option" should anyone ever call me a retard.

[[Insert_Name_Here]]

No offense, but if that's your nuclear weapon, I must be a cockroach because that will probably only make me laugh. Again, no offense. I do agree with you though, retard is a very immature insult. Especially since I have a really good friend who has mild asperger's.

[Guest Anonymous]

" timestamp="1451342702"]

No offense, but if that's your nuclear weapon, I must be a cockroach because that will probably only make me laugh. Again, no offense. I do agree with you though, retard is a very immature insult. Especially since I have a really good friend who has mild asperger's.

 

This is the most severe and astounding case of not understanding sarcasm that I have seen in my twenty-three years on this Earth.

Thank you for that. :D

 

 

Greets,

AG

[Luminesce]

Do you know why retard is used as an insult? Because it means poorly-functioning mentally. Let me enlighten you.

 

dumb

adjective

1.offensive

(of a person) unable to speak, most typically because of congenital deafness.

2.NORTH AMERICAN informal

stupid.

 

id·i·ot

noun

1. informal

a stupid person.

MEDICINE

2. archaic

a mentally handicapped person.

 

""Moron" was coined in 1910 by psychologist Henry H. Goddard from the Ancient Greek word μωρός (moros), which meant "dull" (as opposed to oxy, which meant "sharp"), and used to describe a person with a mental age in adulthood of between 8 and 12 on the Binet scale. It was once applied to people with an IQ of 51–70, being superior in one degree to "imbecile" (IQ of 26–50) and superior in two degrees to "idiot" (IQ of 0–25). The word moron, along with others including, "idiotic", "imbecilic", "stupid", and "feeble-minded", was formerly considered a valid descriptor in the psychological community, but it is now deprecated in use by psychologists."

 

And my personal favorite

"The term "lunatic" derives from the Latin word lunaticus, which originally referred mainly to epilepsy and madness, as diseases caused by the moon. By the fourth and fifth centuries astrologers were commonly using the term to refer to neurological and psychiatric diseases."

 

 

 

This is my stance on offensive use of the word "retard", which as far as I know is unique to me. I don't care, you're all being offensive, and this claim against the use of "retard" as it is offensive is a double standard. You have no right to be offended - this is human nature. "Dumb" is negative because it used to refer to people who were unable to speak. You call things dumb. "Idiot", imbecile, stupid, moron, all referred to people with below-average IQs. These words are offensive because you are comparing someone to one less capable than them. It's offensive on an instinctive level, a claim against your fitness to survive. And it will never go away, until people stop insulting each other altogether. Even though dumb isn't used as it once was to imply its negativity, calling something dumb is in and of itself offensive, as it nonetheless refers to someone less intelligent than the average. All insults work like this. They're all offensive.

 

I absolutely will not stop using retard to mean "being harshly illogical, or failing to think fluidly and lucidly", as long as the rest of the world speaking English uses words like "stupid", "idiot", "moron" and so on. Mental retardation gets no favoritism from me, all forms of mental disorders and comparative insults are equally not okay. And I'm not too happy about "lunatic" having negative connotations, either. Either people stop insulting each other at all, as there are no non-offensive insults by the nature of an insult, or they can stop telling me which ones I'm allowed to use. I never, ever directly insult a person, no matter what word I'm using. When a poorly written program crashes my computer for no reason, I'm going to call it retarded. I could also call it stupid, which is "less offensive". But I won't, because it's not. But I have never, not once in my entire life, insulted somebody for having a disability. My use of the word "retarded" is just as offensive of your use of the word "dumb", or any other insult. That is to say - it really isn't meant to be, but has its roots in offensiveness. My use of the word isn't meant to offend, nor is yours. But I refuse to change my usage of it for it offending others out of principle, rejecting double standards.

 

 

 

tl;dr "Retarded" means stupid, but came from describing mental retardation. "Dumb" means stupid, but came from describing a physical inability to speak. Most insults mean stupid, but came from describing someone's IQ. Stupid itself refers to stupor, a state of unresponsive shock. I refuse to use a word anyone else has decided is less offensive that is, in reality, just as offensive. Either insults must be ceased entirely in any way shape or form, or we have to accept that it's human nature to insult by comparing one to one less able than them, because it's offensive on an instinctual level.

 

As for me, I don't insult people with these words. If they choose to be offended, that's their decision. Just because previously offensive terms have been integrated into the English language as just being "generally insulting" doesn't mean I'm any more okay with them than newer ones. I just use them to express my distaste in a situation or non-sentient thing. None are any less offensive than another, though I suppose some are more distasteful/unnecessary. And it's the individual's decision to choose where to draw the line.

[[Insert_Name_Here]]

Your argument makes sense from an egalitarian point of view - that if we use any insult referring to mental disorders, then any should be alright and none should get special treatment - but the same points could be used in a Kantian sense to argue another extreme: we should use no such insults because they're all offensive to those who have the originating mental disorder. This isn't really a counter-argument (although someone who subscribes to Kantian ethics would say it is), just a point I'm trying to make: there really is no absolute right or wrong answer. I know my previous post gave a "right or wrong" answer, but that's just something I tend to do when I say something without putting some insight into it, something that, let's face it, most people are guilty of.

 

As far as why I was able to make such a statement so easily is because the issue of the offensiveness of "retard" as an insult hits close to home, with so many of my friends having mental disorders under the branch of "mental retardation": that friend with asperger's I mentioned, another friend with autism, and quite a few friends with dyslexia. Top it off with the fact that some many people have picked on my friend with asperger's, calling him "retarded" in the insulting sense, you can see my more immediate distaste for retarded as an insult. As for the stigma of the word in general, it likely stems from the increase of cases of autism and asperger's. With so many people having these disorders, the public is beginning to view "retard" as an insult in a negative light, especially since it hits quite close to home for so many families and people. This wasn't meant as an argument or a justification for my claim (because, as you can see in my explanation, it really isn't justified), mostly just me trying to explain why I took such a split-second stance on it (something I despise doing) and what I think is the reason for the general stigma for the word.

 

Now as far as the point Melian is trying to make, calling someone "retarded" is, to be frank, quite childish. It's the adult equivalent of a child saying "you're stupid." In the ad hominem branch of logical fallacy's, such insults to me are quite low, easy to brush off. In the first half of my statement, I try to make that point. In my opinion, the weakest form of insults are those that attack ones intelligence.

 

As far as what to do about the issue of the offensiveness of low-intelligence types of insults, we ultimately have to go our own way. One can use the categorical imperative I stated in the first paragraph, if someone wants to be ethical according to Kant, one could continue to use any insult according to egalitarian philosophy, or someone could give special treatment to insults based on their own beliefs or life. Because "retarded" and similar words have been mostly removed from my general vocabulary, I will probably continue to not use it, but because you've posed a new philosophical issue to me, whether or not I will continue to toss around words like "dumb" or "stupid" is to be announced. But ultimately it seems like it's up to the individual to determine whether or not they should use such words.

[Luminesce]

Don't worry, that was just me getting my Lumi-opinion out there. I fully understand why "retard" is more offensive than the other examples I gave - it's more recent, more relevant, and it's yet to make the transition from Dumb=mute -> Dumb=stupid. The reason I continue saying it despite its derogatory context is that I don't even recognize its previous "definition" as a definition. Retarded to me means illogical, not thinking clearly, and other similar contexts applied to non-sentient things. Same as dumb, stupid, moron, and idiot mean to everyone else. Technically speaking, I'm fighting for the word to be used like those words and lose its previous derogatory medical contexts. That unfortunately doesn't help those fighting to stop use of the word entirely. But I know people, and I know the internet. They aren't going to stop doing anything because you tell them to. So I guess my way is what I see as the best way to help?

 

Interesting that you called me egalitarian by the way. The same friend (with asperger's) I've had this conversation with on my use of the word "retarded" recently discussed the differences in how we think about problems like this, and we decided "egalitarian" is the best fit. I still refuse to use a title for any of my beliefs, but if what I say sounds like it matches that word then maybe I'll change my mind at some point.

[Guest Anonymous]

Wow you guys, Melian was just presenting the most powerful insult in the universe. "Dumb, dumb stupid head" is the most terrible of all insults and she will use it on you only as a last resort and at the uttermost need. In an instance in which she would choose to use such a devastating word weapon, all other politically correct considerations would be pushed aside. Hurt sensibilities, in persons beyond the intended target of the insult, would be considered collateral damage.