Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Slap in the Face: Why Insults Hurt--And Why They Shouldn't
    A Slap in the Face: Why Insults Hurt--And Why They Shouldn't
    A Slap in the Face: Why Insults Hurt--And Why They Shouldn't
    Audiobook5 hours

    A Slap in the Face: Why Insults Hurt--And Why They Shouldn't

    Written by William B. Irvine

    Narrated by Johnny Heller

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Insults are part of the fabric of daily life. But why do we insult each other? Why do insults cause us such pain? Can we do anything to prevent or lessen this pain? Most importantly, how can we overcome our inclination to insult others?

    In A Slap in the Face, William Irvine undertakes a wide-ranging investigation of insults, their history, the role they play in social relationships, and the science behind them. He examines not just memorable zingers, such as Elizabeth Bowen's description of Aldous Huxley as "The stupid person's idea of a clever person," but subtle insults as well, such as when someone insults us by reporting the insulting things others have said about us: "I never read bad reviews about myself," wrote entertainer Oscar Levant, "because my best friends invariably tell me about them." Irvine also considers the role insults play in our society: they can be used to cement relations, as when a woman playfully teases her husband, or to enforce a social hierarchy, as when a boss publicly berates an employee. He goes on to investigate the many ways society has tried to deal with insults-by adopting codes of politeness, for example, and outlawing hate speech-but concludes that the best way to deal with insults is to immunize ourselves against them: We need to transform ourselves in the manner recommended by Stoic philosophers. We should, more precisely, become insult pacifists, trying hard not to insult others and laughing off their attempts to insult us.

    A rousing follow-up to A Guide to the Good Life, A Slap in the Face will interest anyone who's ever delivered an insult or felt the sting of one-in other words, everyone.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJul 20, 2018
    ISBN9781541446601
    A Slap in the Face: Why Insults Hurt--And Why They Shouldn't

    Related to A Slap in the Face

    Related audiobooks

    Psychology For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Joys of Being a Stoic

      Nov 4, 2020

      In September, a writer for HBO’s Watchmen series, Cord Jefferson, was awarded an Emmy. I enjoyed the show’s first season, a sequel to arguably the best movie (and graphic novel) about superhero vigilantism. The plot involves the protagonists combatti

      9 min read

    • Article

      Thinking Makes It So: Ward Farnsworth Reframes the Stoics with Wit and Insight

      Aug 30, 2018

      Seneca’s suicide, at the order of the emperor Nero, presents a macabre scene. Previously adviser to the fickle, impetuous, paranoid, thin-skinned emperor, Seneca was erroneously implicated in an assassination plot and was ordered to take his own life

      9 min read

    • Article

      How To Live (like A Stoic)

      Jan 23, 2018

      How To Live (like A Stoic)
      4 min read

    • Article

      Life’s Too Short

      Jul 29, 2019

      Life’s Too Short
      5 min read

    • Article

      I’m More Fatty

      Sep 21, 2020

      “When lockdown ends, I’m more fatty.” I had to laugh at this wordplay comment on amor fati below Daily Stoic’s excellent Youtube video. Amor fati is a Latin phrase, and one of the central teachings of Stoicism. It can be translated as “love fate” or

      1 min read

    • Article

      Why Are Humans So Kind, Yet So Cruel?

      Mar 6, 2019

      Under different circumstances, humans can be the kindest, gentlest species or the most murderous. Evolution may hold clues to that Jekyll and Hyde nature.

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Paradox Of Acceptance

      Mar 3, 2021

      The Paradox Of Acceptance
      7 min read

    • Article

      Self-improvement DELUSION

      Dec 11, 2019

      Self-improvement DELUSION
      6 min read

    • Article

      Conflicting Views

      Sep 25, 2023

      Conflicting Views
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Symposium on Charm

      Sep 1, 2018

      A Symposium on Charm
      16 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Il’ja Rákoš

      Dec 14, 2019

      I, like you, definitely don’t need to be made more susceptible to the predations of the truly sinister agents of corruption that are at work all around us. The post A Year in Reading: Il’ja Rákoš appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Ursula K. Le Guin’s Warning: Sci-Fi as Operating Instructions for Life

      Mar 30, 2018

      1. In “Teasing Myself Out of Thought,” from her excellent last collection of essays and reviews, Words Are My Matter, the recently departed and much missed Ursula K. Le Guin wrote: “Kids are taught writing in school as a means to an end. Most writing

      6 min read

    • Article

      ‘Updating’ Roald Dahl? It’s The Same Old Story… | David Mitchell

      Feb 26, 2023

      Good news for me: the series of ITV’s Endeavour that starts airing tonight will be the last. Hooray! I hate Endeavour. A lot. In fact, I would have italicised the word “hate” to emphasise the fact, if I hadn’t worried that it would look weird next to

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Inventions of Witches

      Oct 30, 2017

      The Inventions of Witches
      7 min read

    • Article

      Speech And Transcription

      Nov 1, 2018

      AP2 Books Ada Limón, The Carrying: Poems Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions Hardcover, 120 pages, August 2018 The world asks for transcription. That has been my experience, that if I recount any small terror, I will be asked for the proof of what has

      4 min read

    • Article

      Against Argument

      Aug 8, 2017

      Against Argument
      9 min read

    • Article

      Tom Wolfe, 1931–2018

      May 15, 2018

      Tom Wolfe, 1931–2018
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Slap in the Face

    4/5

    32 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Excellent manual on the ways to successfully practice insult pacificism. Replete with classical Stoic quotes and teachings, this is a gem well worth re-reading.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 2/5
      The author of this book on insults is a philosophy professor who became interested in the subject of insults and how people react to them thanks to contemplating the Stoic philosophers' opinions on the matter. And... Well, he may be able to speak with authority about Stoic philosophers, to whom he devotes one chapter near the end, but the rest of his thoughts on the matter read like the not-very-insightful ramblings of Just Some Guy, but presented with the tone of a college lecture. Which is not a good combination.Worse, the guy in question comes across as having a very limited and self-centered perspective on things. The examples he offers of insults and responses to them often seem positively weird to me, and his descriptions of how "we" have a natural urge to insult people and to take glee in backbiting and so on seem to say a lot more about him personally than they do about anyone else. He talks a lot about insults as group-bonding banter, because that's apparently how he and his buddies like to interact, and a lot about insults as a sort of social hierarchy game, but seems never to spare a moment's thought for how insults can be used to genuinely abuse, manipulate, oppress, or threaten, probably because he's never been the target of that himself and so doesn't need to care about it. Which is worrying, because it seems to me that a lot of his thoughts about how we ought to respond to insults, while they might be fine for dealing with harmless hecklers, could well be dangerous or damaging for people who are on the receiving end of such things.Irvine also has some cringe-inducingly shallow thoughts about "political correctness" -- and, yes, he does unironically use that term -- and his discussion of hate speech is positively dripping with a viscous, oozing layer of condescending white guy cluelessness. People today are too thin-skinned! Just don't let stuff get to you, and you won't have a problem! Ugh. Although I will say that it's actually kind of refreshing, after a couple of decades of the Boomers and the Millennials hurling insults at each other and completely ignoring our existence, to actually see someone trotting out the once-familiar canard about how my generation is narcissistic and rude because we were all given participation trophies when we were kids. Still makes me want to roll my eyes, though.Honestly, the only really good thing about this book was that it quotes a lot of genuinely witty historical zingers, and at least those were fun to read.You know, ordinarily, I'd feel a bit bad about writing this thoroughly negative of a review. But this guy clearly likes being able to pat himself on the back for how great he is at taking an insult, so, hey, I'm just giving him one more possible opportunity, right?
    • 2/5
      A lot of evopsych and a lot of self-congratulatory thinking. Irvine appears to be one of those people who thinks that logic trumps research, and his book suffers for it. This could have been fascinating. Instead it was - well, insulting.