Why is it so difficult to appreciate and so easy to deprecate, to knock down another person with negative comments? In other words, why is the Demon within our psyches, easier to access than the Angel?
This seems to be the way we’re constructed.
(G…d, please forgive me but I have observed this phenomenon rather consistently in my six to seven decades of life on this planet. )
To deprecate or put down another person gives us a sense of superiority, although it is often false, and serves no practical purpose except for the few minutes in which we feel better than the other person.
I chalk it up to another Paradox of Human Existence. We tend to feel superior when we knock down another person, especially those close to us which works against our best interest.
When we are treated like inferiors, we naturally defend ourselves against negative comments, rarely hear them, and certainly don’t develop positive feelings toward those who put us down.
We would have more friends and be better liked if we frame comments and criticism in a constructive manner. I heard the well-known poetry critic Helen Vendler once say, “No one benefits from anything less than praise.”
Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)
Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)
This is interesting to mull. It occurs to me that deprecation of others, weak or strong, may be a kind of survival mechanism, very primitive. To knock down another person is to raise oneself, to survive. Of course, as you point out so rightly, it's a false and temporary reward. But perhaps the struggle to overcome such negative behavior is so hard because the behavior is so atavistic.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. A great deal of our destructive behavior is atavistic which is one reason I allude to the human condition as impossible, or nearly so.
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