"He Has Insulted My Banana!" — The Nonsense of Being 'Insulted'

"Yes, he has insulted my banana, and now must die for what he has done!"

Really? — Okay, so, somebody drew a caricature of a rather well-known religious leader on your poor old banana, and I can well imagine that if the latter had feelings it might not feel very flattered at being associated with that disgusting figure! — But, insulted?

• Don't you actually mean He has just caused my banana to fall out of its supermarket trolley with laughter at the very thought of what's now drawn on it?
• If not, what in the name of Mickey Mouse do you mean by 'insulted'? — Somebody drew a caricature of that disgusting garbage-manipulated control freak on your banana — is all! Where's your sense of humour, you funny silly-billy?!
• What's stopping you just ignoring that if you don't like it, and getting on with genuinely worthwhile things in your life?

Okay, I'm being partially frivolous to make a point. Just where is this 'insult' that so many people complain about, whether the supposed insulted person is one's grandmother or one's P—— (standing for 'manhood' or religious leader, I don't care!)?

Actually, in real terms, the 'insult' is in the mind of the complainant. Yes, it's the complainant, the aggrieved person, who's created the insult — not the person accused of doing the insulting. It isn't that the person who triggered the 'insult' response has necessarily acted sensibly (though he or she might have, depending on the specific situation!). Rather, what that person did was simply to make some sort of statement, representation or implication that the offendable person didn't want to countenance — usually because it highlighted one or more issues that the purportedly insulted person actually really does need to address.

For example, the supposed 'insulter' has been holding up to scrutiny or indeed ridiculing some brazen and at least potentially troublesome irrationality that the other person is publicly displaying. If, on the other hand, a silly, simply incorrect statement or representation of the person has been made, then that's exactly what it is (no more, no less), and again the real problem is in the irrational reactions that it's provoked.

So, how do we address a supposed 'insult' in a way that genuinely gets undoing it? How many human heads do we need to chop off today to restore the supposed 'honour' of our 'insulted' banana?

Seeing that the primary problem is actually the irrational responses of those who are taking offence, the prime need is that those latter people use suitable methods to resolve the emotional issues and attachments they're carrying, which cause them to feel 'offended' in the first place. There's nothing intrinsically offensive about somebody saying Your mother's a crab-infested whore, for example.

If it's true, it's true, and if it's not true, then, barring the conceivable possibility that there was some very specific reason why there would be some beneficial / constructive purpose served in saying it at that point, it was a silly thing to say, and shows that that individual has one or more significant emotional issues which he needs to clear himself of! Indeed, even if the statement were true, in most circumstances it would be irrelevant to current proceedings and thus still a plain silly thing to come out with (what would it actually achieve but very likely upset somebody?)!

However, as clearing his issues is something that only he can do (i.e., if he were ever motivated to do so), it's a complete waste of time looking over the fence and condemning him and his behaviour, when your real need is to address the issues that you yourself are carrying that make you feel uptight about his silliness, and indeed make you seek to pruriently keep criticising, ridiculing, and indeed seeking to provoke him in his stupidities.

So, no, Pope Francis was talking confused nonsense in his publicly referring to such matters. Like devoutly religious people generally he lives by belief and rules, with a low priority on genuine, rationally-based common sense, and shows no genuine desire to understand what's really going on for people so that their issues can actually start to get resolved. He even entertains the notion of revenge being reasonable if one feels that somebody who one is attached to has been 'insulted' — albeit referring only to relatively petty revenge — giving the person a punch rather than anything more harmful! He still has a lot to learn about the nature of 'reality' and the life experience!

The Work is the most effective method I know for anyone to dissolve and clear the emotional issues that cause them to feel offended or that they or others have been insulted, and that being 'insulted' is a bad thing and even requires 'revenge'.

For people who are already well established in using my self-actualization methodology, the method of choice is the Grounding Point procedure, either alongside or in place of The Work.

Revenge, however small, ALWAYS harms the avenger

Remaining aggrieved because of somebody's supposed 'insult' does no favours to the aggrieved or indeed anyone else. Indeed, for the aggrieved it directly causes health problems long-term, including increased tendency for certain types of cancer, quite apart from greatly distorting and degrading his life experience. Acts of revenge of any sort do NOT clear that grudge anyway, and indeed further distort and degrade the aggrieved person's life experience. Thus a vengeful, grudge-bearing mindset is effectively a self-harm mindset, quite apart from the harm it does to others!

Yes, each time he wreaks another act of retribution upon somebody, the avenger is creating additional karmas and unhappiness for himself, so he is (increasingly) in a right old mess. If he wants to feel genuinely better when he's feeling upset about something, he'd do much better to have a good big fart — for all the good his 'vengeance' does him! — But then again, beyond any necessary fart to clear gas from the system, he'd do even better to start getting his head screwed on enough to start in earnest to use the methods mentioned above, actually to clear out not just gas but the issues that are making him feel compelled to go chopping people's heads off (figuratively or actually) each time he feels that his banana or his P—— has been 'insulted'!

"Rhubarb's Great!"

It has inevitably come to my notice in recent times that a crazed, rabid international gang of 'radicalized' rhubarb smugglers has chosen to go around in an increasing number of countries chopping people's heads off with merry abandon if they don't declare allegiance and subservience to The Great Rhubarb. And of course they also seek out and behead or shoot or bomb to smithereens any who are deemed to have 'insulted' their revered Great Rhubarb, who actually died centuries ago, so actually couldn't possibly really be 'insulted' or upset in any way at being caricatured on a banana or even something as trivial as the front cover of a satirical magazine (Oui, je suis Charlie, et Mickey Mouse aussi)!

As if all that behaviour were not irrational enough as it is, each time they carry out any of their delectable little atrocities they bellow out at the top of their voices in a funny language, Rhubarb's Great!, just to demonstrate just how unhinged they really are (people get 'sectioned' in psychiatric hospitals here in the UK for lesser aberrations), and how un-worthwhile it would be for us to vote for any of them if they popped up in some election (where of course their manifesto would proclaim them as being the archetypal champions of freedom and human rights)! Rhubarb smuggling was quite problem enough without all this new-fangled Rhubarb fundamentalism darkening our daily news reports!

Okay, well, realistically, does it look as though we're going to succeed in persuading those brainwashed gangsters to come feeding from the hands of those who promote self-actualization and clearance of emotional issues (and other karmas)? — Somehow I'm not too sure of that!

However, there IS something that we, many of whom have our heads at least a bit better screwed on than those rabid unfortunates, need to and actually can do. That is, to clear our own emotional issues that are causing responses of fear or hostility in us — both direct fear responses and reactive, covering-up responses like putting on a public display of provocative bravado and insisting on exercising our perceived 'right' to 'cause offence' to the rhubarb smugglers. Actually that attitude readily becomes a sort of vengefulness in its own right, so of course would tend to provoke further revenge attacks.

As to whether in practical terms it's a good idea to be publicly lampooning the beliefs and Great Leader of the rhubarb smugglers in a manner that's pretty obviously likely to cause them to send out a hit squad to spectacularly convert you into carrion (useless except for feeding the animals and making bad smells), there would be no one 'right' answer, for clearly such contagious and extremely harmful human dysfunction does need to be addressed in some manner, whether by a military or 'humane' approach or (most likely) any combination of those and other approaches too.

Obviously, ideally we would have or at least find means by which we could reach out to those individuals in ways that bypass or indeed dissolve the blocks to their intelligence that are causing the trouble, so that they could start functioning as decent, loving humans once more and cut out all their belief and 'rhubarb' nonsense.

In other words, we all need to step out of our opinions and beliefs on such things, and, using self-actualization methods such as I present on this site, enable ourselves to be fully flexible and rational instead, so that we respond to each individual situation, including each challenge from the rhubarb smugglers, in the most appropriate manner for that situation's, that moment's, uniqueness.

The chances are that if we were all working on that — sorting out our own houses first — we would (a) be in a better state to respond in the most positive and effective way to each situation (which could still involve taking very bold steps at times), and (b) have a distinct likelihood that if we were all becoming more rational, flexible and aware like that, the apparent enemies would find the wind going out of their sails in their Holy Rhubarb war and find themselves easing up themselves as their illusion of an enemy that they need to conquer gradually dissolves.

One significant thing that we need to bear in mind in that process is that humour so riles the rhubarb smugglers because a fanatical seriousness and lack of humour is an intrinsic aspect of their whole edifice of rigidly held belief and terrorizing others into submission. So, there's definitely a place — indeed an important one — for light-hearted lampooning of those silly people's behaviours! What the rhubarb smugglers of the world could really do with is any number of people, each with a great big (meant) smile and more than a hint of laughter in the air, to keep telling them what a lot of munt-wuggling bladdocks or bawlscroping twunts or downright bawzleflobs they're being (if only anyone dared to do so!)!

Mickey Mouse the Great pronounces…

As for where I personally stand on all this, I, the great champion of freedom and human rights, have now laid down a decree that anyone, anywhere in the world, who doesn't sing Land of Hope and Glory and call out at the top of their voice Mickey Mouse is Great! at least three times a day (and of course, in addition whenever they slaughter anyone), or who insults the name or person of Mickey Mouse in any way, is an infidel and will be publicly… (No, I'll leave that to your imagination!)

…Or, second thoughts —
Why not let's draw a line under all that sordid confusion of idiocies and get out for a nice healthy invigorating strenuous hike in a wild area and allow ourselves to enjoy the peacefulness and all the views and natural sounds instead?! That way we have nothing to lose but our insanity, ill health and ill will (incidentally, rhubarb contains a significant concentration of oxalic acid and so is best not eaten anyway)…

Postscript

To quote from I'm not sure where,

I'd like to apologize to anyone I've not yet offended.
Please be patient, though, because I'll get to you shortly.

…And now let's raise a serious and potentially very useful point to finish off with.

Taking offence is a bullying strategy…

It appears to me that every single person who makes out to be offended (as distinct from just being quietly upset) is in his/her own way a bully — no matter whether that bullying is just seeking to wind a person up, or to impose some sort of control agenda on the supposed offender, or indeed setting off on a trajectory to do a juicy little beheading. So, if a person is making out to be offended, in general terms that 'offence' accusation is not to be deferred to, but taken as a signal that an appropriate anti-bullying strategy is required in any dealings with that person.

However, it's by far the best generally simply to avoid involvement / engagement with such people — even a host who takes offence at something during a posh dinner party, for example. They're never a worthwhile host if they go taking offence — they're just posturing as a supposedly good host!