Very verbal, blunt — alleged characteristics of Aspergers.
I know I can be very verbal (more likely in writing than audibly), but I’m never blunt. However, I can be candid. Here’s the problem: If I try to express myself in a brief manner (like most others do online), I will most likely be perceived as being rude because my straightforwardness will be misinterpreted as bluntness. If I try to avoid being frank, then I end up being incessantly verbose. If that’s not frustrating enough, add to that trying to figure out if something said will be perceived as being blunt or as being forthright.
What’s the difference between being blunt versus being candid? Being blunt is insensitive because the motive is selfish and uncaring (usually because of pride and/or arrogance). Being candid is sensitive because the motive is to be kind and caring (thanks to humility¹).
The antonym of candid is indirect. ‘Indirect’ is also the antonym of blunt. So then does this mean that being indirect is polite? Or is being indirect rude? Society tells its members that being indirect is what is socially correct. Here is the question:
If someone cannot get the hint, who is the rude person: the one who can’t figure out the answer or the one who is being indirect?
Unless I’m mistaken, the impression I get from most people is that they are so terrified of being perceived as rude if they’re directly honest, that they’d rather be indirect or not say anything at all. This then leaves the other person having to work long (as in maybe years or even decades) and hard to ‘get it’ because others are more concerned about their own image.
Disingenuous — not candid or sincere, especially in feigning ignorance; this is socially popular. Ingenuous — innocent, candid, lacking craft or subtlety, natural; this is socially unpopular.
Rephrased question from above:
Is it now considered rude in today’s society to expect someone to be candid to a person who is ingenuous?
I’m going to be candid now, so please don’t twist this as being blunt: I believe people do not like a person who displays an ingenuously child-like simplicity, because that makes someone who is disingenuous uncomfortably guilty . . . especially in situations like being at a party. Being disingenuous has become socially acceptable behavior because enough of a majority of people have desensitized their consciences so that today’s moral standards have decayed sufficiently for it to now be tolerated.
Just because more and more people are heading in the wrong direction does this then mean that those who refuse to follow the crowd jumping off the bridge need to get “cured” to spare the rest from humiliation?
¹Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.
I used to read a lot of George Orwell thirty years ago. Especially his essays and journalism. Excellent model for English.
It makes me happy when people help me by offering constructive (and hopefully encouragement along with the) feedback on what and how I write. It improves the way I can share what I have to offer others. I KNOW I CAN help educate parents with asperger children, but in order to do so, I also know I’ve got to be a better writer (maybe I haven’t mentioned on my blog yet that I am a psychologist? — along with being formally educated in other fields of study).
I read Orwell’s book ‘Animal Farm’ in high school, but I highly doubt that will compensate for my hyper-focus on reading theology books by such people as Richard Sibbes, John Owen, Thomas Brooks, John Bunyan, John Flavel, Thomas Watson, Thomas Boston, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, etc. I can keep on going with my list. However, I think I’m making my point that it’s the writing style of these authors which have affected me the most because of how ‘off balance’ my choice of books are as compared to what most other people read. (My favorite author by the way is Arthur Walkington Pink.)
I’m doing the best I can to follow William Zinsser’s advice in his book ‘On Writing Well — The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction’ but I can’t make any promises as to how successful I’ll be at changing the way I express myself.
‘Happy Spring’ to everyone up here in the northern hemisphere of the planet and ‘Happy Autumn’ to all those in the southern hemisphere!
laurentius-rex, I sincerely appreciate your thoughts on this matter. It helps me a lot to know the ways in which others think differently.
The variable semiotics of blunt can be neatly pinned down as I’ve done so here. That’s why it can cause others to feel uncomfortable. There is a lot more truth than what this world wants to see.
I have been told that the way I can compose a personal letter to address an issue, would insult the reader if they were guilty — but if the reader was innocent, then those same words were comforting. Guilty people are insulted whenever they feel like they’ve been humiliated. People might interpret a message as being a ‘lead cosh with a silk wrapper’ and it might be . . . but then it might also be the truth that they don’t want to hear.
There are two different senses to the meaning of blunt which are very much alike, but subtly different. If being blunt is used in one sense, it may be okay. If it is used in the other sense, it is wrong. The more people think there is never anything wrong about being blunt, the more insensitive people can become towards one another. Here’s a perfect example of a community of people who are never blunt in the wrong way:
The Amish. They are never blunt. I love those people. They function (I admit their world is different, but kudos to them for that!) better as a society than those outside of their world.
It’s all about the way you tell someone to get off the road when a car is coming. You can say, “Get the hell out of the road!” or you can say, “Look out for the car!” Both do the same job, but they give opposite impressions (arrogant verses humble). To add, ‘the hell’ in “Get the hell out of the road!” takes a good thing and turns it sour. If you say it emphasizes urgency, then that’s misleading because someone can still be urgent without it. People use crude language these days thinking that it’s impressive. It’s impressive, but not constructively so.
How well I know these are vulgar times, but how do people think they got that way? Does that mean we’re supposed to follow the crowd? Don’t be influenced into the wrong direction. Be an influence into the right direction by setting the example.
Your blog confused me at first. I’ve briefly read some of what you write and I’m so impressed that I’d like to ask if you’d mind my putting a link to it on from my blog. In my opinion, you’re doing fantastic things and are a person who wants to be good obviously. However, I need to ask if you’re aware that using the word ‘King’ in your subtitle, “The Blog of the One-eyed Autistic King,” can give a wrong impression?
I don’t doubt I do the same thing now and then in my blog, but I find it to be in bad taste. I hope my being frank here doesn’t create a debate going.
There is nothing wrong with being blunt, sensitivity does not come into it when the aim is simple communication without the trappings
What is so uncaring about telling someone to get the hell out of the road when there is a car coming?
We live in an age of euphemisms, for bodily funtions, for illnesses, for all the dirt and sordidness there is in the real world.
I remember when I received the news that my dad died, the nurse on the end of the phone was trying every way not to say what I suspected to be the case.
Apart from that a message that is masked in politeness does not lose it’s effect if the intention behind it was in any case designed to insult and humiliate. It’s a lead cosh with a silk wrapper.
The variable semiotics of blunt cannot be so neatly pinned down as you have set out in your binary oppositions.
I’m glad you explained about the use of ‘King’ and said more like you did in your comment above. That puts everything into a different light. You remind me of myself laurentius-rex, if you don’t mind my saying so. I can completely understand where you’re coming from now. Would it be safe to say that I think we’re both highly sensitive people and need to exercise caution when explaining things?
You can see how I get myself into trouble too then. I think we are united instead of divided even though it might appear otherwise.
Well the King thing is all part of an elaborate semiotic connection with the book by HG Wells, which draws on the even older quotation from Erasmus. It all goes back to the days when I decided to create a website, which involved registering with what was then geocities I tried to enter variants of my name but they were already taken so I came up with Laurentius Rex a sort of pun on tyrannosaurus rex. Well rex means king and originally I structured my website on the notion of domain being a kingdom where I was absolute ruler and tryant in the sense that here in one part of the world, the cyber world I could say what I liked without being dictated to by anyone else. So I created a logo to go with that, and of course made the HG Wells reference. It is an interesting book, because in the end, being one eyed in the country of the blind where they blind are well adjusted, does not make one king, it makes one different and outcast.
In the sense that Erasmus meant it, he meant that having one eye was better than none, in the metaphorical sense that in a world full of unenlightened people even a little bit of vision goes a long way.
There are also legendary ties to Odin, who in Norse mythology gave up one of his eyes in return for wisdom. I am amblyopic and blind in one eye hence my identification with all this symbolism of Erasmus and all.
Of course I could just as well be Quasimodo, King of fools, essentially the notion of being King for a day, but here we risk going off into Wicker Man territory and the role of the fool in literature and history.
For all that I am an Aspie and we are supposed to be nerdy geek stereotypes I live in a rich world of literary allusion and artistic reference.
As for the “Get the hell off the road” psychologically and emotionally it does command more attention, than what appears to be a more straightforward statement. In the same sense that if one leapt into the road and pushed a person in danger out of the way, they would have to be exceptionally harsh to have you arrested for assault.
As far as bluntness arising from lack of thought, thoughtlessness is not the same as lack of care, nor is it arrogance, it is thoughtlessness, lack of awareness not ignorance, in the sense of deliberately ignoring.
Many aspies I have met are exceedingly blunt in the way they phrase requests, in ways that are likely to get one into trouble, but the intention to offend is not there, nor is the intention to overlook politeness.
My very tone of voice gets me into trouble, because it is loud and not well modulated, I am accused of shouting at people when I am merely talking.