Trash talking
Jun. 24th, 2005 03:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonMutant from hell of the day: the woman here at work who likes to stir the pot and cause trouble with whoever is handy. (Unless you're male and then she's all flirty.) Not as bad as some work mutants I've known, but still an irritant. Most times I pretend she doesn't exist which vexes her mightily, but late in the day yesterday I succumbed, I'm afraid. She yelled at me for going through some printouts looking for a stray job of mine because I "wrinkled her papers." (I didn't.) Then when I said, "I didn't wrinkle your damned papers," she asked, "Why are you always so rude?" I wish I could say I walked away and didn't continue in this three-year-old vein, but I'm afraid I said, "I'm rude because you're you," before I walked away. Not one of my best zingers, but I want to progress beyond the need for delivering zingers.
*sigh* Why do some people get their rocks off by conflict? Life is short enough as it is. And I don't want to give this incident more importance then it's worth. It was a petty interaction, nothing more. But it brought up some associations from the past that got me thinking.
Because it's times like those where a ghost from my childhood springs up, puts her hands on her hips and starts trash talking. It's a Pavlovian response dredged up from the tough school in the tough neighborhood I grew up in. I like to think I have progressed beyond that little person who could lay schoolyard bullies low with my razor-sharp mouth. But apparently my amygdala has other ideas. I was reading how the amygdala is the center of the brain that takes fear, anxiety, stress and the like, and develops aggressive behaviors in response. Press button A, get response Number Three.
The meat centers of the brain, the pure animal inside the struggling-to-be-civilized human, don't give a fig for karma or grownupness or enlightenment. On the meat level, it's all about an eye for an eye. I guess that explains a lot of the world's heartburn, probably including the behavior of the Mutant from Hell. Her misplaced aggression is clearly something she learned early as a response to something that made her feel small and unimportant. She has succored her mutation in her black little heart with glee ever since.
But there's meat level response and there's meat level response...I still maintain that it's better to regret being a meat puppet than to think it's a valid way of conducting one's life. I guess it's that glee in doing mischief that separates the Mutant from the schoolyard trash talking kid.
Or I could be wrong and rationalizing the hell out of my own behavior.
TGIF.
*sigh* Why do some people get their rocks off by conflict? Life is short enough as it is. And I don't want to give this incident more importance then it's worth. It was a petty interaction, nothing more. But it brought up some associations from the past that got me thinking.
Because it's times like those where a ghost from my childhood springs up, puts her hands on her hips and starts trash talking. It's a Pavlovian response dredged up from the tough school in the tough neighborhood I grew up in. I like to think I have progressed beyond that little person who could lay schoolyard bullies low with my razor-sharp mouth. But apparently my amygdala has other ideas. I was reading how the amygdala is the center of the brain that takes fear, anxiety, stress and the like, and develops aggressive behaviors in response. Press button A, get response Number Three.
The meat centers of the brain, the pure animal inside the struggling-to-be-civilized human, don't give a fig for karma or grownupness or enlightenment. On the meat level, it's all about an eye for an eye. I guess that explains a lot of the world's heartburn, probably including the behavior of the Mutant from Hell. Her misplaced aggression is clearly something she learned early as a response to something that made her feel small and unimportant. She has succored her mutation in her black little heart with glee ever since.
But there's meat level response and there's meat level response...I still maintain that it's better to regret being a meat puppet than to think it's a valid way of conducting one's life. I guess it's that glee in doing mischief that separates the Mutant from the schoolyard trash talking kid.
Or I could be wrong and rationalizing the hell out of my own behavior.
TGIF.
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Date: 2005-06-24 04:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-24 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-27 12:02 am (UTC)