Talking over a person

 

When a few people go to visit a person and talk deceptively to him it involves calculation. In making comments that they only know the true or full meaning of they act strategically attempting to talk over his head. The object of their deception is himself supposedly left in the dark while they in turn show the real insight. Their remarks come at the expense of the feeling of dignity and perceived self importance the oblivious individual they talk over feels. It is an undertaking the other people share as an inclusive pact that hurts him. They no doubt have perfected their craft over the years with him out of earshot.

 

 People in this way delight in strategizing and securing such understandings at another's expense. I guess it makes them feel both powerful and also delight simultaneously in the individuals humiliation. 

In this kind of arrangement with one another the conspirators seem to believe they are the only ones in awareness of the knowledge they delight in possessing and withholding. When in a room together with them the individual might perhaps however see and even recognize the behavior. He or she might see the behavior as crude or unsophisticated but that won't stop the others from the behavior.  

To add to the insult the remarks may even step over another line that even the saboteurs, it might have been thought, were previously thought incapable of crossing. The group might then go about callously arranging the ultimate of humiliations: the physical harm of the individual.  The individual remains "oblivious" to being the object of their high minded intension and no doubt because of that they continue to scheme on. In utter disdain the group acts friendly on one level, the level the individual wants to believe in, while on another level "that they supposedly have mastered" their business is real humiliation of him or her which moves on now to involve potential violence. That the contempt for the individual can go on and even promote an act of violence being carried out is profound. The "oblivious friend" faces real betrayal!  

 Lets step into the world of the "friendship visit." The guests  blurt out the name of the individual who they have before hand strategized as the person up to the job to physically injure him. The name is uttered at several  moments while looks are exchanged. It was peculiar to infer from just that something so callous being planned. The rest of the visit demystified any doubts.  

This drive to humiliate turns people like one of my aunts into people motivated to continuously try to talk over people and bring them down. By seeking I think to secure through her efforts an elevated image for herself she acts this way finding uplift and reassurance.  Cruelty, power, and the diminishment of the other must motivate her instinctively. She somehow convinces herself in the process perhaps that she's a miss marple or the lady from Murder she wrote.  In finding solidarity with a third person she thinks is important enough to be aligned with she then acts strategically to diminish the oblivious someone. This feel good agenda of making an ally at the expense of another this Church attending older woman delights in carrying out. 

What's wrong with visiting an old friend with a mental illness because you like him? Why not learn from going to Church that Jesus was inclusive of the marginalized and represented humility and compassion? I'm not anyone's punching bag by the way.