# Is ANYONE just a jerk? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 23, 2018, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-just-a-jerk/823404 "2018-10-23T21:48:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-just-a-jerk/823404/21 "2018-10-24T13:44:33Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > I see this ALL.THE.TIME. > > Plenty of people are just jerks with nothing wrong with them. That’s pretty much a constant refrain among the MH professionals I work with. I accept what you say. And I’m glad to hear that. I find it curious that NONE of the people I encounter are described as such. ---
**Author:** ![EscAlaMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/escalamike/32/4177_2.png) [@EscAlaMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EscAlaMike)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-just-a-jerk/823404/22 "2018-10-24T15:22:53Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > I accept what you say. And I’m glad to hear that. I find it curious that NONE of the people I encounter are described as such. Well, I’m sure the client pool has something to do with it. The MH professionals I deal with are exclusively treating convicted felons. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-just-a-jerk/823404/23 "2018-10-24T15:47:19Z")
[Some of them are just jerks.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzRyEI00PXc) ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-just-a-jerk/823404/24 "2018-10-24T19:15:12Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > Well, I’m sure the client pool has something to do with it. > > The MH professionals I deal with are exclusively treating convicted felons. In many instances, I find the ex-cons I deal with far more believable. Sure, a good number of them impress me as simply looking for easy cash. But they are far more willing to acknowledge that they played some active role in their getting to their present situation, and more likely to express a desire for short-term assistance to get them through a tough period. As opposed to the standard, “Some days I don’t feel like getting out of bed.” Or, “I couldn’t stand anyone at my past job.” Or, “I don’t like being told what to do.” :rolleyes: I want to respond, “Sounds familiar, but I still drag my lazy ass out of bed and avoid strangling these incompetent assholes I work with!” 😉 ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-just-a-jerk/823404/25 "2018-10-24T20:20:06Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > You are making the assumption that just telling someone to stop being a jerk and do the right thing will work – for anyone, ever. > > I have not seen this happen, myself. Maybe it does but it has to be pretty damn rare. > > Many people are confused by the term “tough love”. The operative word is actually “love”, as in, “we are going to do whatever it takes to help you, even if it doesn’t feel that way or look that way to you right now.” > > It isn’t “tough” as in "tough shit puppy we are kicking you to the curb because you don’t deserve help. Hope you find yourself, or something. " I’m not at all confused by the term. It means “cruel treatment masquerading as assistance”. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2018, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-just-a-jerk/823404/26 "2018-10-27T19:34:12Z")
> [@DavidwithanR](#): > > I’m not at all confused by the term. It means “cruel treatment masquerading as assistance”. Well, at some point and for some people the term has been a way to understand how to stop being enablers of bad behavior. Some people find heartlessness effortless but need to put a mask on it. But others can’t bring themselves to let those they care about suffer the natural consequences of repetitive poor choices. People are complicated. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2018, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-just-a-jerk/823404/27 "2018-10-28T15:55:16Z")
Dinsdale, I think the real disconnect here is your model of reality. The law (and the religious beliefs a lot of the people writing it shared) assumes a sort of agency for human beings. A “free will”. This is the reason you punish when a person malfunctions and does something that is against the law. In fact, nearly every time a person is found to have broken the law (civil or criminal), all of the punishment - and/or rehabilitation - is levied against just that person. \* From the perspective of medical science, while there’s a tiny amount of uncertainty about this, basically a person is a machine. Just a bigger example of the DNA ticker tape following cellular robots a person is made out of. Sensory inputs come in, cellular machines calculate an output, as they must, according to the laws of physics and the programming code they have, and a person does an output. If your car malfunctions, kicking it won’t accomplish anything. Telling a person they are a jerk won’t either. Like all machines, some are just lemons. It’s not a persons fault, it’s the very instruction code they were made from has a flaw. Why do criminals commit crimes they will be caught for even though crimes are severely punished? Generally the flaw is thought to be that a few adjustments in their mind are set such that the would be criminals severely devalue future rewards or punishments. Most crimes result in a positive reward for the criminal _now_, even if it will result in severe punishment _later_. Those in the law profession can tut at the “scumbags” they bring in. Who “of their own free will” decided to rob and rape and murder. Who tend to be men under a certain age and frequently are descendants of _other scumbags_. Hmm. You see the problem here? Even the worst criminals among us probably didn’t _really_ have a choice about what they did, any more than your car had a choice whether or not to start this morning when you turned the key. So yes, some people are “jerks”. But if you want to propose a solution for this, the first step is to recognize that they didn’t have a choice in the matter. There really _always_ is something “malfunctioning”. (by \*our \*perspective, as far as nature as concerned, if being a jerk helps you reproduce that’s awesome). For reasons that won’t fit into this post, medical science is general is very limited in what meaningful interventions it can make, and psychiatry is one of the most impotent. These people you handle the paperwork for may be unfixable by any means available to our civilization today. But they really are broken. So, like flawed automobiles, you could have these “jerks” be all killed for their organs. Or warehoused in prisons. Or kept in low income projects. Or banished to Australia. But the point is that don’t kick them. There’s no point. Find a solution to handle them that your society can stomach. But don’t bother making them suffer, they didn’t choose to be this way. \*This is hugely flawed. When the FAA investigates a plane crash, they don’t just blame a single aircraft. They frequently find that all of the aircraft of the same model have the same flaw, and institute a recall. Similarly, if we as a civilization really wanted to reduce crime, we’d investigate each criminal and look at their past and the environment and mistakes that were made. Then we’d take corrective action. Perhaps parents should be required to be licensed caretakers. Perhaps “benign neglect” of violent urban areas in the bad area of town are causing there to be a crime creation machine. And so on. ---
**Author:** ![Section\_Maker\_Jupe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/section_maker_jupe/32/1424_2.png) [@Section\_Maker\_Jupe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Section_Maker_Jupe)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2018, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-just-a-jerk/823404/28 "2018-10-28T16:14:07Z")
Jerks are complex!!! Not to hijack, but new book discusses the role of family in crime. (NPR did a podcast on the book as well) > **[In My Father's House: A New View of How Crime Runs in the Family - Kindle...](https://www.amazon.com/My-Fathers-House-Crime-Family-ebook/dp/B07911BRV4)** > > In My Father's House: A New View of How Crime Runs in the Family - Kindle edition by Butterfield, Fox. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading... ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2018, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-just-a-jerk/823404/29 "2018-10-28T17:37:26Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > It seems to me that - at least for SOME portion of folk encountering mental/emotional/personality difficulties, some sore of “tough love” type of treatment might be beneficial. Acknowledging that life sucks and a person has disadvantages, but they still need to figure out how to fit in and survive as best they can. Most people suffering from a personality disorder such as Borderline Personality Disorder or Narssicistic Personality Disorder generally need a pretty direct ‘wakeup call’ that indicates just how their behavior is affecting their lives and those around them. (People with Antisocial Personality Disorder pretty much don’t care by definition and there is essentially no effective treatment for that class of personality disorder.) However, the “tough love” approach has to be tempered with support and encouragement to reinforce good behavior as well as a refusal by people around the patient to accept bad behavior. Treatment of personality disorders requires a multi-faceted approach and generally needs to include participation by people around the patient because the disorder is essentially baked into the patient’s core identity which requires kind of rewriting. With other disorders, such as dysthima, major depression, anxiety, biopolar, PTSD, et cetera, the ‘tough love’ approach is generally counterproductive as a major factor in the persistence of those issues is the shame and self-hatred in them. It can be frustrating to listen to someone with depression talk about how they can’t get out of bed in the morning but recognize that it isn’t just laziness or lack of willpower but can be an actual crippling anxiety or depressive state that has physiological manifestations (e.g. panic attacks, lowered blood pressure, physical fatigue, inflammation, et cetera) which make it difficult to motivate. Even if you can get a depressed person to get up by barking at them, it is just exacerbating the feeling of helplessness or anxiety that they feel. Of course, some people may use the excuse of depression to malinger or get preferential treatment but for people who are truly suffering there is nothing more they would like than for the cloud of darkness to lift so that they can get up and feel like a normal person. It should be recognized that the DSM (and ICD) are really guidelines and checklists for the purposes of making a diagnosis, and not really definitive evidence of whether someone is actually suffering from a disorder, or are even indicative that someone fits neatly into a particular category. There is considerable subjectivity in diagnosis, and on any given day you could probably slot yourself into multiple categories with a sufficiently generous reading of the critiera; the Cluster B personality disorders, for instance, are essentially a spectrum of ‘jerkish’ behaviors. They have also, as noted, changed radically between major revisions, once classifying as mental illness many behaviors such as homosexuality that are now widely recognized as natural variations in healthy human behavior and relationships, while adding new categories of previously unrecognized disorders, a practice that is likely to continue as advances in neuroscience give more evidence that certain disorders do or do not actually result from some kind of cognitive or affective dysfunction. Psychiatry in general is essentially a pseudoscience that pretends to treat mental disorders as a medical illness with discrete causation and has come to largely focus on pharmacological treatments across spectrums despite a lack of evidence of better effectiveness than placebo for many disorders. Medication for major depression, bipoloar disorders, and schizoaffective disorders can be a godsend for sufferers (although the side effects can be severe and even crippling) but are massively overprescribed for many disorders mood disorders that would better respond to other non-pharma types of therapy (albeit with more effort) and often for disorders such as PTSD where they serve only to mask symptoms of the underlying problems. And there are many kinds of “disorders”, such as ADHD, that many see as being less a mental illness than a conflict between naturally evolved behaviors and societal norms and expectations, e.g. children are not evolved to sit quietly at desks and listen to an adult lecturing to them. People who have a disorder and are seeking treatment should not be considered or referred to as “jerks” for a behavior that they don’t really understand and have poor emotional regulation and control over. However, people who simply use the excuse that they were neglected, abused, et cetera in order to justify being unpleasent or abusive themselves? Jerks. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2018, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-just-a-jerk/823404/30 "2018-10-29T02:02:39Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Everyone is someone else’s “jerk”. Yeah I think the question has to be ‘is anyone who almost everyone who comes in contact with them thinks is a jerk just a jerk?’ Otherwise, right, most people are viewed as a ‘jerk’ by somebody sometimes. And those include reasonable (eg. having seen you only at your worst) and unreasonable (eg. think you’re a jerk because you have money and don’t entirely hide it) accusations of ‘jerk’. In case of people almost nobody can get along with, I think the field is narrowing for ‘jerk, but no mental diagnosis’. Or else some quasi diagnosis, like ‘borderline personality’ is just serving as a new term for ‘jerk’. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2018, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-just-a-jerk/823404/31 "2018-10-29T05:14:56Z")
_cough_ ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2018, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-just-a-jerk/823404/32 "2018-10-29T05:56:51Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Most people suffering from a personality disorder such as Borderline Personality Disorder or Narssicistic Personality Disorder generally need a pretty direct ‘wakeup call’ that indicates just how their behavior is affecting their lives and those around them. (People with Antisocial Personality Disorder pretty much don’t care by definition and there is essentially no effective treatment for that class of personality disorder.) However, the “tough love” approach has to be tempered with support and encouragement to reinforce good behavior as well as a refusal by people around the patient to accept bad behavior. Treatment of personality disorders requires a multi-faceted approach and generally needs to include participation by people around the patient because the disorder is essentially baked into the patient’s core identity which requires kind of rewriting. > > With other disorders, such as dysthima, major depression, anxiety, biopolar, PTSD, et cetera, the ‘tough love’ approach is generally counterproductive as a major factor in the persistence of those issues is the shame and self-hatred in them. It can be frustrating to listen to someone with depression talk about how they can’t get out of bed in the morning but recognize that it isn’t just laziness or lack of willpower but can be an actual crippling anxiety or depressive state that has physiological manifestations (e.g. panic attacks, lowered blood pressure, physical fatigue, inflammation, et cetera) which make it difficult to motivate. Even if you can get a depressed person to get up by barking at them, it is just exacerbating the feeling of helplessness or anxiety that they feel. Of course, some people may use the excuse of depression to malinger or get preferential treatment but for people who are truly suffering there is nothing more they would like than for the cloud of darkness to lift so that they can get up and feel like a normal person. > > It should be recognized that the DSM (and ICD) are really guidelines and checklists for the purposes of making a diagnosis, and not really definitive evidence of whether someone is actually suffering from a disorder, or are even indicative that someone fits neatly into a particular category. There is considerable subjectivity in diagnosis, and on any given day you could probably slot yourself into multiple categories with a sufficiently generous reading of the critiera; the Cluster B personality disorders, for instance, are essentially a spectrum of ‘jerkish’ behaviors. They have also, as noted, changed radically between major revisions, once classifying as mental illness many behaviors such as homosexuality that are now widely recognized as natural variations in healthy human behavior and relationships, while adding new categories of previously unrecognized disorders, a practice that is likely to continue as advances in neuroscience give more evidence that certain disorders do or do not actually result from some kind of cognitive or affective dysfunction. > > Psychiatry in general is essentially a pseudoscience that pretends to treat mental disorders as a medical illness with discrete causation and has come to largely focus on pharmacological treatments across spectrums despite a lack of evidence of better effectiveness than placebo for many disorders. Medication for major depression, bipoloar disorders, and schizoaffective disorders can be a godsend for sufferers (although the side effects can be severe and even crippling) but are massively overprescribed for many disorders mood disorders that would better respond to other non-pharma types of therapy (albeit with more effort) and often for disorders such as PTSD where they serve only to mask symptoms of the underlying problems. And there are many kinds of “disorders”, such as ADHD, that many see as being less a mental illness than a conflict between naturally evolved behaviors and societal norms and expectations, e.g. children are not evolved to sit quietly at desks and listen to an adult lecturing to them. > > People who have a disorder and are seeking treatment should not be considered or referred to as “jerks” for a behavior that they don’t really understand and have poor emotional regulation and control over. However, people who simply use the excuse that they were neglected, abused, et cetera in order to justify being unpleasent or abusive themselves? Jerks. > > Stranger If you spent significant time with me and didn’t know I have ADHD, you would not think “This is a valid way of acting, it’s his naturally-evolved behaviour”. You’d think “What the hell is this guy’s problem, anyway?”. In fact, even if you knew I have ADHD, chances have proven to be quite good that you’ll think “What the hell is his problem” anyway, despite the fact that you already know. And certainly I’ve been accused of being a jerk for this reason. It’s insulting and unhelpful to see ADHD “scare-quoted” as if it wasn’t real. ---
**Author:** ![DB\_Coopa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@DB\_Coopa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DB_Coopa)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2018, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-just-a-jerk/823404/33 "2018-10-31T10:46:07Z")
To misquote Stalin - “No people, no problems.” ---
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8dc957/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2018, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-just-a-jerk/823404/34 "2018-11-05T23:13:52Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > I see this ALL.THE.TIME. > > Plenty of people are just jerks with nothing wrong with them. That’s pretty much a constant refrain among the MH professionals I work with. I remember a Mike Royko column about a guy who was hearing voices who applied for some sort of medical assistance. The psychiatrist told the guy and his family there was nothing wrong with him, that he was just lazy and looking for a handout. The guy went and jumped off a bridge to his death. So it goes both ways. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2018, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-just-a-jerk/823404/35 "2018-11-06T00:34:17Z")
> [@Corry\_El](#): > > Yeah I think the question has to be ‘is anyone who almost everyone who comes in contact with them thinks is a jerk just a jerk?’ > > Otherwise, right, most people are viewed as a ‘jerk’ by somebody sometimes. And those include reasonable (eg. having seen you only at your worst) and unreasonable (eg. think you’re a jerk because you have money and don’t entirely hide it) accusations of ‘jerk’. > > In case of people almost nobody can get along with, I think the field is narrowing for ‘jerk, but no mental diagnosis’. Or else some quasi diagnosis, like ‘borderline personality’ is just serving as a new term for ‘jerk’. Some people have said this about “self diagnosed Aspies.” Maybe, in some cases, and maybe not. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-anyone-just-a-jerk/823404.md?page=1)