Please move if the forum is considered inappropriate but as one of the chief rules here deals with being a jerk and we’ve often talked about what exactly jerkitude entails I thought this might be of interest.
It’s a piece called A Theory of Jerks by Eric Schwitzgebel, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. The whole article is interesting but the paragraph below sums up perfectly the essence of being a jerk and describes to a T some of the examples of the breed that we’ve all encountered on the board in the past.
Fortunately, the mods are blessed with a Mantle of Perception that allows them to ferret out and smite with great vengeance the jerks among us. That’s good enough for me.
Internet commenters are people (we don’t know if some are dogs, by their own admission). What the quote above says as far as defining a jerk seems to define most of humanity when dealing with pretty much anyone they don’t know personally - they don’t care what others think or how they feel. What the internet does is expand our exposure to people with no real connection to us, so we encounter it more than we do in the physical world, where 98% of the time we’re moving within our own circles.
The best book I’ve seen on the subject says we’re all jerks at times, but that there are different levels. Most people are first degree jerks. They don’t want to be jerks, but occasionally do something that is inconsiderate due to anger or frustration or whatever. It’s spur of the moment and uncalculated, and there is always remorse for the actions, if not the sentiment.
Then there are second degree jerks who are selfish and don’t consider others at all. A first degree jerk may occasionally lapse into this mode if they start calculating their actions, but a true second degree jerk just never thinks about it. They still have no specific desire to harm people, they just think they are “getting people back” or whatever.
Finally, there are Nth degree jerks, which are pretty much psychopaths. The example in the book was about a girl whose parents started raping her at age 5 and broke her hand to keep to punish her so she couldn’t be a gymnast–the one thing she did that was out of their control. Part of the girl’s healing process was realizing that she didn’t actually have to forgive what her parents did to her, while at the same time letting go of the anger.
I’m nowhere near doing it justice, but it’s been a long time since I read it. But I found the book by googling “nth degree jerks,” and it’s called Don’t Let Jerks Get the Best of You: Advice for Dealing with Difficult People by Paul D. Meier, M.D.
