Please don’t tell me “see a therapist” I know that already.
Agree with her. Then say all these old and retired people aren’t contributing to the economy anymore and don’t deserve to live. Then you ask her how old she is, for effect.
And specifically ask her, at which age or milestone does she think it’s not worth to keep her alive anymore? You can suggest the point where she retires.
Other option, Louis Theroux that shit
Just don’t react, but keep asking “why” type questions, again, just acting interested, like you think they could convince you if they’re just explain it better.
Make them try to argue their own way into a hole until they’re either so pissed off they drop it, or they start to disbelief their own thoughts.
It works cause you’re not arguing against stupid that way, you’re making stupid argue against itself, and nothing beats that
Try the classic (fully untrue, but who cares, it illustrates the point) quote about Einstein
Einstein failed his classes in high school, but by adulthood he was one of the smartest people in the world. People develop at different paces
What value do young children or the ill have? Should we kill them? What kind of backwards anti-human society is that. Instead of just looking at someone’s value, we should look for the potential in each other and help each other get to our full potential.
What “value” does she purport to bring? Just out of curiosity.
Hmph! We don’t live to bring value to others! People have their own value, if you treat them like tools, you waste any productivity you generate!
my rebuttal would be to cut her entirely out of my life.
Ask her what “value” is.
“ok boomer”
There is no teaching those who have no interest in learning.
Why rebut it? You aren’t going to use logic to argue someone out of a position they didn’t use logic to get to. Especially someone that probably thinks you owe them your existence. You’ll never win that argument, don’t ask me how I know.
If you’re still living at home, make it priority to determine a way to make it on your own ASAP, or be prepared to eat shit until you figure that out.
This sounds like psychopathy (also a trait of borderline and narcissism, although there’s an argument to be made that psychopaths are distinct from those).
I wouldn’t expect a logic based rebuttal to work - all of these conditions are essentially emotional in nature, compensating for a negative past (shame) or compensating for a negative future (generalised anxiety).
This compensation is specifically grandiosity - a cognitive distortion to set themselves up as superior in their own minds, such that they no longer need to be ashamed or anxious.
Contempt is a manifestation of grandiosity, or more precisely a reaction to shame, transforming the realisation of their perceived inferiority in the past or future into the delusion of superiority.
Is their a field of study that focuses solely on the behavior, and the root cause, in the way your third and forth paragraphs does? Or, like, a flowchart of emotions and root causes? That was an interesting way to dissect why people might behave in that way.
Yes, psychology, specifically cluster b personality disorders - although it’s much more nuanced and complicated than what I’ve described, especially as conditions often transform and metastasize over time. For example, the borderline can take on a narcissistic persona when challenged and would be diagnosed as such in that self-state.
It’s quite difficult to find reliable sources of information online, as narcissism and psychopathy are popular subjects these days - ironically attracting narcissists and psychopaths to the production of content relating to it (for views or money).
Less curious about cluster b personality disorders, specifically, and more interested in the practical understanding that (in this case) sometimes, the reason behind someone not valuing another is really about them trying to protect themselves.
The connection between contempt, grandiosity, and shame; it makes sense intuitively, but it is interesting to spell it out that way.
What about other big emotions, how many others are really outputs of another?
“What the fuck is wrong with you??”
Your mom’s a cunt.
Woah, hey now. I doubt she’s got the depth or the warmth to be called that!
You don’t need a therapist, she does. Sounds like she is suffering from EDD, aka Empathy Deficit Disorder. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-new-resilience/201004/are-you-suffering-from-empathy-deficit-disorder
Look her straight in the eye and say:
“You are embarrassing yourself.”
