September is for Sh*t Talk

Autumn's shadow explorations are here and the first (September) is dedicated to finding friends in low places.

Mr. Suttree it is our understanding that at curfew rightly decreed by law and in that hour wherein night draws to its proper close and the new day commences and contrary to conduct befitting a person of your station you betook yourself to various low places within the shire of McAnally and there did squander several ensuing years in the company of thieves, derelicts, miscreants, pariahs, poltroons, spalpeens, curmudgeons, clotpolls, murderers, gamblers, bawds, whores, trulls, brigands, topers, tosspots, sots and archsots, lobcocks, smellsmocks, runagates, rakes, and other assorted and felonious debauchees.

I was drunk, cried Suttree.

Cormac McCarthy —Suttree

Why on earth would anybody want to sacralize shit talk?

The practice risks marking one as a foul sinner under some ism or other. If virtue is to be practiced in thought, word, and deed, then is there not some vice in uttering certain strings of words? Isn’t there something low-brow to the practice—something ill-cultured, uncivilized, and otherwise unbefitting an aspiring hierophant?

Yes. But perhaps you can appreciate how shit talk relates to a virtuous life as Carnival relates to the Lenten season.

Three Functions for Relationships

Shit talk serves several crucial social functions that strengthen relationships:

1. Bonding and Trust-building,

2. Competition and Familiarity, and

3. Collective Shadow Exploration.

Let us explore each.

Bonding & Trust-Building. Shared irreverence creates in-group solidarity by establishing mutual comfort with imperfection, while the willingness to give and receive jabs deepens interpersonal connection. This bonding occurs precisely because engaging in mild verbal sparring requires confidence that the relationship can withstand the teasing without irreparable harm. Such mutual testing strengthens trust.

Competition & Familiarity. Friendly verbal jousting channels competitive instincts into harmless territory, allowing people to assert dominance or simulate status while maintaining affection through competitive play. The license to talk shit also acts as a familiarity cue, indicating intimate knowledge of boundaries and comfort levels that only close relationships permit. It opens the door to radical honesty.

Collective Shadow Exploration. Perhaps most importantly, casual irreverence enables shadow exploration among friends and siblings of our order, allowing safe expression of normally suppressed thoughts, aggression, or taboo observations. It provides a socially acceptable outlet for darker impulses that might otherwise remain unacknowledged, which creates measured psychological release alongside social connection.

As I wrote in “Finding Fires in the Sacred Shadow,”

All God’s children need to cuss from time to time, maybe tell a dirty joke, or give a buddy a hard time. Among friends, it can be a bonding ritual that makes for closer friends. We shouldn’t be either Victorian prudes or Vandal boors. We shouldn’t grimace silently or gossip shamelessly. As a release valve and trust builder, we must make space for shit-talk.

In this way, shit talk isn’t reserved only for September. But we can set it aside for ritual practice.

Weak Shit Talk
Silliness or dad humor that does little to confront taboos or bind the group.

Substantive Shit Talk
Mirthmaking or sparring that challenges certain taboos and makes us stronger together.

Excessive Shit Talk
Words that are too painful, too pointed, or go too far, such that they reduce group cohesion.

Finding the Boundary and Going Too Far

‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me,’ children once said on playgrounds. But there are ways words can hurt. A colleague who lies to sully someone’s reputation injures her. A father who repeatedly tears down a child’s self-esteem can affect him permanently. And a friend who takes shit talk too far can wound the friend deeply and put the dynamics of the siblinghood at risk.

All fires in the sacred shadow have boundary stones.

The trouble is, there are no hard and fast rules concerning whether and to what extent one’s words can become weapons. There are only clues. So, if you talk shit, develop shit-talk subtlety, savvy, and a measure of sensitivity.

Expect unexpected feedback.

When your siblings warn you about your words: listen. Cease the shit talk for the time being and resist being defensive. Consider their input respectively, carefully, and reflectively. When someone suggests you have gone too far, don’t react in the moment. For example, don’t just assume it’s September, and then claim everyone and everything is fair game. Instead, let your counterpart know that you hear him and that you will honor your duty to reflect. Replay the event to the best of your ability, and ask yourself how you might have taken on your words had you been in your sibling’s circumstances.

Once you return to them—having aligned head, heart—communicate your original intentions and a desire to repair your bond. If you find that, in love and empathy for your sibling, you can understand his reaction or boundary, be humble and contrite, then apologize. If he accepts this, then you might ask how you can explore this sacred shadow-fire together without anyone getting burned again. If he does not acknowledge your contrition or accept your apology, consider involving a wise, trusted third party to serve as a mediator. This will not only help both parties reflect, but it will also help repair the bond.

And bonds must be repaired.

Those for whom shit talk is an affront also have a duty to reflect. Suppose he finds that, in love and empathy for you, his sibling, he comes to understand that your shit talk was not motivated by malice but by clumsy shadow exploration. In that case, he should be quick to accept your apology or apologize himself.

From Bouncing to Bonding

Otherwise, practice the principle of charity. That means once you have returned to centeredness, assume your sibling’s best intentions when you reflect. This process is hardly any different for a married couple. Consider:

There will always be bouncing, of course. Couples disagree. It’s unavoidable. But it’s also unsustainable. The couple’s bonding method starts with one partner finding the strength to control his reaction. Eventually, the other partner must mirror that effort. If one partner cannot learn to sit within the space (find equipoise)—to realign between stimulus and response (following Viktor Frankl)—he will continue being reactive.

Ongoing reactivity is not sustainable. Bonding is the ultimate aim of all interaction among siblings.

Such leads us to shit talk’s fourth and fifth crucial social functions:

• Developing Resilience, Restoring Equipoise, and Repairing Bonds.

• Breaking Taboos of Competing Orders

There is value, too, in going too far and then repairing—notwithstanding the pain of words that cannot be unsaid. (Going too far should never be planned. It will happen by accident.) Life requires sparring and jousting because it prepares us to become resilient in the face of inevitable attacks from adversaries in the world outside our order.

But we cannot flourish alone.

So, we must practice repairing our bonds for the sake of mutualism, solidarity, and asabiyyah—the integrity of the order. And these require the breaking down of certain taboos that indicate dubious allegiances to other orders.

Rejecting Victimhood

The Grey Robes forbid siblings of the order from donning the mantle of victimhood. So, never accept that a sibling’s scars are open wounds (unless they are open wounds), nor grant that she is a victim of circumstances and never of her own choices. Members of our order must develop a thick skin behind emotional armor, especially those who engage in subversive communication.

Thin-skinned men and women will never build a durable Empire of the Mind.

Yet all shit talk should be doled out equally. You must give as good as you get. You must attend to siblings who go too far, and look out for those who might be wounded by it. And you must never bully or pile on anyone, or allow siblings to lapse into a pack mentality.

Excessive shit talk manifests in degree and kind.

Remember that shit talk lives in the penumbra—neither in the Shadow of abuse, nor in small talk and sweet Gnostic nothings. Like so many things in our order, we grow in the space of non-polarity.

Once a time of shit talk has passed, all should resume projecting a mien of decorum, curiosity, and reverence.

Note: Men and women should separate themselves when engaged in such activities, at least initially. Not only do the sexes generally employ different patterns of shit talk, but each sex is typically better able to talk shit among their kind without going too far. This is especially true for initiates. Those who are tutored and practiced in the ways of our order can mingle the sexes in a manner that allows each sex to learn about the other without burning or getting burned.