Gabby's Tip: Knee-jerk reaction to tattoos?

Knee-jerk reaction to tattoos?

Do you find yourself having a knee-jerk reaction to someone with tattoos? Does your mind immediately self-correct as your memory automatically recalls what elders used to say about tattoos and people with tattoos?

If so, it could very well be that seeing someone with tattoos unconsciously triggers confusion, perhaps self-righteous thoughts. The experience can trigger a valid judgment about the person's character evidenced by their priorities in life. The judgment is not healthy.

Premise: A conscious compassionate person would not spend non-essential money on adornments knowing full well that there are homeless and hungry people everywhere. Hungry homeless people world-wide have a hard time excusing the inconsiderate flaunting of wealth, to include food eating contests.

A tattoo is an in-your-face communication. When first meeting someone with tattoos it can force one to invent a compliment or to stuff a judgment. The stuffing of a thought creates an immediate barrier to the experience of communication, because the relationship begins with a withhold. What takes place thereafter is but an imitation of communication.

A tattoo runs the owner; they become their adornment. Like a Rastafarian's or Hasidic's dreadlocks, a Muslim woman's hijab, or a woman with silicone breasts, it creates an us and them; it's an I'm different type of uniform. It's a covert way of controlling others.* It eventually becomes a topic of conversation, often covert prosthelitization; it causes another to ask questions, which give the believer a chance to justify their belief. As with the question, "Do you believe in God?" most such conversations generate us/them. It also reinforces the wearer's self-righteousness (I'm different, "Chosen," smarter, better). Seldom can a wearer talk about this subject except that they are driven to explain, justify, make-wrong, and argue, all communicated with micro-bursts of condescension.

Tattoos, silicone breasts, and expensive jewelry? --absolutely, once everyone is fed and sheltered.

* It's a self-righteous covert way of being different/better than, or making others wrong (for being judgmental, for being/believing as they do).