You Have The Right To Be Offended
7 years ago in #life by shayne (68)
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Unfortunately, freedom of speech is an illusion.
No, its not. it's just the coincidence of the community not handling getting offended anymore . it meaning most people dont risk there life over it.
You should not have to risk your life over it if you have the constitutional right to practice freedom of speech.
indid..
I can equally see that actually, I have no reason to be offended, for an insult/slight describes the psychological state of the person issuing it, and says nothing about me, the individual. I can choose to enter that state as well, be offended, and that in turn probably says more about my desire to step onto some moral high ground or other and vent an outraged poor-me story, rather than anything about the actual situation.
The energy around being offended - outrage, justifying, justifications, judgements etc - is exhausting. Everyone walking on fearful eggshells means very little of substance is expressed; numbed and dumbed communication, unchallenged shit. I've been working my way up and out of that zombie-zone, where being 'challenged' is equated with an 'attack', and being 'offended' the easy side-step to distract from my own unease with dealing with something I'm shaky on :D
🚣Cheers @shayne, I like your writings, I respect your style and perspective.
Thanks.
The ease with which one gets offended is, I agree, a problem for individual people. It's important for mature adults to cultivate an ability to be fine with others having different views and opinions. That's just for one's own wellbeing, but it also has a broader cultural affect of actual tolerance.
People think of tolerance in the wrong way, I think. It's typically seen as an embracing of things that you don't like. But that's not really what it is. Some people are offended by homosexuality, for instance, and tolerance is the simultaneous holding of disagreement with that lifestyle while also permitting it to exist. It is tolerated. It doesn't mean people who are offended by homosexuality have to go around hugging every gay person they know and wish their whole family would become gay or anything.
Where was I going with this...?
Dunno Shayne, you tell me :D
Agreed that 'tolerance' can be seen as having to force yourself to 'like' something that you don't. I do think that 'tolerance' has within the concept a forcible acceptance, or endurance of something. It seems a bit like a suppression of 'being offended', not speaking out or saying that one 'doesn't like'. Tolerance just puts up.
I (too?) think the issue is upside down.
If I am tolerant of, say, homosexuality, then I do not 'accept' it, for I am fighting the very notion/concept (or perhaps the tendency within myself). If I am offended by the very presence of someone who expresses 'gayness', then this says a lot more about my prejudices/issues than anything about the person. This is what I was trying to express in my comment. If I judge (and being offended or 'tolerant' or 'intolerant' is to pass judgement, rather than to just accept), then my judgement says everything about me, and my psychological position, and nothing about the person I am judging. Although the words can look as if I may be saying something about them, the real between-the-lines stuff is all about me and how I view the world, how I project my unprocessed pain and trauma onto the world and onto others.
Great thoughts. We SHOULD be offended! I'm offended all the time. And that is my right. I have no right NOT to be offended. People will offend me, and I will call them morons or walk away. But I will never in my wildest dreams take away them their right to offend me (free speech)
Resteemed btw!
Thank you @scandinavianlife for resteeming this, I would've missed it otherwise!
I hate vikings. How's that? (need a safe space?)
😂😂😂
Totally Agree with your observation regarding the Right to Be Offended is Free Speech!
Haha! Great post @shayne. Steve Hughes speech about being offended hits the mark! It made me laugh while watching it but he makes sense. I mean come on, adults should learn to deal with it because if not, then are we gonna call the cops when somebody offended us?
"I'm offended and I have rights"
That part always cracks me up.
That Steve Hughes sketch is fking brilliant, he is awesome.
So true though, we'd all become mute if we were to avoid offending anyone, ever. Sticking a law on a feeling is crazy business!
Thank you so much for this article, there are no words to describe my appreciation for all the efforts of prof. Peterson he put in dealing with this absolute insanity modern society is faced with!
Yesterday I listened to his explanation of why bill C-16 is dangerous, and completely agreed with him:
"If people are forbidden to speak up their opinion, they are not allowed to think as well, and when we are not thinking and discussing issues among ourselves, those issues only accumulate and grow, and suppression of all those negative emotions we accumulated by not talking to each other can only lead to absolute aggression and going into the far-right end of spectrum."
Heard in the sauna, one friend of mine to another: hey, you're a negro, and I'm fat. It's not exactly secret, anyone can see that. Why has it become such a taboo?
Glad to find your post. Happily following you for more.
The bottom line: PC is simply a method of control. And it is very effective since we have an instinctive need to be acceptable to the tribe. In ancient times to be rejected and cast out of the tribe meant death. That imprint in our souls is still there and still very real. So most people comply. They do not offed, they prefer to be controlled, to be part of the PC patrol, they even feel they are aiding the tribe by doing so. Blessings, that was a really shitty post and I'm offended.
You are right that social ostracism is part of our natural concerns as human beings. I'd like it if we had fewer laws and some combination of transparency / ostracism.
Martin Luther King said civil disobedience is a moral imperative. That's why in this kiddy glove, touchy feely world we live in today, I use the word "cunt" every chance I can. Especially when I'm teaching Sunday School.
Very naughty.