492
06-06-2024, 04:15 AM
This post was last modified 06-06-2024, 05:00 AM by FlyingClayDisk.
So many thoughts on this subject, so little time.
On the one hand we have the notion of freedom of speech and expression. On the other we have entitlement mentality and absolute censorship. Somewhere in the middle we have society today, wherever that may be. The definition of "civilized" frequently moves this middle marker around.
If one goes and lives on a remote island, alone, they are permitted to make up and define their own set of rules concerning what is civilized and what is not. If one goes and lives in a densely populated city, generally the rules of civilized behavior are defined for them. Again, somewhere in the middle a balance must be struck, but who is allowed to make those rules...and more importantly, who is not?
Using the 'two hand' analogy again; on the one hand, civilized society requires rules. On the other, society with no rules is anarchy. More balances to be struck.
Up to this point we have only addressed a theoretical world, but now we must move this same discussion into the 'real' world. ...
"Those <insert expletive> <insert race, religion, culture>'s, I HATE them and they should be exterminated!"...OR..."I am going to affix a giant <sexual apparatus> to my forehead and travel, naked, to work using the subway today."...OR..."I don't need to use any specific bathroom at all because I identify as a ferret, so I'll just 'go' where I choose." Are any of these behaviors acceptable? By most (civilized) standards, the answer would be...'of course not.' Yet, at the same time we have persons within our society lobbying for the right to behave in ways not too far different from any of these examples. Why? Because it is..."My right, because I am 'entitled' to behave in this fashion!", or so they say.
To most, any of these behaviors would be offensive. Yet some would argue these behaviors are contained within their right to liberty, their right to freedom of speech and/or expression. Oddly, it is often the very same people who say they are 'entitled to NOT be offended' who the most ardent defenders of allowing people to behave in whatever crazy way they choose. One might even say they are...'hypocrites'. But are they? Well, yes and no. I might opine, a better description might be that they are...'selfish'. The only behavior which acceptable to them is behavior that they alone approve of, and all other behavior is unacceptable and...you guessed it...offensive.
I don't profess to have the proverbial final answer; it's a complex question. But I do know this; when you short circuit two energized electrical conductors to earth ground there are going to be fireworks, and this is essentially what we have going on today in society. The trouble is, people are smart enough to realize this and they only graze the ground with their proverbial electrical wires before quickly pulling them away. Some might call it progressively testing the waters to see how far they can push people into acceptance.
Now, some of what I've written here may appear like it is advocating censorship, but in all actuality the opposite is true. Here's why. If we take these opposing concepts and extrapolate them out to their extremes (which is very much happening without our conscious realization), we wind up in a very dysfunctional and dystopian society. Because remember, the people themselves will remain, only society around them will change. At the extremes we will have a society where everyone lives inside their own personal little opaque bubble, isolated from the world around them. This way, and only in this way, everyone can coexist while at the same time being as...'jiggy as they wanna' be'.
I can't speak for others, but I don't think that's a world I particularly look forward to living in. One potential solution (at least in my perhaps twisted mind) is to ask people who scream the loudest for 'tolerance' and for protection from being 'offended' to simply take a good, long, hard look at themselves in the mirror. Accepting that we all have 'selfish' motivations is a little bit easier to swallow than openly (or even privately) admitting that we are 'hypocrites'. Because after all, we all have a bit of hypocrisy in our souls, every single one of us.
Flame on, my good fellows. Flame on indeed.
Peace.
NOTE - The following section was actually intended to be a separate post, but for some reason the system combines two consecutive posts into a single post
One other thought on the subject, and this may seem like an oblique way to address the topic, but stick with me for a moment and I think you'll see where I'm headed.
This is something I think we all run into more frequently than we realize. People often think they know what another person is thinking. People will form an entire opinion about another person without that person ever saying a word to them personally. "I know exactly what that evil MF'er is thinking!!!" C'mon, you know you've thought this about someone at some point, right? I will often error on the side of over-explanation of certain things in the hope of eliminating as much of this as I can ahead of time.
When we talk of subjects like being 'offended', and its fraternal twin 'tolerance', we have to remember that our feelings are often driven by mental pictures we create in our minds about what motivates another person, about what they are thinking. Perhaps a newborn child has the luxury of not having a single drop of cynicism in their hearts, but for the rest of us weary travelers in this thing called life, we all have healthy quantities of cynicism floating around about something or other. I dare anyone to say they harbor not a single bit of cynical thought, and often much of this is focused on what other people are thinking.
When we talk about being offended, the deck is often stacked (in our minds) based on this concept. What I mean by this is, because we 'think' we already know what another person is thinking, this 'baggage' gets added onto anything this other person actually says or does; it's like an amplifier. This happens regardless of whether the other person was really thinking what we had conjured up in our mind or not. The net result is, whatever we were originally thinking is now compounded almost exponentially. In short order that simple cynicism turns into hatred, and then no matter what the other person says...it's offensive. It's offensive...just because. It's offensive just because they opened their "gawd forsaken pie hole...dammit!"
When you scale up these concepts to 'group think', now all of a sudden one person doesn't even need to know another person to already 'know' what "those no good bastages are thinking!"
In today's society people know "I'm offended" is a weapon. And it truly IS a weapon. People will use this weapon to hurt other people simply because they don't like them...because they 'think' they know what they are thinking. How, you ask? "I'll call HR on this person who offended me, and they'll get in all sorts of trouble!"...is one example, OR..."I'll file a lawsuit against this person / company and say I was offended"
None of this is to say that there is never a time and place where one truly gets offended. There most certainly are situations which are offensive and wrong, and these situations absolutely should be addressed and corrective actions taken. However, there are also times when people's feelings of being 'offended' are driven by false motivation, and this equally has no place.
Lastly, I'm pretty confident we've all seen "that guy", or "that gal", whom you just know is a boiling cauldron of "I'm offended", you know the one; that person who everyone feels like they're walking on eggshells dealing with. Some people make a career out of being "that person", and the most ironic part is, that same person is filled with more 'hate' than everyone else in the room, and that person 'thinks' they know exactly what everyone else is thinking.
Just something to 'think' about.
On the one hand we have the notion of freedom of speech and expression. On the other we have entitlement mentality and absolute censorship. Somewhere in the middle we have society today, wherever that may be. The definition of "civilized" frequently moves this middle marker around.
If one goes and lives on a remote island, alone, they are permitted to make up and define their own set of rules concerning what is civilized and what is not. If one goes and lives in a densely populated city, generally the rules of civilized behavior are defined for them. Again, somewhere in the middle a balance must be struck, but who is allowed to make those rules...and more importantly, who is not?
Using the 'two hand' analogy again; on the one hand, civilized society requires rules. On the other, society with no rules is anarchy. More balances to be struck.
Up to this point we have only addressed a theoretical world, but now we must move this same discussion into the 'real' world. ...
"Those <insert expletive> <insert race, religion, culture>'s, I HATE them and they should be exterminated!"...OR..."I am going to affix a giant <sexual apparatus> to my forehead and travel, naked, to work using the subway today."...OR..."I don't need to use any specific bathroom at all because I identify as a ferret, so I'll just 'go' where I choose." Are any of these behaviors acceptable? By most (civilized) standards, the answer would be...'of course not.' Yet, at the same time we have persons within our society lobbying for the right to behave in ways not too far different from any of these examples. Why? Because it is..."My right, because I am 'entitled' to behave in this fashion!", or so they say.
To most, any of these behaviors would be offensive. Yet some would argue these behaviors are contained within their right to liberty, their right to freedom of speech and/or expression. Oddly, it is often the very same people who say they are 'entitled to NOT be offended' who the most ardent defenders of allowing people to behave in whatever crazy way they choose. One might even say they are...'hypocrites'. But are they? Well, yes and no. I might opine, a better description might be that they are...'selfish'. The only behavior which acceptable to them is behavior that they alone approve of, and all other behavior is unacceptable and...you guessed it...offensive.
I don't profess to have the proverbial final answer; it's a complex question. But I do know this; when you short circuit two energized electrical conductors to earth ground there are going to be fireworks, and this is essentially what we have going on today in society. The trouble is, people are smart enough to realize this and they only graze the ground with their proverbial electrical wires before quickly pulling them away. Some might call it progressively testing the waters to see how far they can push people into acceptance.
Now, some of what I've written here may appear like it is advocating censorship, but in all actuality the opposite is true. Here's why. If we take these opposing concepts and extrapolate them out to their extremes (which is very much happening without our conscious realization), we wind up in a very dysfunctional and dystopian society. Because remember, the people themselves will remain, only society around them will change. At the extremes we will have a society where everyone lives inside their own personal little opaque bubble, isolated from the world around them. This way, and only in this way, everyone can coexist while at the same time being as...'jiggy as they wanna' be'.
I can't speak for others, but I don't think that's a world I particularly look forward to living in. One potential solution (at least in my perhaps twisted mind) is to ask people who scream the loudest for 'tolerance' and for protection from being 'offended' to simply take a good, long, hard look at themselves in the mirror. Accepting that we all have 'selfish' motivations is a little bit easier to swallow than openly (or even privately) admitting that we are 'hypocrites'. Because after all, we all have a bit of hypocrisy in our souls, every single one of us.
Flame on, my good fellows. Flame on indeed.
Peace.
NOTE - The following section was actually intended to be a separate post, but for some reason the system combines two consecutive posts into a single post
One other thought on the subject, and this may seem like an oblique way to address the topic, but stick with me for a moment and I think you'll see where I'm headed.
This is something I think we all run into more frequently than we realize. People often think they know what another person is thinking. People will form an entire opinion about another person without that person ever saying a word to them personally. "I know exactly what that evil MF'er is thinking!!!" C'mon, you know you've thought this about someone at some point, right? I will often error on the side of over-explanation of certain things in the hope of eliminating as much of this as I can ahead of time.
When we talk of subjects like being 'offended', and its fraternal twin 'tolerance', we have to remember that our feelings are often driven by mental pictures we create in our minds about what motivates another person, about what they are thinking. Perhaps a newborn child has the luxury of not having a single drop of cynicism in their hearts, but for the rest of us weary travelers in this thing called life, we all have healthy quantities of cynicism floating around about something or other. I dare anyone to say they harbor not a single bit of cynical thought, and often much of this is focused on what other people are thinking.
When we talk about being offended, the deck is often stacked (in our minds) based on this concept. What I mean by this is, because we 'think' we already know what another person is thinking, this 'baggage' gets added onto anything this other person actually says or does; it's like an amplifier. This happens regardless of whether the other person was really thinking what we had conjured up in our mind or not. The net result is, whatever we were originally thinking is now compounded almost exponentially. In short order that simple cynicism turns into hatred, and then no matter what the other person says...it's offensive. It's offensive...just because. It's offensive just because they opened their "gawd forsaken pie hole...dammit!"
When you scale up these concepts to 'group think', now all of a sudden one person doesn't even need to know another person to already 'know' what "those no good bastages are thinking!"
In today's society people know "I'm offended" is a weapon. And it truly IS a weapon. People will use this weapon to hurt other people simply because they don't like them...because they 'think' they know what they are thinking. How, you ask? "I'll call HR on this person who offended me, and they'll get in all sorts of trouble!"...is one example, OR..."I'll file a lawsuit against this person / company and say I was offended"
None of this is to say that there is never a time and place where one truly gets offended. There most certainly are situations which are offensive and wrong, and these situations absolutely should be addressed and corrective actions taken. However, there are also times when people's feelings of being 'offended' are driven by false motivation, and this equally has no place.
Lastly, I'm pretty confident we've all seen "that guy", or "that gal", whom you just know is a boiling cauldron of "I'm offended", you know the one; that person who everyone feels like they're walking on eggshells dealing with. Some people make a career out of being "that person", and the most ironic part is, that same person is filled with more 'hate' than everyone else in the room, and that person 'thinks' they know exactly what everyone else is thinking.
Just something to 'think' about.
![[Image: zr610e3eb4.jpg]](https://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/zr610e3eb4.jpg)
