'Being Offended' Thread.

[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.

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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.

[Karl12]

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?

Really do appreciate the thoughtful reply there FCD and thought you asked a mighty important question there.

Who gets to do the defining lol?

Which groups get to be supposed arbiters of moral integrity or what people say, write or think?

Is it intelligence agencies via mockingbird media? Is it military intelligence via domestic Psy-Ops? Is it foreign governments bribing (I mean lobbying) the political system to promote specifically concocted ideologies? Is it non governmental organisations funded by eugenicist families like the Fords, Rockefellers and Carnegies?

Basically is it just those groups who throw enough money in the proverbial pot for covert social conditioning programmes (and what potentially subversive agendas do these people actually have)?

Hitchens asks at the beginning of this clip 'who gets to decide?' and as Peterson says in this clip it's probably going to be 'the last people in the world you would want doing it'.

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.

Yes definitely appreciate where you're coming from and do salute your opinions - I know for a fact I'm not perfect and can definitely be a bit hypocritical at times (I do try to keep it in check lol).

To my mind 'free speech' (like 'free enquiry') is insanely important for a healthy, functioning society and couldn't agree more with this guy when it comes to the eventual outcome of state sponsored censorship.

Also thought this was a pretty powerful quote:

[Karl12]

• "I do not know how to find out anything new without being offensive".

Charles Fort

Quote thread

[CCoburn]

In these contemporary times being offended is like a small knife, but back in the day it was more like...

[Karl12]

https://youtu.be/LhXhtn9aW3I


Scottish

[Anna]

Also thought this was a pretty powerful quote:







[Image: https://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/i...0e3eb4.jpg]

This is funny because "it didn't start with the gas chambers" meme is mostly used by the opponents of the so-called hate speech. The political correctness and the censorship in the name of tolerance are justified with the appeals to the examples of genocides and holocausts in history and the discriminatory hateful rhetoric which gave rise to them.

Let's not forget that the Nazis were initially the opposition exploiting the weak democracy. Hitler wrote his Mein Kampf in prison. Did he have a right to free speech too? There are numerous examples in history where verbal aggression preceded or accompanied discrimination, physical violence against or actual extermination of various ethnic groups or whole nations.

The society's oversensitivity and the rise of special snowflakes might as well stem from the collective PTSD.

[Maxmars]

This is funny because "it didn't start with the gas chambers" meme is mostly used by the opponents of the so-called hate speech. The political correctness and the censorship in the name of tolerance are justified with the appeals to the examples of genocides and holocausts in history and the discriminatory hateful rhetoric which gave rise to them.

Let's not forget that the Nazis were initially the opposition exploiting the weak democracy. Hitler wrote his Mein Kampf in prison. Did he have a right to free speech too? There are numerous examples in history where verbal aggression preceded or accompanied discrimination, physical violence against or actual extermination of various ethnic groups or whole nations.

The society's oversensitivity and the rise of special snowflakes might as well stem from the collective PTSD.

/start opinion

In truth, many opponents of hate speech are not against hate speech, they are against free speech.

They have allowed their own emotional triggering to become fertile grounds to presumptions that any people hearing or reading "hate speech" will be swayed by its' content.  As if every bit of information they encounter must be purified and rendered inert to their own biases.  Or the presumption that any others hearing it, will lack the means to identify it as such, and respond accordingly.  Rather than attacking the content... they smear the speaker, call them names, or liken them to popular villains.

The response often takes the form of a fear response.  Fear is both sloppy and abrupt...

"Speech" is a responsibility of all members of a society or community... most who engage in it are naturally inclined to amend their emotional acceptance of their own speech without reservation (perhaps to account for their personal relevance.)

Our recent focus on "fee fees" and virtue posturing has become a thorn in the side of free speech.  Personal judgments of 'hatefulness' should be used to address the speech, not suppress it.  To invalidate hate speech, you must address the speech, not the speaker.

However, there is such a thing as speech for "hates' sake" and such speech deserves intense scrutiny... most often to the dismay of the speaker.

Our community, for example, will not tolerate the practice of proselytization, which very often a central element to "hate speech."  Also, speech attesting to "validating hate" is most generally a form of verbal violence, meant only to attack and impugn the subject...  But a list or a description of a person or events may be negative, without being hateful. 

The ultimate resolution of that speech is at the individual level.  If the individual is triggered, the speech will be called 'hateful'... if not, it's just speech.

/end opinion

[UltraBudgie]

/start opinion

Well reasoned points, and an excellent demonstration of how abstract thought is laudable and acceptable, as long as it is never never anchored with specific concrete examples. That's the line that must not be crossed, because it results in instant polarization. Even allusion is agenda; there is no "fair and balanced". All argument outside the sanctioned narrative must be context-free.

It is a telling characteristic of the most propagandized nation in history. The use of specifics belongs to the masters.

We've been programmed to act that way. It's deliberate.

[Anna]

Rather than attacking the content... they smear the speaker, call them names, or liken them to popular villains.
...

Our recent focus on "fee fees" and virtue posturing has become a thorn in the side of free speech.  Personal judgments of 'hatefulness' should be used to address the speech, not suppress it.  To invalidate hate speech, you must address the speech, not the speaker.

I wholeheartedly agree with everything you wrote but the thing is that the society always gave hell to those who went against the tide. Virtue posturing is nothing recent. There are numerous examples of various human societies punishing dissenters either with social ostracism, public humiliation or death. And of course, this has hardly ever been fair but I somehow cannot recall at the spot examples from the history of humanity when anything was actually fair. Not to mention that what is fair to some people is unfair to other people and vice versa.

Those who challenge the social norms or the ideas cherished by their society are the usual target of hate campaigns or the victims of cancel culture. If they had had the misfortune to be born hundreds of years ago, they might have been burned at the stake, who knows? I think we've made a bit of progress since the time of Giordano Bruno that we no longer burn people literally, only metaphorically.

​​​​​​​Self-righteousness is closely linked to the conviction that one has the monopoly on the truth. We are the majority, we have power so we know the truth. Those who disagree are liars. And the liars need to be punished. Those who dissent are convinced the truth is theirs. Who is to judge who is right? Usually, the judgement belongs to those who are in power.

There is a difference between censorship and public ridicule or hate bandwagon. The former is usually preventive and is done by some sort of the authority; either a state or leaders of an organization or owners of the media or internet platforms. The latter is nothing else than the revenge of the mob whose sacred values were attacked. It doesn't prevent free speech, it punishes the "offender." The question is whether the self righteous mob, who boycotts the offender or tears him to shreds, should be pacified because that requires censorship too, this time to protect a dissident.

It would be great if everyone was civil and focused on the message and not the messanger but this is not going to happen any time soon because people are mostly driven by their emotions and unconscious primitive impulses and not by the reason alone. Those who challenge the status quo should be prepared to pay the price. You can't challenge the sanctified groupthink and, at the same time, demand to be protected by it. You cannot count on the respect of the very people, whose bull# you called out. Usually, that is.

And it's just better to realize that than hope for some ideal society where only civil discourse prevails, where the opinions that go against the grain are given careful consideration, and those who share them don't have to take the heat unfairly... (Jesus how I hate this word). This is very important, especially that most of the world is undemocratic and in countries other than the Western ones, offending the dominant ideology is much more dangerous if not deadly.

[LightAngel]

While reading this topic I noticed that two members are banned.

I find that a bit ironic in a topic about being offended.