'Being Offended' Thread.

[Anna]

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