The act of taking offence is basically finding a way to make known precisely how selfish you are. People are inherently self serving, but find a myriad of ways to mask or hide that selfishness. Being offended is a wonderful tool to enable guilt free, self serving conduct. Conduct, that under normal circumstances would be at best questionable. But when you add offence to any perceived insult, then the despicable shit a person can get away with is jaw dropping.
Once offended you can behave like an absolute dick. Because you’re offended. You’re outraged and consumed with moral indignation. Your behavior is understandably justified.
What I find odd is that becoming offended gives people the moral justification to be offensive. But, having ones feelings hurt is at it’s core almost exclusively selfish, and the offence is often just a charade.
In a perfect world everyone would be offended by the same things. But, the world is far from perfect, and so instead of agreeing on what we find offensive, we’ve decided instead to find everything offensive. Which means that no matter how an individual or a nation conducts themselves, there is always going to be another person or a group of persons, or a country that finds that conduct offensive.
Always. Without fail.
So, how is this human behavior selfish you might wonder?
Let’s consider some of the things that cause offence. Religion is a good place to start, because the behavior of the faithful has been guided by offended righteousness since someone sat down and invented religions. Regardless of the cult and regardless of the horror perpetrated by the cult members, the acts were and always will be based on attacking other cults that disagree with your personal mythology. So, all of the killing in the name of God is done because one sect of fuck ups don’t like it that another group of fuck ups have a different belief system that they use to indoctrinate their children. So, why the hell would a different belief be cause enough for armies to invade, heretics to be burned and infidels put to the sword?
Is the violence, mayhem and brutality simply because the existence of contrary thought is unsettling? Does it cause a seed of doubt to creep into your bubble of certainty? Is killing people and taking their land and valuables justified because they dare to be different from you? The answer to all of the above questions is yes. You’re offended by their difference.
That’s damned selfish. Nothing more and nothing less.
We’re offended because other people think, speak, act or look differently from us. Religion is just a mechanism we use to motivate enough offence to act badly. Nationalism works almost as well as religion as far as catalysts for deplorable behaviors go, but damned near anything that ends in ism will work.
Offended because women are in the workplace? Your offence is actually based on the fact you now have more people to compete with for money and stature, and some of them are going to be more capable than you. We call that sexism.
Offended because people of color are in your school and your workplace? Your offence is again based on the fact that you now have more competitors for opportunity. We call that racism.
I could go on and on but instead I’m going to include a link with a list of 234 isms. Take note that the description states the list is comprised of political, philosophical and religious beliefs. Not facts but beliefs. Each and every one of the ism’s on this list is capable of generating offence from proponents and opponents of the ism.
http://phrontistery.info/isms.html
Each day we expand the list of ism’s to help us become and stay offended. The internet has assisted in a large way with the expansion of this list, and from my perspective all I see is selfishness and laziness. I’m not sure if the lazy component is new. I suspect not, but personal sloth is much more evident now that every person with an opinion can share that opinion with the world. All you need now is a Samsung and you can share your indignant outrage with the world.
I think I need an example to describe the lazy I’m referencing.
Let’s start with obesity. Recently, the national health service in Britain started running ads on bus and subway lines. The ads stated clearly that there was a marked increase in certain cancers among obese people. The ads also stated that this increase was particularly noticeable in youth.
Some woman had a fucking conniption. She complained to the health service and threatened a lawsuit because she was fat and her feelings were hurt. She was offended and wanted an apology and the ads removed. She felt that the ads were body shaming her and perpetuating the notion that fat equals unhealthy and unattractive.
So, there’s the lazy and selfish side to being offended. This dumb bitch would rather not pass along verifiable data that might help prevent cancer because the researched facts hurt her feelings. Also as she sat down with a cup of tea and a box of cookies to type her complaint, the thought never occurred to her to maybe just have tea and take a pass on the cookies.
Because leaving the cookies in the cupboard and expending more calories than you take in requires some effort. You might even have to walk or exercise and that’s work. It’s way easier to be offended.
So now we have a trend if a criticism is leveled at you. A remark regarding your weight or any aspect of your lifestyle that might require some discipline to enact a change, is now considered offensive.
So, lazy + selfish x challenged = offended.
Now comes the second part of the art of being offended. You need to make certain that everyone knows you’re offended. For some reason being quietly offended just doesn’t cut the mustard any longer. Your critics must be silenced with the forcefulness of your indignation. Social media again provides and if you’re looking for endless examples of this behavior, then go and look at the comment section of any forum or on-line newspaper or twitter. I find this behavior bewildering. I understand if you object to an article. I further understand and generally respect your demeanor if you present a thought out response to explain your offence. Even if I disagree with your position, I respect the time and effort you put into actually thinking.
I’ll elaborate to illustrate how being offended works in 2019.
Let’s say that ten years ago you attended a real estate open house. You tour the home and decide that it’s not what you’re looking for. So, you leave, but before you do you would comment to the realtor that the place could use some paint or maybe new windows.
Fast forward to today.
You tour the same house and don’t like the place, but before you leave you take a giant crap in one of the bathrooms. You purposefully don’t flush your work to make certain that the owner knows that you didn’t like what you saw.
Because you need to let the owner know how you feel and not provide any reason for why. Because then you’d have to articulate your feelings into thought.
But, thinking isn’t a major component of most offence these days. It’s too hard. Plus you might have to read or do something you don’t like. And possibly have your convictions challenged.
So, all of the expended offence energy isn’t about being right. It’s about silencing any opinion that isn’t a mirror image of yours. Right has become secondary to reassurance that there’s nothing about you that you need to rethink or change.
Seems like an odd way to exist.
Just sayin.