RE: You Have The Right To Be Offended
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.
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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.