Offensive comments seem to be more offensive by those close to us. Most of us are grown up enough to not to be offended by people we don't really know, i.e. on the internet. But why do we get offended at all?

Offense and Emotion

I was teased a lot when I first started primary school (I was a bit different). My parents use to tell me to not listen to them and what the kids were saying, was not who I was. It would be 20 years before I would see that this was true. I don't mean I didn't believe it before, I did believe it, I dismissed these things and that worked fine. But I didn't see that I was literally not what people think of me, I wasn't even what I thought of me, until much later. This might sound pretty obvious to most people, but I myself often forget this, so I am writing about it here, so if you forgot or never heard this before, it will jog your memory.

A lot of time and money are spent analysing our psychology, brains and emotions. To find out what influences us in this way or that. I understand that they are making tremendous head roads in these areas. But that is not what I want to discuss today, so no figures or statistics, maybe a little self observation (and a lot of honesty)will be necessary. When I say honesty, its not like you are going to have to admit anything to anyone, its just being honest to yourself. Hard to do sometimes I know. This is somewhat an extension of my "Identity Politics Destroys Happiness" article link below. As a result of some recent conversations.
https://steemit.com/life/@louisbettong/identity-politics-destroys-happiness

So I'm going to make an assertion here, all people get offended when comments, aimed at them, challenge a persons identity. Some people get offended even when the comments are not aimed at them, they are so attached to their identity that their identity (ego) reads in to it anyway, just in case haha, a preemptive offence. This occurred for me when I was young, thankfully I got over it. I know this is entry level stuff here, I'm no philosopher, I know that a lot of people here will have done much more and I invite comments so I learn. I am just trying to convey it to others like myself, in simple terms, it also helps me understand.

To tackle offence properly I have to explain what I mean by the above terms, identity and attachment. I have to be careful here as I am a beginner.

Identity
Identity is so much more than where your from, it is also what you do, how you perceive yourself, what you think other people perceive you as (always interesting) how you are feeling, how you think you are supposed to feel and the list goes on. In reality none of things are actually you, your identity is not you. You can discover this by discovering the thinker, that is observe you thoughts how they move by, as you observe your thoughts who is doing the observing? So are you what is contained in your mind? are you your thoughts? You can't be, because you observed your self thinking. Then as you become aware that there is something observing your thoughts, than who just became aware of the observer? Whether you get this or not is of no consequence, it just shows you that you are not all the things that you think you are, this is a good and bad thing if you don't already know. It isn't actually important to know who you are, it is probably more important to know who you are not. What this boils down to essentially, is you are more than just what you attribute to yourself and sometimes you may not be some of the things that you attribute to yourself. So if you can't attribute anything to yourself, then how can anybody else?

If you don't grasp the above concept then you become your identity, it becomes you. Which is what it wants, it is almost like part of your mind is trying to hide who you really are from you, so that it can exist. It can seem like a struggle when trying to think about these things because your identity is trying to hide itself from you by creating more identities. Identification is really your ego, or perhaps what your ego uses to justify its existence. Now the above is just an analogy, a sign pointing to what it is. There are not two you's dukin' it out in your head, that's crazy talk.

Attachment
By attachment I mean people take these attributes, these identities and become dependent on them. This is all thanks to your ego (and conditioning but that's for later) trying to maintain control over you. If you have identified as a baker, then your mind will keep you on that track, your a baker and bakers do this and they don't do that etc. This seems harmless enough when regarding mundane, superficial stuff like your occupation, however it can have a big effect, even in that case, when you suddenly become something else. I am an engineer, I lost my job a couple of years ago and it has been tough ever since. You can imagine how hard it was for me washing dishes as a deckhand, or doing 2 weeks unpaid work experience cleaning beer lines at my age. You'll learn a lot about attachment in situations like that. I became quite attached to "being" an engineer that any attack on that was hard to accept. In reality I was unemployed, I had to deal with it, it is the reality that exists at that moment, "I" was no longer an engineer. Now attachments can be a lot more devastating and complicated when we get into identities surrounding our race, religion and feelings etc.

Imagine the above scenario if I was also attached to the identity of being a good, honest person and somebody attacked my ego with such information, that I could not prove either way. This is of course is the best way to attack someones ego, so you don't have to prove anything. It can be complicated and I have kind of started in the middle. But in simple terms, your attachment is your ego hanging to your identities, maintaining your identities. You have layers of things that you identify with and a single attack can cause damage to multiple. I am an engineer now I am unemployed. I'm attached to being an engineer, an earning participant in society, hard working, successful (the worst attachment of all) even a man. All gone in a moment. That is a lot of identity to lose at once.

So to recap, identities are what your ego uses to justify it self with, and attachment is your ego maintaining identities for use as justification.

Offense and Emotion
Getting back to offence and emotions, the above is how I comprehend it for myself and my words are like a sign. My words are not what I am describing, they are just the description. There may be better descriptions, better signs, however you wont know how good the description is until you see/experience it yourself. Then when you explain it to someone else, your explanation will become another abstract description of something real. Stay with me on this lol. So the above describes a way that you may regard yourself (in your mind) that is less then real or perhaps somewhat imaginary and may not have come from you at all. Then all of a sudden, I come along and start insulting you, with words no less, really getting to the heart of your identity, comments that'd really "hit close to home", so to speak. Inevitably you feel offended, however the thing that I have attacked about you is, well somewhat imaginary. Sure you may do that particular thing, but it is not you. I might say, your art is shit, a baby could have done that. You're offended not because you're shit, but because you have identified with "your art", which may or may not be shit. You have also identified as an adult, and your ego does not like to be compared to a baby. Additionally I am suggesting that the art was not thought out because a baby could have done that. So you get three hits, and are deeply offended. If you Draw your income from art there may be a whole list of things to be offended about. Funny thing is that, if you attribute some form of authority on me, then your offence is worse. The less authority that you perceive me to have, the less offence you will take. So are you offended because of what I said, or because of what you thought?

Even funnier, is that you are trying to punish me for my words by taking offence and getting emotional. "I'm going to punish you by feeling sad for a few days".

The emotions that you feel are like a catalyst to get you to act in some way. This is why all this recent talk about "getting in touch with your emotions" is rubbish. Getting in touch with them, if you want to discover that they are responses to imaginary stimulus sure. However do not get in touch with them if you want to get high on them. They are like drugs, I think even science has determined that they may be the result of different chemicals in the brain being released, as a result of different stimuli. Released by your pusher (the ego). People don't be fooled, getting you to be in touch with your feelings, is a way to manipulate you (and vice versa).

Emotions are so addictive, we engineer situations that allows us to feel them again and again, but I think that is best left for another article.

So in conclusion, I learned that what goes on in someone else's head, or even if the articulate it to me, can not effect me (in my head) unless I allow it to. Or more accurately allow my ego to present what they say as a threat to my identity. I forget this a lot. If I could remember this in every moment, life would be smooth, I forgot this recently. It was a good reminder to keep my ego in check. I guess that is what they call a "reality check". The ability to drop your attachments, and give away your identities or labels, for me, reveals real happiness. It is a bit hard to acknowledge (and maybe a bit harsh for me to say) that if you get offended, by anything at all, it is really your own fault. To see this is to free yourself from the emotions associated with offense.

OK here is the bad news, all those good things, the nice comments, the identity (ego) boosting comments, the one's that make you feel good (you know where this is going huh). Well yep, they are imaginary to and you are just as irrational feeling good about those, as you are about feeling bad about the other ones. But that's definitely for another article.

LB

Oh and please comment, I'll try not to get offended. Or rather, I'll be offended if you don't lol.