From The Archive: I Find That Offensive

From The Archive is a special Friday feature. It features posts from my earlier (now-deleted) blog: Stuff & Nonsense and a few items from previous versions of A Tangled Rope that I feel deserve reprinting here, mainly as a way of archiving them. The dates are only approximate, I’m afraid, and there is a possibility that some links may no longer work (although, I will try to remember to test the links before republishing the piece).

I Find That Offensive – 12/04/05

The first response to the increasingly common cry of 'I find that offensive' should always be 'So what?'

To say that you find something 'offensive' is to say something akin to finding that novel good, that film indifferent, that album fab and groovy, that art installation tired and inane, that particular sheep rather attractive and other comments of that ilk. They say something about you and how you respond to things, but - and this is the important bit - they say nothing at all about the thing - object, statement, whatever - itself.

To call something offensive is NOT to engage with the thing itself - it is an avoidance of engagement or confrontation. It is in effect saying 'you're not playing the game the way I want to play, so I'm taking my ball home.'

For example, what offends religious people will leave the non-religious indifferent. What offends the politically right, doesn't bother the politically left and vice-versa. This goes to show that offence in most - if not all - cases is both subjective and a learnt behaviour.

In other words to take offence is a personal choice. It may happen - perhaps through social conditioning - that the offended response seems to be almost instinctive, but it is not. You are offended only because you want to be, and - if you are honest - because you enjoy that feeling of self-righteous self-affirmation that being offended brings.

More and more these days, it seems we want to live in our own fantasy kingdoms. Insulated from the world and the unpredictability of other people by our I-pods, we watch the TV programmes, read the newspapers and books, listen to the music, surf the webpages that confirm our own prejudices and outlook, we carry on living safely inside our sealed cars, or hidden securely behind our own walls.

The cry I'm offended! is the cry of the spoilt child inside us all, seeing the walls of our carefully constructed sandcastles crumbling under the assault of the approaching tide of the real world that lies beyond our control.