"The purpose of life is to fight maturity." -Dick WerthimerAn acquaintance of mine's Twitter page is allegedly being investigated for one reason or another. Apparently his knack for pushing the envelope out the window is a problem, but is pushing the envelope any worse than chastising these ne'er-do-goods?
I know for a fact that I've offended a lot of people a lot of times, but not nearly so much as several of my friends do, and if there's one thing I've noticed, it's that they're a lot more fun to be around than the people who take offense at the things they say.And that right there's the crux of the matter. These guys will make an (arguably) offensive joke, not directed at anyone in particular so much as its concept offends someone. Now, who's really at fault here? Is it the guy who wants to be funny and means no offense, or the guy who decides to take offense, regardless of whether the joke was directed at them.
I don't know about you, But I, personally, dream of a world where no one insults or offends another with an offhand statement or particularly rude yet funny joke. However, I don't think this will ever happen because people just shut up. As a general rule, assume that people won't shut up.
Instead, I think our search for the beautiful tomorrow should be focused more on the tough skin than blunting the tasteless edge of every asshole's dagger. A world where nobody offends anyone else isn't a world of the impeccably polite, but one of people who just don't give a damn.
If a person doesn't want to be offended, their best bet is more than likely to not take offense at things, not tell someone that they have deliberately decided to be ess happy because of something someone else said.
I have a distinct memory of a bright February morning in grade 10, working on an assignment that had something or other to do with Black History Month, and in response to a teacher's question someone turned to their neighbour and asked, "Am I allowed to say black?"I was aghast of course, but I damn near shat myself when their friend just said, "I dunno." Is it really getting to the point where people are so afraid of offending people they won't even go so far as to state something that is fact. When has a black person ever gotten mad at someone for calling them black?
Basically, I hope we can get over ourselves before everyone's boring and polite.
I know what you mean. It's really hard to go around in our culture with so many different groups we could "possibly offend". I never know what to say. But I do think we need to be courteous. Yes, there are some people who take waaaay too much offence at the smallest things. But there are also some things that shouldn't be said. Some people are just dumb about it. I wish I could just punch anyone who's responded to my question "Can I have that black marker?" with "Don't be racist!". I mean seriously, don't be stupid.
ReplyDeleteHahaha, I agree with Renee, I get what your saying but I also think that people need to have a sense of courtesy for other people. If someone is offended by something they usually have a personal reason as to why the comment offended them.We should also recognize though that in most cases people don't say things to personally offend us, and because of that people should be willing to overlook certain comments.
ReplyDeleteI think that there is definitely a fine line to walk when it comes to political correctness. It is true that while some people take offense to some statements others don't. It largly depends on who you are dealing with. For the most part I think we are becoming overly sympathetic know to atone for past insensitivities. Yet I believe in the foreseeable we will be able to fine tune ourselves and come to an acceptable level of cultural sensitivity.
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