My ambivalent reaction to this post motivates me to make a distinction between two kinds of advice; I will call the first “community-normative” advice and the second “agent-pragmatic” advice.
On one reading of your post (as community-normative advice), you’re basically telling people in general to do what the title says: “Don’t get offended!” My gut reaction to that is along the lines of handoflixue’s comment, only with less profanity. Everything anybody ever says is a speech act, and some speech acts are harmful, and some are intentionally harmful. So telling someone not to get offended is kind of like telling them to stop getting in the way of moving fists. Potentially a sign of moral myopia.
On another reading of your post (as agent-pragmatic), I see sensible advice for any individual thinker in the abstract. Yes, if it’s possible to cultivate a general disposition not to be offended, that might be a good idea, in the same way as cultivating an immunity to arsenic might be a good idea if you live in an Agatha Christie novel.
I think the difference between the two is that if you say “Don’t get offended!” without disclaiming the community-normative implications, you’re imputing blameworthiness to those who are (perhaps maliciously) offended.
To be fair, you did actually disavow those implications.
So telling someone not to get offended is kind of like telling them to stop getting in the way of moving fists. Potentially a sign of moral myopia.
Yes, telling people not to get offended is like telling them to stop getting in the way of moving fists. And on a case by case basis, it generally is bad to blame people for what other people are doing to them. But on a long term basis, if you find yourself constantly on the recieving end of moving fists, you might want to seriously consider learning to dodge better. Similarly, if you find yourself constantly getting offended to the point that your epistemic rationality becomes impaired, you should seriously consider practicing ways to better manage your emotions.
But on a long term basis, if you find yourself constantly on the recieving end of moving fists, you might want to seriously consider learning to dodge better.
That really, really depends though. Two different people may find themselves in that situation for completely different reasons. Some folks really just can’t catch a break; others really are ready to see a slight in anything that remotely discomfits them. Some folks need to learn to dodge better, some folks probably won’t get far with any advice that tells them to do something different since all these moving fists are not their idea and they’re taking pains to avoid as it is, and I daresay many folks will encounter both types of situations because moving fists are not a single class of thing...
At the low end of the mind, you’re absolutely right. The options are: take the hit, dodge, hit back, or redirect the punch away, or don’t even get near people in the first place.
The best of those options is to redirect the punch away, which is very difficult to do.
At the high end of the mind, where extreme layers of subtlety exist, where most people don’t even have the ability to be aware of at any time during their life, there is another way: realize that the punch is not directed at you. At that level of depth into the mind, the offendee actually entices people to say offensive things in order to get offended.
One layer deeper than that, the offendee’s subtle body language, and overall “air around them” or “feeling they give off”, is what entices people to say things that person will find offensive. At this level, the method is to realize that the punch is not only not directed at you, but is actually directed at the puncher.
As offensively blunt as it is to say: the reality is, it’s always the fault of the person who gets offended. Of course, most of the time, all people involved are offended, and so it’s everyone’s fault.
In the end, what I’m trying to say is not “don’t be offended”, but instead: listen to your feeling of being offended. It knows better than you. It’s not telling you what’s wrong with other people, it’s telling you what’s wrong with yourself. It’s right.
Yes. That’s because what I’m riffing on is the superficially-reasonable nature of your statements here. That’s kind of the idea behind sarcasm—tone and context alone make the difference between two very different readings of the same utterance.
That being said, I agree with some other commenters that a generalized disposition to not take offense strikes me as problematic and a little Spocklike. I am put in mind of Aristotelian ethics, wherein one is recommended to pursue the virtue of righteous indignation (that term had less baggage in Aristotle’s time) in contrast to the opposite vices of irascibility and complacency.
In certain very specific cases, yelling at the top of your lungs and banging on the table might be the entirely correct thing to do in response to a person’s actions or words, and the sense of offense you feel is useful, because it is what provides you the necessary motivation to do so.
I’m also reminded of, IIRC, Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed containing the directive to not allow oneself to become angry, because anger distorts clear thinking, but also observes that sometimes it is necessary to display anger so as to effect desirable change in the world.
Not really. There is a qualitative difference between being harmed and being offended. And as usual the word “offended” can range in meaning from a perceptual experience of distaste or dissatisfaction to a surrender to anger and outrage. It’s clear to me at least which end of that scale katydee is advising us to avoid.
Of course it wouldn’t make sense to advise people to avoid disliking things that are contrary to their values. But it makes perfect sense to advise mindfulness in the face of strong emotional responses. “Keep a cool head under fire” is uncontroversially good advice, and not equivalent to blaming people for being shot at.
Also, katydee’s advice works when applied to itself, because clearly too there would be nothing useful about being emotionally outraged at the idea of advice-as-victim-blaming, and none of the reasonable critical comments here seem to be couched in the form of incoherently angry rants.
My ambivalent reaction to this post motivates me to make a distinction between two kinds of advice; I will call the first “community-normative” advice and the second “agent-pragmatic” advice.
On one reading of your post (as community-normative advice), you’re basically telling people in general to do what the title says: “Don’t get offended!” My gut reaction to that is along the lines of handoflixue’s comment, only with less profanity. Everything anybody ever says is a speech act, and some speech acts are harmful, and some are intentionally harmful. So telling someone not to get offended is kind of like telling them to stop getting in the way of moving fists. Potentially a sign of moral myopia.
On another reading of your post (as agent-pragmatic), I see sensible advice for any individual thinker in the abstract. Yes, if it’s possible to cultivate a general disposition not to be offended, that might be a good idea, in the same way as cultivating an immunity to arsenic might be a good idea if you live in an Agatha Christie novel.
I think the difference between the two is that if you say “Don’t get offended!” without disclaiming the community-normative implications, you’re imputing blameworthiness to those who are (perhaps maliciously) offended.
To be fair, you did actually disavow those implications.
Yes, telling people not to get offended is like telling them to stop getting in the way of moving fists. And on a case by case basis, it generally is bad to blame people for what other people are doing to them. But on a long term basis, if you find yourself constantly on the recieving end of moving fists, you might want to seriously consider learning to dodge better. Similarly, if you find yourself constantly getting offended to the point that your epistemic rationality becomes impaired, you should seriously consider practicing ways to better manage your emotions.
That really, really depends though. Two different people may find themselves in that situation for completely different reasons. Some folks really just can’t catch a break; others really are ready to see a slight in anything that remotely discomfits them. Some folks need to learn to dodge better, some folks probably won’t get far with any advice that tells them to do something different since all these moving fists are not their idea and they’re taking pains to avoid as it is, and I daresay many folks will encounter both types of situations because moving fists are not a single class of thing...
At the low end of the mind, you’re absolutely right. The options are: take the hit, dodge, hit back, or redirect the punch away, or don’t even get near people in the first place. The best of those options is to redirect the punch away, which is very difficult to do.
At the high end of the mind, where extreme layers of subtlety exist, where most people don’t even have the ability to be aware of at any time during their life, there is another way: realize that the punch is not directed at you. At that level of depth into the mind, the offendee actually entices people to say offensive things in order to get offended.
One layer deeper than that, the offendee’s subtle body language, and overall “air around them” or “feeling they give off”, is what entices people to say things that person will find offensive. At this level, the method is to realize that the punch is not only not directed at you, but is actually directed at the puncher.
As offensively blunt as it is to say: the reality is, it’s always the fault of the person who gets offended. Of course, most of the time, all people involved are offended, and so it’s everyone’s fault. In the end, what I’m trying to say is not “don’t be offended”, but instead: listen to your feeling of being offended. It knows better than you. It’s not telling you what’s wrong with other people, it’s telling you what’s wrong with yourself. It’s right.
Don’t get hurt. Pain is natural and very easy to experience, but it interferes with your capacity for rational thought, and that’s clearly suboptimal!
Ironically, the text of your post seems unambiguously correct to me.
Yes. That’s because what I’m riffing on is the superficially-reasonable nature of your statements here. That’s kind of the idea behind sarcasm—tone and context alone make the difference between two very different readings of the same utterance.
That being said, I agree with some other commenters that a generalized disposition to not take offense strikes me as problematic and a little Spocklike. I am put in mind of Aristotelian ethics, wherein one is recommended to pursue the virtue of righteous indignation (that term had less baggage in Aristotle’s time) in contrast to the opposite vices of irascibility and complacency.
In certain very specific cases, yelling at the top of your lungs and banging on the table might be the entirely correct thing to do in response to a person’s actions or words, and the sense of offense you feel is useful, because it is what provides you the necessary motivation to do so.
I’m also reminded of, IIRC, Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed containing the directive to not allow oneself to become angry, because anger distorts clear thinking, but also observes that sometimes it is necessary to display anger so as to effect desirable change in the world.
Not really. There is a qualitative difference between being harmed and being offended. And as usual the word “offended” can range in meaning from a perceptual experience of distaste or dissatisfaction to a surrender to anger and outrage. It’s clear to me at least which end of that scale katydee is advising us to avoid.
Of course it wouldn’t make sense to advise people to avoid disliking things that are contrary to their values. But it makes perfect sense to advise mindfulness in the face of strong emotional responses. “Keep a cool head under fire” is uncontroversially good advice, and not equivalent to blaming people for being shot at.
Also, katydee’s advice works when applied to itself, because clearly too there would be nothing useful about being emotionally outraged at the idea of advice-as-victim-blaming, and none of the reasonable critical comments here seem to be couched in the form of incoherently angry rants.