At 9/17/10 07:04 PM, poxpower wrote:
They say everyone gets offended by SOMETHING.
Except I can't think of anything for me. I mean, is murder offensive therefore I want it outlawed? Not really. It doesn't offend me when someone murders someone else. In fact I don't give a shit. I just want to make sure it doesn't happen to me or anyone I know.
So maybe I'm wrong on this but I don't think there is such a thing as "being offended". I think it's people who perceive certain behavior as bad for society, therefore they should be banned.
Saying "this offends me" is just something people say to bypass having to give reasons for why they want to prevent other people from doing X.
If you want to prevent others from saying or doing something, you better have a damn good reason.
There's an element of semantics to it. I don't know if you consider being 'annoyed' by something the same as being 'offended' by it. I hate the word 'offended' because it's so commonly tied to political correctness. I would say that if someone wanted into a room where i was working and started singing really loudly, i would be annoyed. But would i be offended? If someone said that Irish people suck [I'm half irish] Would i be offended? I don't know, though i would probably be annoyed simply because that kind of bigoted behavior is annoying by my purely subjective perceptions.
There's really only one thing that i could say 'offends me', and that's statements, implicit or explicit, by people who want to coerce other individuals into some sort of 'collective action' And of course, like you said, I would want to prevent someone from bringing such a coercion into effect though it would be mighty hypocritical of me to force them not to say it. When someone says "I support Universal Healthcare" He's not simply giving an opinion, he's not simply saying "I like Star wars" or "I like Bach over Mozart", he's saying that, if he had the power, he'd force someone to pay for something they don't want it, and the worst part is, is that this individual probably hasn't actually wrapped his mind about the actual implications of his statement. I can reasonably call such a statement offending because it is, quite literally, an OFFENSIVE opinion. [That is, of or relating to attack or aggression] But again that's really more semantics. It would be more honest to say that nothing actually offends me, I simply find such a statement annoying.
Offensive can simply be a replacement word for 'annoyance' but the former has more weight than the latter. Saying something offends you, even though it's the equivalent of saying that something annoys you, pulls at people's heartstrings more.
But I REALLLLY don't want to get into a debate about universal health care, replace the issue of healthcare with an imposition you don't approve of... Say, sharia law. "I believe our government should adopt sharia law" works just fine.
Anyway, you're right about 'offensive'; it's similar to morality. A word used in place of another word [Morality = Utility of X group, or morality = good consequences] where the former word has a greater emotional impact on the latter.
