In defence of offence
"That's so offensive!" It seems that wherever we go today, there's someone taking offence about something. What does it really mean?
Offence, defence, defend, offend. They're all related. We can take a defensive position where we wait for an attack, or an offensive position where we are the ones doing the attacking. While we never say "I was so defended" we often claim to be offended. It sounds like being offended is the same as being attacked - if only by words, instead of by something more solid. But there's more to it than that: the attack has to strike home and cause us some harm. So really when we claim that something has offended us, we're saying we've been harmed by it.
Now, it seems to me that when somebody makes a comment about us, there are four possible outcomes.
- Acceptance: we agree with what they've said
- Rejection: we disagree with them
- Compliment: we like what they said
- Offence: we didn't like what they said
So if someone was to say to me "Your ears are too pink and you smell of cabbages", I could respond in any of those 4 ways. Thus:
Acceptance: Yes, I've been to my allotment and I got a little sunburned
Rejection: Rubbish! my ears are exactly the same shade of brown as the rest of me, and I smell of Old Spice (which might be an even worse admission)
Compliment: Why thank you. I'm so glad someone noticed
Offence: That's a horrible thing to say - I feel really bad now.
Now the first two responses merely fall away from us. They have no effect on our self-esteem and we don't feel attacked by them. The second two, while leading to opposite responses, share something in common. To elicit the response, we must (at least partially) believe what's been said. If we didn't believe the compliment then it would come across as transparent and we'd expect the flatterer was after something, but believing it (even if it's because we want to believe it) gives a nice feeling that we're a bit better than we thought. Likewise with an insult, if we didn't believe some or all of it, we'd reject the statement and, knowing it was false, we might still feel annoyed but we wouldn't feel worse about ourselves. It's only by accepting some element of truth to the insult that we can let it offend us.
It's also possible that by accepting the insult we are giving the insulter the moral authority to judge us. So an insult from a small child doesn't have the same sting (or at least it shouldn't, unless you have a very fragile ego) as from one of our peers - or someone we look up to, such as a parent or senior relative.
However, it gets worse. If it does turn out that we can only be offended by things we recognise a grain of truth in, where does that leave people who are offended by gender or racial or religious slurs (whether made directly to themselves, as the target - or being offended on behalf of others)? Does it mean they actually believe some of the denigrating remarks made, or are they merely feigning offence because that is what they think is expected from them?
With a lot of things, but maybe not the really big insults, I can't shake the feeling that each of us has it within ourselves to choose whether or not an action or remark will offend us. We can either get hyper-sensitive about it, thereby accepting the offence and any truth it contains - which just gives the insulter the response they were hoping for, or we can dismiss it as being baseless and ignore it and the person attempting to give offence.
Richard Nixon said a lot of things (although some mysteriously got erased off the tapes), but one thing that he said which has a lot of wisdom is that "Those who hate you don't win unless you hate them; and then you destroy yourself." So let's not dwell on all the petty and often unintentional statements and doings that seem to be driving our society into a pit of recriminations and arguments. Let's assume that unless something is clearly, unequivocally and personally directed towards a person, it was never intended as an attack or to cause hurt, It might have been thoughtless and unnecessary- but shouldn't we be able to rise above life's little frictions and just take them in our stride?