An excerpt from “The Big Questions: How Philosophy can Change Your Life” by Lou Marinoff:
“A trifle consoles us because a trifle upsets us.”
Blaise Pascal
“What’s on trial here today is political correctness. Now, political correctness is the idea that assures that the worst thing we can do is offend somebody. Well, a lot of people were offended when Galileo suggested that the earth was revolving around the sun. A lot of people were offended by Picasso because in his portraits the eyes weren’t where they were supposed to be. A lot of people were offended by Rosa Parks when she wouldn’t sit in the back of an
Alfred Molina in the TV series Ladies Man
“TOO MANY PEOPLE experience needless dis-ease due to a handful of fundamental confusions. With increasing frequency in recent times, people have confused privileges with rights, objectivity with subjectivity, wishing with willing, wanting with needing, price with worth, affluence with fulfilment, reality with appearance, and sameness with equality. Not to mention disease with dis-ease! In this vein, people cause themselves and others a lot of unnecessary suffering by ignoring the distinction between offense and harm. The costs of this ignorance, both personal and societal, have been monumental. Before we get to the troubles this mistaken equivalency causes us, we must first clarify just what “harm” and “offense” are, and thus make clear the difference between them. If you can learn not to confuse the two, and learn how not to take offense, you might just spare yourself a lot of dis-ease, and maybe even harm. I am very serious about this: the confusion of offense with harm is itself a potentially harmful mistake, with dire consequences awaiting those who persist in making the error.
WHAT IS HARM?
Suppose you’re riding the subway and somebody big and heavy accidentally steps on your foot. Suppose your foot is actually injured in the process - perhaps some small bones are broken. This is a harm; namely, a physical injury to your person.
Now, further suppose that you need healthy feet to do your work; perhaps you are a letter carrier, or a dancer. With a broken foot, you are temporarily prevented from earning your living. This is a collateral harm; namely, an obstacle to the fulfillment of your normal duties or interests, which disappears only when your injury disappears.
If the person who stepped on your foot says, “I’m sorry,” you certainly have the power to accept the apology. However, the apology and your acceptance of it do not reverse the harm to your foot, or the collateral harm to your career.
In
So there is a difference between intentional versus unintentional harm. Either way, your foot is still injured. But whether it occurred by accident or on purpose makes a moral difference to you, as well as a legal difference to the system. A friend may harm you unintentionally, and you’d probably remain friends. A friend who harms you intentionally - well, that person is not really your friend at all.
Not all harms are caused by other people. Your foot could be injured by a dog, or a shark, or if you are struck by lightning, for example. You can’t sue or press charges against a thunderstorm, of course, even though it may have harmed you. Forces of nature act impartially.
In any event, harm is done actively to an unwilling victim who does not have a chance to accept or reject the act, and who does not condone it. That is, victims of harm do not seek to be harmed. If someone tries to harm you, you may or may not be able to defend yourself. If someone apologizes for stepping on your foot, you can forgive them - but your foot will still hurt. The physical harm is done and apologizing doesn’t undo it.
WHAT IS OFFENSE?
Now suppose you’re on the subway - with healthy feet - and you notice one of your fellow travelers staring at your toes protruding from your sandals. This seems a bit odd or threatening to you (a stare is a threat among adult primates), or at the very least rude, so you ask ”What are you staring at?”
“Your feet,” comes the answer. “They are the ugliest feet I’ve ever seen; I can hardly believe my eyes’.” You feel provoked, angry, and upset; you are experiencing dis-ease. You’ve been offended.
You have not, however, been harmed. Your feet are just fine, and there isn’t any collateral harm either. You can still walk or dance, go about your daily life, perform your work unimpeded.
Now I have some news for you: Those who are offended play an active role in being offended. Offense is merely offered to someone, who must then decide whether to accept the insult or not. If someone tries to offend you, you always have the option to refuse to take offense, provided you know how to exercise it. You cannot be offended without your own consent. (But you can be harmed without your consent. See the difference?) Thus, in a civil society^ if we say something that unintentionally offends someone, we can always apologize by saying, “No offense intended” - and the other person can answer, “None taken.” If someone apologizes for staring at your feet, you can forgive them and feel no insult. And if an offense is offered but not accepted, there is no offense, no harm, and, furthermore, no dis-ease.
AND NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET
Then there’s the possibility of someone first stepping on your foot and then saying your feet are ugly. We would say they are “adding insult to injury.” The very phrase indicates there is a significant difference between the two.
To sum up: harm is a one-way street, while offense runs both ways. You can be harmed against your will, but never offended against your will. That is a powerful distinction. And I urge you to consider the benefits of drawing it as often as necessary. You can maximize your ease by refusing to take offense, or maximize your dis-ease by seeking it at every possible turn. The Roman Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius knew this very well. He had learned it from his teacher, the freed slave and great philosopher Epictetus: “We are not disturbed by things, but by the views we take of them.”
Take away your opinion, and there is taken away the complaint “I have been offended.” take away the complaint “I have been offended” and the offense is gone. - Marcus Aurelius
THE COSTS OF CONFUSION
As Americans and others have collectively lost sight of the distinction between offense and harm, taking every proffered offense as a definite harm, the costs are mounting. The courts are clogged with frivolous but lucrative lawsuits, rewarding people for perpetuating this confusion. Schoolchildren stage murderous attacks on their classmates and teachers in response to perceived slights. Society has muzzled, and even prosecuted, artists, scholars, political activists, and scientists simply because their work wasn’t to everyone’s taste, infringing the civil liberties our nation is predicated upon and depriving the culture of everything from scholarly advances to entertainment to insight into our national character.
The rise of “political correctness” in the universities, which has now spread to corporations, governments, the justice system, and the military, has robbed us of our common sense and ability to seek and speak truths for fear of stepping on someone else’s metaphorical toes. What may have begun as an exercise in instilling civic virtues such as politeness, which creates ease, has mutated into a totalitarian regime’ of thought control, which creates dis-ease. We’re banning books, inflating grades, censoring scholars, refusing to make vital moral distinctions. Just as with personal issues, social and political dis-eases cannot begin to be eased until they are correctly identified. And they can never be correctly identified if people are afraid to know or speak the truth about their causes.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH KIDS TODAY
Let’s look at one extreme example of this phenomenon in more detail: the increase in horrific acts of violence committed by schoolchildren. Typically, the perpetrators - including children of the affluent, from ”good” homes - appear to be retaliating for having been taunted or rejected by their peers. Some slight - a word or gesture or casual rejection - is met with lethal force. That is, offense is offered, then it is accepted, next it is confused with harm, and finally the imaginary ”harm” leads to drastic retaliation. It’s not really any different from the gang-related homicides in American inner cities, where as little as a single act of “dissing” (disrespecting) someone is punishable by violent death.
Thomas Hobbes, who devoted his long philosophical life to the study of human conflict and its resolution, wrote, in 1651, that people will resort to violence “for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sigh of undervalue, either directly to their’ persons, or by reflection in their kindred, their friends, their nation their profession or their name.” In other words, they will kill merely for being “dissed.”
WHEN OFFENSE BECOMES HARM
It is important to note that under certain conditions, offense can become harmful. If you take offense on a daily basis, you may not be able to mobilize sufficient moral self-defense, and eventually the repeated offenses can have a cumulative harmful effect. That is especially true to the emotionally vulnerable, such as children. Take for example, a child whose parents continually call him “stupid.” To call a child stupid once is harmful. Why? The child needs to believe (for a time) that his parents know best, so he will probably behave in accord with their description and expectations 01 responsibility for describing himself. (Some people never do, and usually need psychological help.) The child who is repeatedly told he is stupid may then behave as though he were stupid. Such deliberate underachievement, caused by the acceptance of repeated offense by one who is unable to defend himself, is obviously harmful to the child’s better interests.
Adults can be verbally abused too, and “anger management” programs are not enough to prevent such abuse. Men and women alike could benefit from instruction in moral self-defense, learning how not to provoke, and how not to be provoked in the first place. Then there would be less anger to manage, all around. Both sexes need to understand each other’s triggers much better than they do if they wish to prevent offense from escalating into harm. (For more on the sexes, see chapter 8.)
Fortunately, with some philosophical help, adults at least can develop a greater capacity for moral self-defense, and learn how not to take offense even when offense is insistently or forcefully offered. Children need this too. Yet there has hardly been any demand for moral self-defense instruction in schools or corporations. That’s a pity; it is desperately needed. An hour of MSD is worth a planeload of grief counsellors.
We must be able to tolerate a certain amount of offensiveness in our daily lives, but the emotionally vulnerable need to be able to remove themselves from the offender or the offending stimulus if too frequent or intense, lest it becomes harmful.”
From “The Big Questions: How Philosophy can Change Your Life” by Lou Marinoff
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