A Culture of Offensive Behavior, or is it?

“It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' as if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what." – Stephen Fry, The Guardian, 5^th June 2005.

People love to be offended. They do. No one admits it, but they love it. They love it because they feel like it gives them power over someone else. You can really put someone in their place when you explain “how utterly offended you were” by what they said. Not so much on the sterile and detached world of the internet but in real life, to watch that person shrink into their little box and worry about every word they next might say for risk of offending you again, that you might smite them once more. How satisfying.

Jeremy Clarkson is one example, he’s a high and mighty in the world of presenters and TV personalities and in realism the loud mouthed Doncastian should have known better than to blow his top while already having chalked up a number of other infractions - however deservedly or not. Was his outburst out of order? Probably, yes. Was the reaction to it justified? Or rather – was it equal to the outburst? Hmmm...

There is a culture of over-sensitivity creeping through society like a rash. Just look around. Poke around on the internet, say something out of place or something which has the smallest possibility of being misconstrued and you’ll be on the end of a keyboard warrior in the blink of an eye. Complaining about how you hurt their feelings and you’re just a big fat bully, trolling all these innocent, gentle people who've done nothing wrong ever in their entire whitewashed lives. You've all met them.

You meet them in real life too, more and more these days. I recall a time, not so long ago, when one could make a joke in mixed company and, provided it wasn’t spectacularly racist, you could pretty much get away with anything. Not now though, ooh no; no jokes, no quips and no wisecracks. Lest you inadvertently offend someone who was eves-dropping or who stumbled in on your conversation, someone who probably should have been minding there own business in the first place, but who has now made it the sole goal in life to be offended by you.

If we return to Top Gear, Mr Clarkson and the recent fiasco in Argentina we see a fantastic example of this. If you are unfamiliar with the story, it has to do with the number plate characters of the car used by Mr Clarkson during a Top Gear Argentina special. The number plate reads H982 FKL. In case you’re modern history or international abbreviations are a bit rusty, someone inferred from this random assignment of numbers given to a 1990 Porche that it made reference to the Falklands conflict in some derogatory sense.

Let’s look at the logic behind this a little more closely. 

Firstly it has to be said this is an exceptionally unfortunate arrangement of alpha-numerical characters, or then again, is it? Firstly, the producers buy the vehicles for the show specials; the presenters might have a choice of the type of car they want but the producers find and purchase it. Initially then it would seem the fault is with the producers but is there blame to be applied here? Can it be reasonably argued that upon deciding the Argentinean destination for the show special that the producers searched millions of registrations for this exact one? No, of course not, that would be ridiculous.

Secondly there is the problem of the actual Falklands reference, 982 FKL. Naturally you discount the first two characters leaving the 82 FKL. However, though the 82 may be attributed to 1982, the start of the Falklands war by Argentina invading the Falkland Islands, the FKL isn’t even the recognised abbreviation for the Falklands; it is FLK, a minor variance you will agree but as we’re being pernickety and nit-picking every little detail to suit this argument... As I was saying; making it their sole purpose in life to make sure they have something to be offended about.  

Equally though, could not English viewers be offended by Richard Hammonds number plate - EKH 646J? After all in 1646 there was a bloody battle in Great Torrington, the last battle of the English Civil War no less. Yet I hear no cry of offense from English historians or the general English public.

The problem is that there is a sense of entitlement like never before in society and being offended seems to have become not only trendy but also an extension of some warped narcissistic entitlement complex. People don’t have thick skin anymore; they don’t seem to have skin at all. Every tiny comment no matter how harmless with be tirelessly picked apart for something, anything, to take offence to so they can feed their lust for self-absorption. You can almost imagine them salivating with baited breath, having not fed their addiction, waiting for you to say something wrong – or even something right that can be twisted into something wrong; “those trousers look brilliant on you”, “so you’re saying all my other clothes look terrible? How can you say that!? That’s so rude!”

And so it goes.

So what are we to do about this culture of over-sensitive delicate little flowers with raging superiority complexes? What Indeed. Are they going to have to learn to suck it up or are we going to have to learn to tone it down. The truth is, they are going to have to learn to suck it up and here’s why; there are already a number, nay, a myriad of concessions made for various levels of offensive materials – be it pornography or racist remarks etc and quite rightly so I might add. There is enough protection for what might be regarded as the ‘protected characteristics’ of any individual or group. Anything beyond that begins to creep towards oppression of the freedom we have to express ourselves and that is a dangerous thing. In regards to making sure you don’t call an Afro-Caribbean person a ‘nigger’ or make lewd remarks about the deceased at a funeral I think we can all agree that these things are unacceptable and successfully differentiate between acceptable behaviour and being an ass without being babysat.

How do we stop this culture of over-sensitivity? Not by being overtly insensitive but by simply maintaining that level of good courteous and polite behaviour that the civilised world has been built on, we don’t need to change how we act, those with a problem with everything need to alter how they chose to over-react.             

   

A.R. Bell

#LogicShotgun

@ARB_itrary

Religious Indoctrination and the Infinite Universe of Children

There is something profoundly wrong about the religious indoctrination of children. 

It is theft and I will tell you why. When a child is born they are born free from everything, they are born as empty slates, clear minds. As they grow they turn into little scientists; watch any child play and soon you will realise that it is not idle play, they are constantly conducting experiments; what happens if I put this ball in this cup? What happens why I put it in that cup? If I throw sand in the air, what happens? If I make annoying sounds, how long will it be before daddy gets mad? How much does this weigh? Why can I not reach that? Everything interaction is an experiment, every event studied intently to learn more about it, every sound listened to, every taste savoured and every touched sends a spike of inquisitiveness to the infant mind. They are adventurers with infinite imagination on a never ending quest for new knowledge. Their world is one full of wonder and discovery every day. This constant questioning and discovery is made possible because they are not limited in the scope of their understanding; their universe is as it should be to them (and likely how it is in reality) – infinite.

When all questions are reduced to one simple answer there ceases to be great moments of discovery; Why has the giraffe got such a long neck? God. Where did the world come from? God. Why are some stars brighter than others? God. Where once there was a rich and colourful gallery of explanations there is not one plain answer to everything – God. For adults this can be rationalised but to reduce everything to just God in a child’s mind is stealing that discovery and wonder from them. It limits their once infinite scope to the boundaries of God. It squashes their naturally inquisitive minds; it removes the adventure and wonder because now it can all be explained so easily, it is all reduced to God.

Imagine a library. Maybe situated in a fantastically interesting old building, a maze of wood panelled rooms and heavy oak doorways inside of which sit towering bookshelves brimming with thousands of books by thousands of authors. Walking through it you notice all the different books on different subjects; factual books, fictional books, comedy, satire, reference, children’s stories, history, academic journals maybe. You notice how they are all bound differently in different colours. The library is a canvas of colours and titles stretching on forever, covering every subject known to humanity, every thought, every invention, every event in every language. The shelves bow under the weight of the work of thousands of years of discovery and imagination. You can smell it in the air, that wonderful papery smell of books – the smell of knowledge and understanding.

Now remove all those books, sweep them off of the shelves and into some abyss never to be seen again. Take all the knowledge and imagination and cast it away. In its place, amongst the empty shelves where only the dust outlines of the spines remain, place on a table a single religious tome. This is now your library. This is maximum scope of understanding and imagination available to you – your library has been reduced to God.

There is no denying that religious texts are indeed useful and should have a place in every library both figurative and real. They are useful because they provide insight into human history; those people who put together Genesis, for instance, tried to figure out the world was made. After all, they didn’t have much later scientific advances to rely on, so they did their best. Later stories were added to try and form some sort of treatise on morals and human interaction and through hundreds of years these religious texts began to take shape. However, as time advanced there became a following, a stoic and dogmatic following of these texts. They became preached pieces that were no longer about explaining the world but were about political means and ends and financial gain, they were, and still are, about control. Take the Bible for instance, it features the ten ‘commandments’, not ‘the ten suggestions’ or ‘the ten good ideas that you might want to use’ they are commands. More and more organised religion became about them and us, being either with it or against it. It became narrow minded and has stayed that way ever since.

Children do not need narrow minded thought being introduced to their infinite universes. They do not need to be told everything they are going to burn in hell for or how God will hate them if they do this, that or something else and they do not need a warped version of emotional blackmail masquerading as morality. They need morality and ethics based on real human interactions not ancient doctrines that condone rape, murder, discrimination and hatred as long as God says it is alright. What children need is encouragement in the things they are good at and a free world to explore and discover with no limitations imposed on their imaginations by anyone, imaginary or not.

Children only need the limits of their own imagination and inquisitiveness, their desire for adventure and knowledge. 

They deserve to be shown that the world is even more fascinating and amazing than they could imagine; they deserve better than to have their infinite universes reduced to God. 

#LogicShotgun 
A.R. Bell 2015
Twitter: @ARB_itrary