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Righteous Indignation

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Righteous Indignation: A Dissertation on Why and How People Should Calm the Heck Down



DISCLAIMER: This is a single shot opinion piece. I do not claim to be an expert, and my examples are from personal experience, rather than diligent scientific research. It’s more a rant than an essay, so please consider it as such. Comments, criticisms, and questions are more than welcome, and I’ll be happy to reply to them.

TL;DR Summary: Is it just me, or are some people getting more offended than they should be about things? If it’s the latter, I have a few suggestions to help with that.




I’ll start by going on the record saying I have something of a reputation for being very difficult to bother/annoy/offend. It’s rare that I’ll have a problem with something. It’s a trait I’m pretty proud of, and it’s been very useful to me and my friends over the years (it’s also been a huge pain as well, but all in all I like to think it’s been more good than bad). It’s one of those traits that make it very easy for someone to get along with most people. Obviously that’s not to say I don’t ever get angry. The list of things that set me off is small, but it’s still there (ironically enough, the topic that I’m about to talk about is one of these, which may come through a bit in the rest of this rant), and I’ve had my moments, just like everyone else. After all, everyone gets offended once in a while, and often it’s for completely legitimate reasons. That said, the more and more I’ve been going out into the wide world of the internet, the more I notice that there are a lot of really angry and sensitive people around.

And I mean really angry. Wow.

Now to be fair, there’s no shortage of social barriers that put me in kind of a unique place in this respect, so my point of reference may very well be skewed here. I grew up in a place that’s tamer and more diverse than most (Ottawa, Canada), and being the political hub of a diverse country means hate crimes are dealt with pretty swiftly. But even then, the tension in general is far less than you’d expect, and by comparison even the less tolerant portions of Canada are generally calmer than the US.

IT’S COOLER UP NORTH, EH



In fact, there’s something I noticed about Canada in particular when it comes to being offended. For example, does anyone remember the 2010 Winter Olympic closing ceremony? I’ll give you a quick recap: it was pretty much one giant cavalcade of Canadian stereotypes being played off for laughs. We even had a bit where we made fun of a technical failure we had during the opening ceremony.

It was received well enough. Some people liked it, some didn’t. That’s fine of course. Not everything can be to everyone’s taste. But what really surprised me at the time is when I started hearing criticisms about how it disrespected Canada as a country…but the people saying this were not Canadian. Apparently some US commentators were saying we basically made complete fools of ourselves and that it was quite offensive.

Was I offended? No. Not at all. I even cracked up at quite a few of those jokes. If the media and people I talked to about it were any indication, it wasn’t just me who took no issue with it either (yeah I know there’s a clear bias there, but even so it seems odd that none of us had this view of the ceremony being offensive).
In another instance, a friend of mine came up to visit from Pittsburgh on Canada Day weekend, and was shocked by people wearing Canadian flags as capes, considering it to be rather disrespectful. Again, I was pretty surprised. It’s a pretty common occurrence. Heck, people go around with versions of the flag that have a pot leaf where the maple usually is right out on public streets, right up to the Parliament building itself. No one really gives it a second thought.
Therein lies a sort of fundamental difference between a good part of the US and Canada: on average, Canadians seem to take themselves far less seriously, and have far less trouble laughing about themselves (please note that this is a major generalization. I'm describing the general cultural perspectives of entire countries here, and diverse ones at that. There are most definitely outliers in both cases; in fact, I'll get to that in another dissertation).

It’s a pretty consistent theme in a bunch of our cultural staples. A lot of them involve enjoying and taking pride in truly absurd things (Don Cherry, artery obliterating foods, and extreme politeness to name a few), and we’ll readily crack jokes about ourselves (being a kid who spent many hours of his formative years watching Just For Laughs, I can attest to this). When looking south of the border however, it seems to me like that sort of attitude just doesn’t really go around all that much.

For a good example, look at some of the big parody news shows on either side. Up north we have Royal Canadian Air Farce and This Hour has 22 Minutes. Anyone who’s watched these shows knows what I’m talking about when it comes to not taking things seriously. No one is safe from their jokes, from people to entire cultural groups, but it never feels mean spirited. You could sit a group from every part of the country and you could all laugh together. Switch over to shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and it immediately feels more confrontational. You’re less laughing at yourself with the rest of you than you are laughing at some other group. You aren’t in any way associating with the people you’re laughing at. It’s a hard feeling to describe, but in most cases, you know it when you see it.

Now I could keep going about the anthropological and sociological intricacies of these differences, and why they might exist, but that would be going overboard a bit. This is supposed to be about the practical aspects of indignation, not the root causes. The real core point I’m trying to make with that long pretentious segment is to demonstrate my own social background in contrast with that of the majority of the people I’ll be talking about in the next segment (like I said earlier, this is a gross generalization) and give some rough context to the attitudes that promote the behaviours perpetrated by the latter.

Obviously, there’s a lot in the world worth getting upset or offended about. Discrimination of gender, race, and sexuality, poverty, inequality, the list goes on. And because there are so many of these entirely worthy causes out there and growing venues for moral outcry about them, you start finding more and more people ready to fight for moral justice. While this is great, not everyone really knows how to go about this, and you end up with some blunders.

If you’ve been around Tumblr for any serious length of time, you probably know where I’m going with this. Yeah, social justice bloggers.

UGH YEAH...THOSE GUYS



Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for equality and tolerance. All things considered I’m quite a bit more liberal and feel more strongly on the matter than the average Joe (maybe I’ll get into my exact views on these subjects some other time, for now just please take a leap of faith and assume that I’m not a neo-nazi misogynist homophobic intolerant slimeball). This is exactly why nothing quite gets me as these militant and hyper-sensitive attitudes that often arise from equality movements. This attitude of not tolerating anything less than complete and absolute eradication of any form of perceived discrimination is not helpful to the cause. If anything, it alienates anyone who doesn’t completely adhere to the ideal, and antagonizes those who would otherwise support the view, effectively rendering it less respectable and less legitimate in the eyes of the masses. This black and white attitude on the subject is discrimination in and of itself, and the very definition of hypocrisy. This is why people do not take such statements seriously; they basically parody the movement they are fighting for, and the ones making them are the only ones not in on the joke.

I’d give some examples, but I don’t wish to point fingers here. That’s not the point of this rant. Instead, for those of you familiar with Homestuck, I’ll point you to the character Kankri Vantas. This is an on the ball parody of exactly what I’m talking about (that was Andrew Hussie’s intent with the character, as stated by himself if you go through the trouble of talking to him at the exposition station as Damara on this page, though if you want a quick and less transparent bit of evidence, here). This business of using special “sensitive” terminology, prefacing statements with “trigger warnings”, and going on at length in a manner that exudes patronizing self-righteousness and a morally superior smugness. It’s not effective. It’s not efficient. It’s not satisfying. If this were a product undergoing a usability test, it would be dead in the water. This attitude has all the benefit of drenching lubricating fluid onto a comically large stick before shoving it up your rear.

The other polar opposite but similarly problematic attitude is the more hostile version, where anything and anyone who does not completely conform to the ideal of absolute tolerance (sometimes to the point of intolerance) is treated with outright enmity. A friend of mine who is studying the topic so graciously provided me with the example of many second wave feminist groups (yeah I know radical feminists keep popping up in this dissertation, but they’re just such a good example), and the lovely following anecdote. Apparently one such group threw out a well known and respected feminist author for getting married to a man and thus “sleeping with the enemy”. Apparently, women’s liberation isn’t so much about freedom of choice as it is about complete segregation of the sexes. I don’t think I should need to explain why this stance is both dumb and counterintuitive, but I’ll do it anyways (see Tip 3 Step 3 for more on that).

GET TO THE POINT ALREADY



And at long last, we get to the practical part of this dissertation. Assuming you’re someone who is easily offended or who feels the need to account for such sensitivities (or are someone who would like to give such people some advice), here are some relatively simple guidelines to living healthier and making more rewarding use of your time and energy towards your beliefs.

TIP 1: TAKE NOTHING PERSONALLY



Often times, you’ll hear a comment, and instinctively think it’s about you. It’s an easy assumption, especially if it pertains to a group or belief you associate with that is being targeted. And it’s only natural that this will give you all the more desire to react to it. But here’s a tip, unless the person is actively pointing you out as the intended subject of the comment, you’re probably safe in assuming that it isn’t directed at you. There are a lot of people in the world, and it’s virtually impossible to talk about them without needing to make some generalizations. It’s an efficiency mechanism that helps humans deal with the world. It’s what lets us know that if the first fire is hot and so is the second, you probably don’t want to stick your hand in the third fire.

Everything has associated traits we attribute to them, and often times there are exceptions we cannot account for. Most people understand this pretty well. Preconceptions aren’t always perfect, but they’ve gotten the human race this far, so we generally let them slide. Taking offense at these sorts of mistakes (particularly if you represent one of the exceptions), or feeling the need to point out every instance where this sort of generalization is fallacious, is a waste of both your time and that of the person you’re correcting, and nobody appreciates having their time wasted being told information they already know (well, almost nobody. I’m generalizing, you see). (Note: there are cases where these generalizations are worth correcting, but that will come with Tip 3.)

So next time someone says something that offends you, take a moment and think about whether or not they were actively talking about you when they said it. If not, you probably have no business being offended. If your response to the indignation is to interject into a conversation you were not even a part of, unless they were directly talking about you, just stop yourself there. If you aren’t even a part of the group being targeted, not only is there no reason for you to take it personally, but your credibility in trying to argue about it with the offending party plummets, and you probably won’t come off as anything more than “some self-righteous douchebag”.

TIP 2: FOCUS ON INTENT (AKA DON’T TAKE ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING SERIOUSLY)



People make jokes sometimes. Yeah, I know, it was a huge shocker for me too. Sometimes, these jokes can be off-colour. I’ll give you a personal example: I have a good friend whose nickname for me is “Tech Support”. Why? Because I have a half Indian heritage. Is it a racially charged comment? Yes it is, very much so. Am I offended? Not at all. Should anyone else be? No (remember tip 1). Why? Because it’s a term of endearment, not meant in any offensive or hurtful manner. He doesn’t take it seriously, and neither do I. Heck, the guy is better with computer hardware than I am!

The fact of the matter is, there will always be some things that appear offensive from the outside, and some people might make a jape about sensitive issues every once in a while. This is nothing to start a war over. Now, I understand the argument of “perpetuating the idea that it’s okay to say these kinds of things”, but let me tell you a secret: it’s a load of hogwash. Believe it or not, most people are capable of telling when something is intended as an offense or not. There is a myriad of indicators that you can find in choice of words, body language, and various other sources that set the tone for these kinds of things, and these are generally understood subconsciously. The term for this ability is empathy.

Granted, there are situations where it’s hard to tell. Less direct forms of communication like text take away from some of the sentiment, and if you don’t know the person well enough, it can be hard to decipher a joke from an insult, or sarcasm from a genuine statement. That said, you should not immediately assume that the intent is malicious. If you’re really that unsure and need it clarified, you can ask (“You were kidding right?”). If you can’t understand sarcasm (not everyone does, and that’s fine), explain as much to the person. Sure it might kill the joke, but that’s better than getting up in arms over it. If everyone had that default response, the Cold War would have resulted in the pan global extermination of the human race the moment someone made a crack about the colour red.

Here’s a general rule on the matter: if the mood isn’t distinctively hostile, don’t make it so. At that point you’re less fighting injustice than you are creating strife where there is none, and there are less than kind words for people who do that (though I’ll go with “wet blanket” in the interest of keeping things pg). You’re shooting the civilians. There are better places to direct your righteous fury, like at people who actually do mean harm.

TIP 3: WORRY ABOUT WHERE YOUR IMPACT IS USEFUL



For those of you who were scratching their heads when I made that comment about usability testing earlier, here’s a quick debrief on the concept. Usability is defined by three principle traits: effectiveness (the thing does what it’s supposed to), efficiency (the thing does what it’s supposed to well), and satisfaction (the thing makes you feel good, or at least doesn’t make you feel bad). So with that in mind, this tip should be pretty easy to understand. Think of it in the following steps.

Step 1: Where could I direct my energy to help make a difference? Don’t bother with petty anecdotes or matters beyond your control. You want legal recognition? Aim at the government. You want to support the victims of your cause? Start a fund or service for their benefit, or better yet join an existing one (there’s almost definitely an organization out there that represents your ideals). You want to fight against discrimination? Go out there and stop the culprits, or call them out directly (I’m not advocating violence here, however. Such answers almost always escalate unfortunately, and you can do better than stooping to such levels). If a bully is pushing someone around, don’t lecture everyone else about how they shouldn’t bully people. Stop the damn bully!

Step 2: How can I maximise the potential of my efforts? You only have so much time you can spend, so spend it wisely. Blathering into the aether of the internet (hypocrisy alarm is dangerously close to going off, I know), without actively providing pointed, useful tools or outlets for addressing the problems you are talking about (there, a little better now) serves no real purpose. At best you’ll rile someone up, but without giving them any direction in which to channel that energy. An even more efficient way of facing these problems is to lead by example. Do you want your cause to be treated seriously? Treat it as such yourself. Don’t coddle it and make an outcry at every criticism without first evaluating the merits of those criticisms, acknowledging them, and using them to strengthen the validity of your point. Arguments are like metals. A pure one composed solely of itself and devoid of any consideration for outside views, is brittle, and will break under pressure. But when you infuse it with those acknowledgments, and recognise the weaknesses and strengths of another, you make an alloy which is far more resilient, and which the opposing group can dismiss far less easily. There’s a reason steel is better than iron, and there’s a reason any good debater will tell you that a great deal of arguing well is in listening to your opponent. Listen closely to the world around you and be patient, and you be able to see the weak points in your opponent where your strikes will be most poignant.

Step 3: How can I make this more pleasant for all involved? There’s no way to make everyone happy, especially if your cause is controversial, but often times you’ll find that there are many places where you can make friends. Strong binary views will always be the feeblest in recruiting such individuals. This is because the “you’re either with us or against us” mentality breeds a fanaticism that’s just plain alienating to most people. It creates a barrier to entry that doesn’t need to be there. For example, I truly deeply believe that men and women deserve equal rights, but I find it extremely hard to sympathise with militant feminists who breed this “all men are evil” attitude. I’m a man, and I don’t think I deserve special treatment over women, but I’m hardly going to say that all men are evil. It’s just as discriminatory as the thing it’s fighting, which makes it no better (rather, it’s worse because it throws in hypocrisy). It’s like going from a hereditary dictatorship to a military one. Want to know how well that works out? Look up the history of the Soviet Union. The point is, when you’re fighting for what you believe, don’t make any more enemies than you have to. Most of those people on the fence probably agree with you all things considered.

There we are. I won’t delude myself in thinking this will persuade many people (heck if you read this far I’m already quite impressed), but if even the slightest bit of what I said gets through to someone out there, it will have been worth it. With any luck, it will mean one less person shooting their beliefs in the foot. Thank you for reading, and I wish you the best of luck. Try and enjoy life, or at the very least try to make use of the frustration.
So here's a dissertation I wrote (or rant. Whatever you want to call it). I got inspired after reading about people (in my opinion) grossly overreacting to relatively minor situations. Perhaps it's just me, but for all the respect I have for social justice, I can't help but find all this business of getting up in arms over every little perceived slight just a tad silly. So I decided to write a whole bunch about it, and how I think people could make better use of all that energy.

Please feel free to tell me your thoughts, both on the dissertation's contents and this whole business of me putting my big walls of personal thoughts up here for all to see. If you want to start up a conversation on the matter, I'm all for it.

Either way, I'll just state for the record that writing this was really therapeutic.


Disclaimer: The thoughts and opinions contained in this document completely represent those of Warcry31 and he takes full responsibility for them, but in his defense he was tired at the time and being tired makes him do things...
© 2013 - 2024 Warcry31
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MyBrokenRoseUnfold's avatar
Ha! I wonder how many times I've wanted to rant this to someone. (I haven't, though; it'd just make a bad situation worse, given the usual timing of my desire to rant.) Agreed; far too many people have their laces tied a bit too tight. Most of the people I know (I'm American and live in the Bible Belt, which makes the next bit funny to me) aren't nearly so uptight about most of the controversial stuff--we make jokes about church in church and keep going to our gay hairstylists whether we believe homosexual marriage should be legal, illegal, or a non-issue--but sometimes it seems like everyone who gets heard in a public forum has a stick up their butt. "You do not believe in my version of tolerance, so I shall not tolerate you!" :shakefish: "Your candidate doesn't believe in x! Nevermind that they support everything else I believe in on all the important issues, I'm voting for the other guy!"

Sheez. (The sad thing is, I've done this sort of stuff myself...)

I'll stop here before I summarize your entire thingy and just say "thank you" for saying so well what a lot of people in a lot of places would like to say to (what often feels like) the entire world. Et aint just ush Baible Belt Amuricans an' ar brethren unner theh Shtars an' Shtraipes (or y'all up'air in Canada with yer meeses) whut are taird of thuh nonshense. (Duh.)

If you can read any of that last sentence. ;P