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LM: #335: The right to offend
If you’re doing work of any significance, it is going to upset someone.
Art is speech and if you’ve bothered to speak, someone won’t agree.
We’ve made a lot of progress in recent decades in considering the feelings of others. The side-effect is, assholes are having a heyday – they actually enjoy hurting people.
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Meanwhile, kind people are paralyzed with fear they might offend.
And so we live in this strange world where nobody can agree what’s true. The assholes are saying whatever necessary to get a rise, while the angels are too scared to even ask a question.
There’s a quote about liberty that is essentially, “My right to move my arms ends where your right to not have your nose struck begins.” In other words, you may act and exist, but don’t harm others.
What it doesn’t account for is that another person’s perception of having been harmed is subjective. Claude Monet painted a sunrise and that absolutely scandalized the art establishment. They literally called it offensive.
If someone says you’ve offended them, you should consider what they say. They have the right to be offended, and to tell you.
You have the right to have done in good faith this thing you didn’t expect to hurt anyone, and to stop doing it if you think it did. But you also have the right to decide to continue as you were.
That is, “Your right to hold your fist in space does not end where another’s right to ram their nose into it begins.”
If someone runs into your fist, do not cut off your hand.
Aphorism: “The crisis of modern society is precisely that the youth no longer feel heroic in the plan for action that their culture has set up.” —Ernest Becker
Cool: AncientTexts.ai shows you the original Latin texts from authors such as Cicero and Julius Caesar, alongside English translations.
Best,
David
P.S. Dr. Aziz Gazipura showed us how to be kinder by being not nice.
