It seems to me that people have forgotten the value in feeling offended. Instead of using this sense of offence to build passion and fire up debate on contentious issues, we are using it as an excuse to silence the other side through assigning shame to a person who has the gall to disagree with us. Perhaps this growing sense of communal offence creates a sense of community out of collective righteous indignation, perhaps it gives people a sense of purpose, perhaps it’s attention seeking.
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Whatever the reason, feeling offended and using that feeling to attempt to silence others appears to be becoming a way of life for many of us, and it’s creating a movement of social censorship.
I recently watched a Steve Hughes video on this subject and it really got me thinking – what is the power of offence? The comedian asked us, what’s wrong with being offended? Have we really become so far lost into the land of political correctness that no one can have an opinion for fear of someone becoming offended and the subsequent social pariahism that will ensue?
This social censorship movement is creating a burgeoning power behind the feeling of offence, where the lines between the personal and the professional are so blurry, we can hardly see them.
The debate of when we celebrate Australia Day has renewed with recent fervour and with it, has come the now familiar dose of collective offence and social censorship.
Albury mayor Kevin Mack has been drawn into the public debate because of a meme he posted on his personal Facebook account. As a result of this post, I’ve seen so many comments castigating him for sharing this meme and calling for him to step down from office as “clearly he doesn’t understand the nuances of community multiculturalism”. Once again, the personal and professional lines are blurred and I am left wondering if we can ever take our work hats off – is Cr Mack ever just Kevin? Should every thought, every post, every meme shared in his personal community be scrutinised as an investigation into suitability?
According to research, generally, people argue that public figures should be held to a higher standard because they are *setting* the standard, but I can’t help but wonder at the untenable nature of their position. We castigate them for not being willing to say anything from the heart at press conferences, of always toeing the party line, but then we throw them to the wolves when their opinion doesn’t agree with ours.
John Stuart Mill wrote about the importance of not silencing our dissenters, but of listening to them.
Even if we are staunch in our views, Mill contends that the truth will become clearer through its collision with error.
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Are we so afraid that our arguments won’t hold up that we can’t listen when someone challenges them? Cr Mack was not representing council when he posted what he did on his personal page, and the call for him to step down seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to curry favour and pander to social censorship. No longer, it seems can we use the offence we feel to inspire dialogue, encourage debate without fear of condemnation or job lob loss, and with a free exchange of thoughts and ideas.
In the words of Hughes, people do not catch leprosy from being offended. It will not hurt you. Use it to build your arguments, fuel your passion and encourage public discourse. Without feeling offended, we have nothing to fight for and the rabbit hole of censorship that we will continue to burrow down will not end well for any of us.