Very true, and I’d also add in - a lot of this confusion can be linked back to the fact that Western Society (maybe even all societies, comparatively speaking) is more equal than it’s ever been in history. In the past it was pretty clear who had power and who didn’t because there were laws about these things. You knew that men had more power than women because the law said you were allowed to pay women less. You knew black people had less power than white people because the law said they couldn’t sit at that lunch counter/wouldn’t get counted in the census/whatever.
These days a lot of ‘power’ is mediated by social capital, and it’s a lot harder to pin down
I would doubt if it will, actually. Because what’s happening at the moment is that culture is not really dependent on geographical proximity, but you do have a lot of different cultures which are personally chosen - that didn’t happen back in the day when you mostly interacted with people in your own town. So people can be living next door, but culturally more widely separated than ever (“living in their bubble”) - on the other hand, you can participate in a culture with someone despite living right over the other side of the world (hi from the other side of the world!). So I don’t think we’ll ever get close to a monoculture - people will seek diversity by personality if nothing else. The tricky bit will be obtaining enough core consensus that everyone will at least be happy to co-exist with the different.
Sure, but do you care about the schools’ adherence to pledge of allegiance? I have no issues with adults caring about important school matters, even I do and I’m childless, but I can’t for the life of me see how whether or not kids say the pledge affects anyone not directly involved in any way.
Most of us current adults will live in a future world run by (or at least mostly populated by) today’s children.
If one believes that inculcating reflexive Patriotism is a Good Thing to do to kids because it’ll ensure the survival of the Freedom-Loving Republic once they’re grown, then it’s manifestly obvious that schools pushing the Pledge is an unmitigated Good.
Further, the mere fact any school leadership anyplace would question the utility of properly molding the little citizens-to-be is prima facie evidence they are fundamentally unsuited to being in positions of authority over our children’s education.
The issue seems pretty clear when explained that way.
Not that I think those true believers are necessarily objectively right. But I think I’m accurately explaining their POV.
Something that’s kinda hard for most Leftists to wrap their minds around is that many (most?) Rightists believe that our very civilization is hanging by a single fraying thread. The idea that factions in society are taking whacks at that thread is truly terrifying to them; they’re sure the Visigoths will sack our country when it snaps.
Conversely Leftists tend to think civil society is very strong. It can be made stronger through change. But there’s not much way to break it. And you certainly can’t break it by trying to improve it.
A lot of Rightist thinking makes more sense when you accept that they think we’re collectively standing on very, very thin ice. And the climate is warming.
Eh, ice melts and refreezes all the time. It’s happened for billions of years. It certainly isn’t caused by human activity, and even if it is, there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Why should I have to pay for someone else’s parka and life raft?
What I’m talking about has nothing to do with global warming. What I meant was that in the stereotypical Rightist attitude, society is in a precarious place. And to boot, the social environment is becoming ever less stable and more risk-prone every day. As precarious as things are now, they’re getting even more so with every passing day. :eek::eek:
It’s a common thing and I know people personally who actively seek stuff to get offended over. They would never admit it of course but that’s beside the point.
Although people usually associate the offenderati with the left wing/liberals the right wing does it just the same. Case in point - Colin Kaepernick.
Exactly… that’s what I was thinking about while reading LSLGuy’s low status/high status post. That’s not to say that there aren’t legitimate grievances between people of various statuses, but most of what I see as people being offended is really much more of a demonstrative way to signal one’s adherence to a certain set of values and/or enforce social norms, and is more often than not, lateral in terms of relative power.
I mean, if I was to get up and say something particularly racist around a bunch of my wife’s friends, they’d probably get (and say) that they were offended. And they’re all white, upper-middle class people. The only real power difference would be gender-based, but my hypothetical offensive statement doesn’t concern that.
The offense would really be at the fact that what I said would be unacceptable in light of the prevailing social norms, and not so much because any of them have any particular excitement about diversity or anti-racist stuff.
The “looking to find offense” crowd seems to be a set that has a very narrow path to navigate in terms of the breadth of what they espouse, and finds offense in ways and in things that normal society doesn’t. So they cry “offensive”, and get ridiculed as a result.
Shodan’s response was funny, but seriously, I don’t see how the pledge of allegiance in schools is a trivial issue. Rather IMO it’s an example of how sometimes accusing other people of ‘looking to be offended’ (whether aimed at supposed people of this kind on left or right) can be just a way to brush off significant issues. Having the pledge recited or not is symbolic of whether or not the basic mission of US schools includes fostering US nationalism/national identity*, and in a somewhat uniform way.
It’s a symbol. Arguing that symbols are necessarily trivial because they aren’t the whole of the underlying issue they symbolize is sophistry. Or at least it requires first getting everyone on the same page in agreeing that all symbols are trivial. I don’t agree. In the real human condition symbols can matter, and IME very few people who claim otherwise are consistent about it.
My point is separate from the part of the original post on this talking about people taking offense at a false story of Obama banning the pledge. Whether people have the correct information about something before getting upset is a different issue. Also of course I’m not saying people don’t get offended at trivial things which obviously some people do. There is a contest in our society now between the left’s belief it can gain and keep the moral high ground by hypersensitivity to ism/phobia of various kinds real or imagined, and what I see is right’s tending to descend to their level in recent years (others are free to say both sides do it or started it equally or the right started it, but I personally think it was more the modern ‘counter culture’ left’s thing to begin with).
*the ‘under God’ part is another aspect, but as we all know that was a relatively late addition.
Sorry to nitpick, but apparently it’s ok to sing during Eid (the festive celebration at the end of Ramadan). It seems like it is not ok (sadly google isn’t giving me definitive answers here, it doesn’t seem to be specifically forbidden like sex, but music appears to be frowned on in many places) to sing during the month-long fast of Ramadan.
My experience is that being offended, as described, is more a way of identifying as part of a group than any other motivation. You show you are part of the group that hates the trend toward inclusivity of belief systems other than your own (War on Christmas), or the group that hates seal pups being clubbed to death, or whatever. Your group may not be with you geographically at the time of the offense, but they are there in spirit. It’s just tribalism again.
This is not a standard reflection, and the recitation of a national anthem in the schooling is not typically considered like a singing. the children in my country recite/sign the equivalent through the Ramadan. Of course there are some very puritanical type people who take this view, but it is not something standard.
FWIW, thisis a link to the start of the brouhaha I was thinking of, and I see that I misremembered the specific observance - it wasn’t Eid, it was Muharram. Which is not an observance I’d heard of before, hence my slightly garbled report.
A lot of folks are writing this off as over sensitivity.
I think that a whole other aspect to it is that offensive behavior is much more likely to be pointed out now than even a few years ago. The offensive folks have had a sea change, not of their own making. The obnoxious louts used to be able to say and do anything and social custom said that to show offense was gouache, so people just put on the sickly grin and waited for them to stop.
Now offensive people are getting brought up short when people call them out for their shit. They’re not used to this so they place the blame on the offended for being too sensitive or for "looking to take offense, " when really they are just speaking up where they used to remain silent.
Of course there are people that go to extremes in anything, including taking offense. But I think not enough blame goes to the truly offensive who are finally being called out and are pissed off about losing their right to be an asshole without consequence.
I don’t think you’re wrong that that shift has occurred, but I think it’s not always assholes who are being called out. More often than not, I think it’s people who speak or act in good faith without realizing that their choice of language or topic could seem hurtful.
I have several people I am close to, including my school-age daughter, who are significantly affected by mental health issues. For each of them, the misperceptions and stigma surrounding mental health issues magnifies their struggles in very real, very meaningful ways.
A local business in my small town has a sign out front that is changed up monthly or so to display a new jokey one-liner along the lines of “Why do we drive on the parkway and park on the driveway” (har har). They’re usually innocuous like that, but over the last several months there have been a number of mental-health flavoured jokes that have made me really uncomfortable. I struggled for months with my feelings about them – I know that they are just meant to be funny and that there was no malicious intent, but I strongly and genuinely believe that even something as inconsequential-seeming as one small sign ultimately contributes to the overall climate of dismissing, diminishing, misunderstanding, and disrespecting mental health issues.
For my daughter, some of the very real consequences of living in a society that doesn’t understand or respect the challenges of her illness are classmates who think it’s okay to joke about her problem, teachers who expect a pill to “fix” her, and extended family members who roll their eyes at her not just sucking it up and changing her mindset. My sister, who suffers from (well-managed) bi-polar disorder has a hell of a time with potential dates being scared off because “bi-polar” is wrongly understood by many to mean multiple personalities at best, and psychotic at worst. And the numbers of people who are afraid to admit they need help because they don’t want to seem weak or become a joke are immeasurable.
I know that the business owner didn’t put it up to be mean. I understand that a one-off joke isn’t the cause of those issues. I don’t think that my daughter’s classmates would see a sign like that and consciously think “Oh, goody! That gives me explicit permission to mercilessly mock a classmate in crisis!” But I do believe that a sign like that perpetuates the already existing mentality that it’s okay to misrepresent and dismiss what’s very difficult and very real for countless people.
So after much consideration, I ultimately ended up writing a polite letter to the business owner asking if he would consider laying off the mental health gags. I didn’t yell or cry or call the newspaper or threaten him. I just asked, and explained why. He said hell no, and that I had gone to great lengths to interpret his sign to fit my agenda, that society doesn’t care about my feelings, and that instead of complaining and whining I should just ignore the sign.
I know a lot of people would agree with him, and I get that, but his reaction was along the lines of what I often see in comments about similar stories, and that’s what I have a hard time understanding. I don’t have “an agenda”, and I truly don’t go out of my way to find things to be offended by. I just honestly felt that the attitude displayed on that very public sign in a very small town is damaging to the people who are the butt of the joke, and wanted to throw a light on it. I didn’t change anything by speaking up, but I didn’t hurt anything either, and my daughter saw me supporting her by standing up for something I believe in, and I feel okay about that.
Maybe I’m naïve, but I think it’s more likely that a lot of the people who see something that doesn’t feel right to them and say, “Hey, maybe we could reword that” have gone through a similar thought process, as opposed to scouring the world hoping to find something they can twist into fodder for outrage. I just feel like we’d all be better off if we could just have a conversation about it without either side making assumptions about the intentions of the other side.
Hey, Aspie, father of an Aspie daughter here, you’re preaching to the choir.
A perfect example of what I was talking about. Mocking the differently abled has a long and ugly history. Even now you get people going, “Oh, was that wrong, should I not have done that?” And when people who have challenges, or those that support them, rightly speak up and say “Please consider not being a dick” the jerks get their BVDs in a knot and call them pansies who can’t take a joke. Because, you know, they’ve been making retard jokes all their lives and no one has called them on it before.
Oh, I’m sorry! I wasn’t really meaning to direct my whole response to you, specifically. I was just meaning that although this guy was ultimately a jerk, I do generally believe that most people don’t consciously set out to cause offense just as I believe most people don’t consciously set out to seek it.
But you’re right, some people who have never been asked to be thoughtful in their word choices before do sometimes resent the hell out of it.