Wednesday, April 2, 2008

That Which Offends Us


When did people get so easily offended?
Yesterday on the Dooce blogsite, Heather Armstrong linked a site that very artistically showed portraits of people before and after their deaths. One of her readers had been deeply offended by the link and wrote Ms. Armstrong to tell her that. By the time I read the blog, there were over five hundred comments and what amazed me was how many of the people who'd taken the time to go to the site had never seen a dead person. Most of them were not offended- the pictures were, if anything, way too artistic and the dead had been composed to look peaceful and hardly dead at all.
But it really got me to thinking about what offends us and why.
Then this morning I read Jonah Goldberg's column in the local paper wherein he stated that he was deeply offended by those little Darwin fish on the backs of cars. Instead of interpreting them, as I do, as witty responses to those Christian magnet fish, he finds them evidence of religious bigotry.
Good Lord!
It seems to me that we find everything offensive these days from Doonesbury comic strips to the sight of a woman breastfeeding her infant and I think it's because we are so removed from the very realities of life that make us human beings. Somehow one person's take on current events or the idea that yes, mammals feed their young with their breasts makes some of us squirm. We don't want to think about things. We find them offensive.
Like death.
Why can't we grow up and quit being offended by the truth? Or even someone else's version of it. If it's not true, why should it bother us? If it is, let's face it.
"You can't handle the truth," Jack Nicholson said in that stupid movie with Tom Cruise. And I admit that there are many truths I don't want to face and can't handle. This doesn't make me a better human being though, or a deeper thinking one or a more compassionate one.
It makes me a dumbed-down ostrich willing to stick my head in the sand.
But at least I know that. And I'm sick and tired of do-gooders trying to censure anything from print to TV that might offend someone because the truth is, we're a big bunch of pussies as a society and it's getting to the point where everything has the potential to offend someone. I am not advocating cruelty here. I'm just saying that taking offense at a bumper sticker is a big fat waste of time but looking into the face of a dead person is facing a very real truth and makes us realize how very short and precious life is which shouldn't be offensive at all.
Words that can sound offensive must be used if we are to deal with the very real problems of homelessness, racial discrimination, poverty and sexual abuse. Trying to eliminate these words actually eliminates our being able to discuss them and do something about them.
So I guess what I'm saying here is that I am offended by people being so damn offended by stupid things. Or what I consider to be stupid, anyway.
As one nurse commented on Heather's blog, we come into this world pretty funky and we go out the same way. As far as I can tell, life itself is a pretty funky business and although we may not want to think about that, it's just the truth.
Let's quit being offended by the funk and get in there and clean it up. Let's quit being so squeamish and silly.
Let's try to save our getting offended by the things that deserve it.
We all, in our hearts, know what those things are.
The life and death things. Not the bumper sticker things.
Let's quit getting distracted from the things we should be offended by. It's a waste of time that we don't have.
Want to be reminded of this? Check out the web site and read the text that accompanies the pictures.
Unless you're offended by the stories and pictures of the dying and dead.
In which case, please don't. It's really okay to go on believing you'll live forever because if you do, you'll have plenty of time to be offended by anything you want to be offended by. Including bumper stickers.

6 comments:

  1. Well, I just got a "Duplication Error" message from blogger, I never saw one of those before - it said that the action I was trying to perform was already done - I don't think so, blogger! Anyway, I forgot what I was going to say...something about 'how early do you have to get up in the morning to leave a comment on dooce.com?' By the afternoon, comments are usually closed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Actually, she usually doesn't open comments at all. Meaning you can't comment. But this one woman had challenged her yesterday by e-mail, calling her a chicken-shit for not opening comments for what was so obviously a hot topic.
    So she opened them.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's not people getting offended that worries me - it's people getting offended and then expecting the rest of us to react as if we are all offended as well.

    I offend people without meaning to all the time. My clothes, my hair, my life, what I write, what I say, what I listen to, who I date, what I drink. As long as they don't confuse their offense with my problems, we're all good.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I suspect people are "offended" by that which makes them uncomfortable. So many things make us uncomfortable, but we frequently experience them in cloaked ways, since our subconscious is trying really hard not to let us feel that queasiness...

    Everybody has hot topics right? Death is a big one. Having people jest at your religion, especially if it's a dogmatic world view that can't handle such nudging, is another big one... Boobs (cause we're all obsessed with them in some way- how could we not be?- but totally not okay with them for some reason) Also, the fact that we're "animals", that sometimes fluids come out of us, that we're not plastic little dolls... What else? Gosh there's so much! Liminality, when key boundaries start to blur.

    And gosh, for some people rather than face the things that make them uncomfortable, it would be much preferable to go on a crusade of how right they are. A smokescreen from and by oneself to avoid facing, death, boobies, and all the funkiness in between!

    Ha! People. Us. eh. :S

    Oh and for the record I have not ever seen a dead body (only pets), I have not yet clicked on your link to the artfully dead, and the latter has everything to do with the former. Honest. Okay but now I have to go click, cause I feel a little silly about it.

    :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. QG- You completely got what I was so clumsily trying to say. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete

Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.