Offense and where to stick it

To be offended is to feel annoyed or upset by someone or something.  It can imply that an insult has been deployed and some injury made to psychological well-being.

People worry about causing offense.  Those high on neuroticism can find themselves coming home after a social evening and reanalysing everything they said to everyone to make sure that no insult was implied or made.  This can border on the ridiculous - "perhaps I should not have mentioned my recent trip to Norway because I know Cyril is strapped for cash at the moment and it is common knowledge that Norway is the most expensive country in Europe, if not the world."  On average Cyrils are reasonable people who understand unequal distribution of resources and their multiple causes, including personal choice.  The economics of my chilly vacation barely registers with such folk.

I do have my own Cyril-centric moments but on the whole I find that the ebb and flow of the social polity smooths out ruffled feathers and everybody is happy to gently negotiate a balanced mode of being through dialogue.  Every now and then, however, someone announces - "I find x offensive," or even "very offensive," and this is not predicated on any other clause.  No justification or explication is given for this announcement, and yet all who hear it immediately sit up, pay attention and generally behave like a pack of meerkats seeking out threat.

To publicly denote something as offensive appears to act as an admonishment or at the very least a warning that a punishment may ensue should such behaviour continue.  The kind of people who tend to this signalling are well-educated and unlikely to resort to physical violence.  It is the fact that it is an isolated announcement, not embedded within a reason, that gives it power.  Normally one would expect an argument, some form of dialogue, to emerge when an educated person is aggrieved.  In its absence we are left to assume strong feelings and an injury to some vital, moral core.

But whenever I hear such announcements I perceive only pomposity.  To be offended in this way is to lay claim to an authority to adjudicate and punish and that in turn implies some higher knowledge of how things should be.  And that really does require a lot of justification.

I suspect this speech act acquired fixed use in times when we were all bound to more explicit moral codes - perhaps the era when things were often ghastly and frightful and a raised eyebrow combined with an "I say!" might be sufficient to rein in an otherwise recalcitrant rogue in the tearoom.  In our more modern times, with its vast array of cultural influences, and rapidly expanding and changing knowledge about the world, we are unlikely to (re)gain a single moral order.  There is more than one stable strategy available to solve social coordination problems.

It is in this context that announcing that "I find x offensive" comes across as a forceful act of moral superiority to many.  If we do not share the same moral codes then an ungrounded punitive statement can either be seen as aggressive or the behaviour of someone who is extraordinarily self-absorbed and unconnected to the world.  To this end, I would consign this faux emotion to the cognitive trash can.  Its use can only be detrimental in the immediate and longer term.