The bottom line to this issue is that we live in an age peculiarly sensitive to issues of offence. We also live in an age fraught with serious issues of danger. Yet we seem to have lost our ability to discriminate priorities in regard to dealing with both. We are in effect diluting real and clear existential crises with protecting the thin skinned to the point where we are infantilising adults. Kindergarten values don’t work in the real world. We seem to be as outraged by words that even have the possibility of offending someone as we are by acts of extreme violence. We say silence is violence when someone doesn’t agree with our political views. We say that words are as lethal as weapons. We have lost ourselves in a froth of a virtually schizophrenic ethical system that says among other things that pedophilia is a heinous crime that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law but in some places vigorously prosecute anyone who says that Mohammed was a pedophile when he had a sexual relationship with a 9 year old girl. (A practice now being debated in Iraq as the marriage is proposed to be lowered to what age? 9.) Why do we prosecute?Well, because it offends they say. And offence is an outrage. Until we can master the proper use of outrage, I don’t have much hope for the west and particularly the anglophone world which seems intent on proselytising its toxic message to the rest of the world. You may now choose to listen to this warning or scuttle about with musings on things that don’t matter, it’s up to you. My moving finger has written and is now moving on.

 

I think it’s outrageous that the OP regards our thoughts or worries as simple musings rather than concentrate on what he regards as significant. Somewhat dictatorial!

 

Wonderful offering. What brings on rage in me? Given all the brain futzing drugs I take and my wife's dying, damned little gets in. WAR always gets in. Think about this - there has not been one year of peace since I was born, 1940. There has not been one war worth fighting in my lifetime. In every war I have been witness to, our elected politicians went on record supporting the sending of our children to fight for no good reason except appearance and money. My wife was Welsh. She experienced WWII in a way none of us in the U.S. then ever did (she was born in 1937). If being bombed almost daily wasn't bad enough, there was little food or clothing. The fighting people had to be cared for. Rationing to one extent or another lasted through the 50s. She was always upset that we, the U.S., took so long to get in the war. My argument has always been that we should have ignored the war. We fought and died for Europe in WWI. That was too much and then they want us back! We are a country built on the backs of brave, strong people. Most of whom had escaped their homelands and came here for a taste of freedom. They did not want to go to fight for the countries from which they escaped. But ... Politicians, it seems, will always bend towards business before citizens. Not all pols but most. Kennedy is held up to be this wonderful man who would have gotten us out of war because he knew how ugly war is. Sorry folks. Don't believe that for a moment. Of all the things Pres. Kennedy taught me more than anything "Money makes the world go 'round regardless where it came from." Money lets you buy elections therefore all money is good. Also taught me friends only count when they can supply what you need. Of course he taught us all fidelity was foolish. There has not been a politician of any value at all for whom I could vote, almost exclusively because of war. Do the younger people today understand the cost in human lives of war? Hundreds of thousands of U.S. military and support people have been killed in recent wars. How many civilians? Millions and millions. All of these people did nothing more than be born. Their price for being alive? Death. What was achieved by killing all these people? WWI, IMO, was nothing more than a continuance of the fighting in Europe that had been going on for hundreds of years. What came of "defeating the enemy"? WWII. What came of WWII? Proof most leader of the "free" world hated Jews - they (including the U.S.) turned fleeing Jews away. Most people in power in the U.S. thought stealing land from and arresting citizens simply because they were associated with Japan was acceptable. The land and businesses and monies taken from them were not returned but kept by rich people to make them richer - all with the support of our politicians. During Vietnam most of our sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers were sent to fight. They were, for the most part, the poorer members of our society. They fought to keep the person next to them alive. None I knew ever fought for "some fuckin' flag." When they came home they were vilified. The ugliest slander was "Baby Killer." First and foremost, if you haven't been in a shooting war you have no idea what goes on. Babies are not killed. Babies die when villages are attacked by the good guys and the bad guys. The good guys, I can't speak for the bad guys, would not, did not knowingly kill babies and any person they thought was not the enemy. I forget who asked the question, "Are there any civilians in war." Sadly, the answer is no. In war there are only people killing each other for absurd reasons. Our youth at the time, IMO, attacked the war in numbers because they were afraid they'd be drafted. Before the Vietnam draft was enacted there were damned few people marching against the war. We claim to be a civilized nation. Is it civil to drop atomic bombs on people? Is it civil to douse the good guys and the bad guys with poisons (agent orange)? Is it civil to level a city with not military value (Dresden)? Is it civil to force people to kill and be killed just to make some other country happy" As an aside, it is stated there were 1,000 bullets fired by the good guys to kill one bad guy. We were not warriors in the true sense of the word. We were kids trying to stay alive anyway we could. War causes me to rage against humankind (and to write too many words). Please recognize IMO all the fighters were good guys (U.S., Vietcong, German, Japanese). The leaders were the bad guys.

 

When you live in society with other people it isn't up to you on what other people find outrageous. What is up to you is how you respond to their outrage, and your own intent behind what illicited it. They're responsible for their feelings, their outrage, their beliefs, and you can choose to dwell on it, and shout at clouds trying to change it or do something more productive.

People have valid outrage by virtue of what they, but just because something is valid doesn't mean you need to do anything about it. Especially if you don't have a relationship with that person. If you do, you might try and resolve that conflict. Sometimes a relationship isn't worth compromising your principles. In which case, just find other people.

Because people don't change when you tell them, they change when they have no other choice but to, and for a lot of people...

They'd rather die.

 

What qualifies as something worthy of outrage?

Insulting someone’s son, standing-up someone’s daughter for a date, ruining someone’s plans to go bird-watching, improper recycling habits, not re-winding a VHS tape before returning it, wearing white shoes after Labor Day… watch and learn:

 

I’m speaking of legislation or a sense of righteousness that gags the marketplace of ideas. The kind that arises out of outrage over things that people should simply ignore. But we live in a world of the over sensitive enabling themselves. This is why being discriminating about what is outrageous and then acting on it through the machinery of the state is an essential thought process. I’m very skeptical about the notion that statecraft is soulcraft. Too Orwellian for my taste.

 

What kinds of ideas don't benefit from outrage? A lot of really good or creative ideas were made just to stir outrage. I think if an idea is shut down because of crybabies it probably wasn't a very strong idea anyway.

If you want to have a marketplace of ideas, you should expect and welcome competition.

But most people don't want a marketplace, they want a monopoly.

 

When one believes that what they believe is unassailable in the larger moral sense then it becomes necessary to them to eliminate all that could “confuse” the less properly socially engineered. In the medieval period the idea was to have the elect interpret “truth” and stamp out all the competing notions. This done so that the non elect not be drawn into sin. Today I hear academics at the highest levels call for research to end on issues they consider to be ideological treasures. To further engage in such research would be an “outrage” . If this is not rooted out root and branch we may be headed into or already in another medieval period.

 

Double post.

 

Don't you consider the society in question? Some societies - China, the late USSR, etc. left no room for doubt or
differing opinions. "Free" countries have some societies which allow some degree of personal challenge and spoken dislike. The freedom of speech, of course, is slowly being taken away under the guise of protecting us from another "Twin Towers". Giving up freedom for safety is akin, IMO, to cutting your wrists to check the color of your blood. We as a people have forgotten the reality, "We have met the enemy and he is us." We elect the pols. who write outrageous laws. The laws really bother us. We vote for the same pols. again.

 

There may be others, but the only things I consider worthy of outrage are best serbed in the Politics forum.

Oh, and fucking sauerkraut. Really???

 

Something that pisses me off and sends me into pure rage is when a now ex friend who was nearly 2 ft taller than his wife and was 200lbs heavier hit her, putting her in the hospital. I went after him and didn’t stop until I was pulled off. We are close to the same size so it was a fair physical fight, but I was so angry, coming from an abusive home I lost it. I can’t stand wife/girlfriend/kid beaters.

 

The 2008 financial crisis will cost the U.S. over $20 trillion dollars.
One person went to jail.