Why does your right to freedom of speech trump someone else’s right not to be offended?
Posted by Solver 5 years, 6 months ago to Philosophy
Answer:
“Because in order to be able to think you have to risk being offensive.”
- Jordan Peterson
“Mr. Reagan” does a reasoned and logical blow-by-blow analysis of the world famous Psychology Professor Jordan Peterson versus Feminist Kathy Newman interview.
https://youtu.be/8o0Cu72XQ4k
“Gotcha!”
- Jordan Peterson
“Because in order to be able to think you have to risk being offensive.”
- Jordan Peterson
“Mr. Reagan” does a reasoned and logical blow-by-blow analysis of the world famous Psychology Professor Jordan Peterson versus Feminist Kathy Newman interview.
https://youtu.be/8o0Cu72XQ4k
“Gotcha!”
- Jordan Peterson
If I offend you, you tell me what I said and why it offended you. It's then up to me to decide to apologize if I agree, or refuse to apologize if I don't agree.
Where the relationship goes from there will be different in each case.
And this is NOT meant to be a confrontational response. Please don't take it that way.)
How do the terms "harassment" and "offensive" get defined? Who gets to define them? What offends me may not offend you; what you view as harassment, I might not see the same way. If we were in a conversation, which one of us gets to define the terms "offensive" and "harassing"? Do we use your standards or mine?
In today's hyper-sensitive snowflake society, anything anyone says can be considered harassment, and someone's personal and professional lives can be completely ruined because he/she made an innocent comment.
There are some people who laugh hysterically at--and love to share--what society in general might consider sick and twisted jokes. I had a personal tragedy 38 years ago that is the topic of one of those joke lines. (True story: my now ex-wife and I lost a full term healthy daughter during childbirth when she had a seizure on the delivery table. I almost lost my wife; we did lose our daughter.)
If I have a right to not be offended, then I also have the right to prevent anyone else from ever being able to tell one of those jokes ever again.
I can't buy that. As you said, no one has the right to muzzle someone else; if I tried to do that, it would be emotional censorship. I completely agree with that statement.
But if we have a right to not be offended, then that is the policy being advocated. If you (again, general you, not specific you) have a right to not be offended, then in essence you force your standards of offensive on everyone else, and can effectively prevent them from saying anything that might offend you.
But what about the reverse? Do you think everyone else should have a right to impose their standards of offensive on you? Should they be able to prevent you from saying something that you view as wholly innocent, just because it offends them?
To me, the term "offensive" is no different than loud, bright, hot, funny, and a whole host of other purely subjective terms. What might be too loud for you might not be too loud for me. What I might find funny, you don't.
Our individual value systems determine what is offensive to each of us. The way I see it, the only way to exercise a "right to not be offended" is for nothing to be said by anyone ever again, since anything anyone ever says could offend someone. That's the only way to truly not violate (what I consider to be an imaginary) right to not be offended.
Again, please don't take this response as being confrontational. It is not meant to be.
Look at who wants to violate your freedom of speech in the name of preventing verbal "offensiveness" while openly promoting harassing their political enemies to deliberately offend them and worse..
When those terms are more narrowly defined, I'm in complete agreement with you.
I should have the right to eat at a restaurant without some idiot lefty blindly following orders and trying to "run me out of town", or not have hundreds or thousands of calls and/or emails, etc.
https://youtu.be/fHMoDt3nSHs
But say anything rough to libs and they get all snowflakey.
That reminds me, my most conservative of four brothers recently called the manager of his apartment complex a snowflake.
The man became SO offended.
Bwahaha!
Rather, an individual can choose whatever they like to be offended by.