Are You Offended??? SO WHAT!!!

Are You Offended??? SO WHAT!!!
(The psychology of deliberate self-victimization)

(Amended to exclude the now infamous and very divisive "steak story"!!! I will include the steak story in a later post as it was derailing the entire thread!)

At a recent family function I witnessed a situation where family members got into a fight over a very insignificant event - and were immediately polarized into camps. A simple non-issue, in very short order, managed to turn blood relatives - fairly tightly knit relatives, against one another. Stunned, I watched, thought, and filed it all away

Needless to say, when I got home - I rather quickly began to Google terms like "seeking offense", "finding offense in others", and "the psychology of being offended." I found information that not only applies to my little familial ketchup war. But also applies to so many ATS based issues that I thought I would make a thread about it.

Skeptics vs believers?
Republicans vs democrats?
The "awake" vs the "asleep"?
"Blue pill" vs "red pill" thinking?
Christians vs Muslims?
Theists vs atheists?

Check, check, check, check, check, and check. These notions apply to it all.

Let's dig into to some of what the experts, thinkers, and philosophers have to say...

There are people who turn on the radio and get offended because they hear someone speaking in a certain tone or saying a word they don’t like. Some people have a whole list of words that they are offended by, and anytime someone says one of them, they go off into a tantrum.

Albeit, it’s just like allowing someone else’s behavior decide how you are going to be emotionally. You can be the person whose emotions or strings are pulled by someone else, depending on how they choose to act or what words they choose to use.

You choose your own emotional responses, and you own them. You can blame others for how you choose to feel and pretend that you are a victim.

Or you can choose not to give anyone permission to take away your happiness, joy or good mood away from you.

You can give away your power and allow someone else’s behavior to pull your strings..

...If you don’t like what someone is saying on the radio, turn the dial. If you don’t like the way someone chooses to dress, turn your eyes. Don’t feast your eyes on it.
If someone else wants to listen to rock music that you think is disgusting, then don’t listen to it. That is what free speech and the First Amendment of the Constitution are about. That’s what free expression is all about. That’s what it’s all about; there is no code that is going to fit everyone.

However, when you come from love you always know what to do and you have consideration, honor, honesty, security, trust, acceptance, integrity, understanding – all those things are love and you cannot be wrong with them. This also means having enough self-love and dignity, not to be burdened with someone else’s victimizing behavior and if need be, allowing them to act that way away from you.

Choosing to not be offended is to not be a victim.

Source

I put this first because it fairly well sums up my own instinctive thoughts about the whole situation. If I find offense in the behavior of another - behavior that is not intended to directly provoke or harm me - then I'm pretty much basically invalidating the other persons right to choose by trying to impress my own views upon them. I am, essentially, angry that they have the gall to disagree with me. This is the reality of it. This is my own insecurity screaming in my ear... telling me that I cannot be wrong ( because I'm smart and always right! ) so, therefore, this other persons disagreement must surely be a deliberate act of mocking me...

We all do this, to one degree or another. We react to alien or different thoughts as if they were threats. But why?

Could it be that we are all narcissists?

There's the groom who wouldn't let his fiancée's overweight friend be a bridesmaid because he didn't want her near him in the wedding pictures. The entrepreneur who launched a meeting for new employees by explaining that nobody ever gets anywhere working for someone else. The woman who had such confidence in her great taste, she routinely redecorated her daughter's home without asking. The guy who found himself so handsome, he took a self-portrait with a Polaroid every night before bed to preserve the moment.

As Ted Turner put it: "If I only had a little humility, I'd be perfect."

But narcissism isn't just a combination of monumental self-esteem and rudeness. As a personality type, it ranges from a tendency to a serious clinical disorder, encompassing unexpected, even counterintuitive behavior. The Greek myth of Narcissus ends with the beautiful young man lost to the world, content to forever gaze at his own reflection in a pool of water. Real-life narcissists, however, desperately need other people to validate their own worth. "It's not so much being liked. It's much more important to be admired. Studies have shown narcissists are willing to sacrifice being liked if they think it's necessary to be admired," says Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee...

cont...

cont.

Deep desire to be at the center of things is served by extreme self-confidence, a combination that makes narcissists attractive and even charming. Buoyed by a coterie of admiring friends and associates—protected by the armor of positive self-regard—someone with a mild-to-moderate case of narcissism can float through life feeling pretty good about himself. Since they feel entitled to special treatment, they are easily offended, and readily harbor grudges. Yet narcissists are often very popular—at least in the short term.

The beauty of being a narcissist is that even when disaster stares you in the face, you feel neither doubt nor remorse. In a study, researchers asked a pair of participants to undertake a task that was rigged to fail. Most people tend to protect their partner, sharing either the credit or the blame. "But the narcissists would say, 'It's totally the other person's fault.' They're completely willing to step on someone," says narcissism researcher Keith Campbell, associate professor of social psychology at the University of Georgia.

Source

Hotchkiss' seven deadly sins of narcissism

Hotchkiss identified what she called the seven deadly sins of narcissism:
Shamelessness: Shame is the feeling that lurks beneath all unhealthy narcissism, and the inability to process shame in healthy ways.
Magical thinking: Narcissists see themselves as perfect, using distortion and illusion known as magical thinking. They also use projection to dump shame onto others.
Arrogance: A narcissist who is feeling deflated may reinflate by diminishing, debasing, or degrading somebody else.
Envy: A narcissist may secure a sense of superiority in the face of another person's ability by using contempt to minimize the other person.
Entitlement: Narcissists hold unreasonable expectations of particularly favorable treatment and automatic compliance because they consider themselves special. Failure to comply is considered an attack on their superiority, and the perpetrator is considered an "awkward" or "difficult" person. Defiance of their will is a narcissistic injury that can trigger narcissistic rage.
Exploitation: Can take many forms but always involves the exploitation of others without regard for their feelings or interests. Often the other is in a subservient position where resistance would be difficult or even impossible. Sometimes the subservience is not so much real as assumed.
Bad boundaries: Narcissists do not recognize that they have boundaries and that others are separate and are not extensions of themselves. Others either exist to meet their needs or may as well not exist at all. Those who provide narcissistic supply to the narcissist are treated as if they are part of the narcissist and are expected to live up to those expectations. In the mind of a narcissist there is no boundary between self and other.

Source

Well all that seems to fit! But there is no way that the vast majority of an entire culture could be suffering from the same mental health issue.. Narcissistic Personality Disorder... So there has to be another explanation for our self-assured and easily offended natures.

Could it be Cultural narcissism? Literally a mass delusion?

In The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch defines a narcissistic culture as one where every activity and relationship is defined by the hedonistic need to acquire the symbols of wealth, this becoming the only expression of rigid, yet covert, social hierarchies. It is a culture where liberalism only exists insofar as it serves a consumer society, and even art, sex and religion lose their liberating power.

In such a society of constant competition, there can be no allies, and little transparency. The threats to acquisitions of social symbols are so numerous, varied and frequently incomprehensible, that defensiveness, as well as competitiveness, becomes a way of life. Any real sense of community is undermined—or even destroyed—to be replaced by virtual equivalents that strive, unsuccessfully, to synthesize a sense of community.

Synthetic sense of community? Hedonistic need to acquire the symbols of wealth?

What are we stumbling into here? Chilling stuff... but look around you. Analyze it all. Does what you see match up to this cold, sobering assessment of society?

cont...

cont.

Narcissism, or excessive self-love, is marked by bloated confidence, vanity, materialism, and a lack of consideration for others. Yet narcissistic personality traits have become so pervasive in American culture that they threaten to transform us into a nation of egomaniacs, research psychologists Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell say in their new book The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement.

Twenge and her team at San Diego State University also report today in a new study that narcissism continues to spread quickly among college students, especially young women. Considering how cultural influences on girls have changed in the past decade, that's not surprising, says Twenge. Plastic surgery rates have jumped since the 1990s, and materialism is increasingly being emphasized in song lyrics, for example, she says.

Song lyrics? Could media be telling us to be shallow, closed minded narcissists?

You bet.



Why would media, and the folks who control it, want us all to be narcissists? What purpose does that serve? Well of course the answer is divide and conquer - divide et impera.. In short, making us all self-absorbed and intolerant means that we can never unite, agree, or stand up for the common good. Fragmentation is key to global domination.

It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer a country.

Raymond Chandler

"To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism, and religious dogmas."

Brock Chisholm - Director U.N. - W.H.O.

“We can choose to use our growing knowledge to enslave people in ways never dreamed of before, depersonalizing them, controlling them by means so carefully selected that they will perhaps never be aware of their loss of personhood.”

Dr Carl Rogers - Former President A.P.A.

"We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."

David Rockefeller

Source for quotes.

So, friends and denizens of ATS. I put it to you bluntly, clearly, and without my usual habit of giving a few facts and hoping that the members will connect the dots on their own. We are at war and this is one of the primary weapons that is being used against us. We've been trained to see only ourselves and to dismiss and even hate those who do not serve as literal mirrors for our own thoughts.

We have been divided, we are being conquered, and we are all complicit and guilty in our own rights. Every single time we argue, instead of discussing, we sell our own freedoms away. Every time we hold true to our own dogmatic predispositions, out of emotion and personal bias? We close the cage door and lock ourselves in.

United we might stand. But divided we don't stand a chance at all.

Quit looking for offense folks. You're going to find it. And, in doing so, you will lose the war.




The hour is growing late for us. The people with agendas have been at their game for a very long time now, and they are brilliantly skilled at what they do. They've fragmented us with illusory choices and the right of self definition. They've taught us to rabidly defend ourselves and our opinions. They've taught us that it's OK to hate - as long as you hate for the right reasons. They've created labels for us, so that we can feel wanted - and then used those labels to enslave us to dogma and paradigm. It's time for us all to wake up and to realize that our first, primary, and ONLY relevant label is "human" and that the rest, be they political, religious, nationalist, philosophical, or otherwise... Are all just smoke screens designed to make us slaves.

So, if you're offended? SO WHAT!
Sadly, and ironicaly, I say... let the fighting begin....

~Heff

lol you poor soul, i remember when i was outcast for making beetroot sandwiches.
time will heal your wounds.

It's kind of obvious it's not about the ketchup but that's part of the human condition. Your relative decided to bring it up even though it could have just as easily been a non-issue. And because people took sides and made a big deal about it, there was hidden animosity among your family members.

Think about it this way, you all have underlying issues that haven't been resolved and instead of discussing the actual problems, you are arguing over ketchup on steak...

(But seriously, why did you ruin a good steak? )

Is this a bad thing? Well, it's part of life. It's engrained into us. You seem offended about your family members reaction, while they may have just said something because they were mad for another reason, or just generally a cranky individual that has been led to believe certain things about steak.

In any case, since it wasn't blown off as comedy in the beginning (Which it probably should have) you very well might carry the torch of offending speech with you to the next family outing...

Oh, and one other thing. No offence to you if this is not the case, but just because you believe a family member or other person has no issues with you, does not mean that they or people close to them don't. Some people go through life completely oblivious to people's thoughts about them.

As I said, not directed at you, but clearly a possibility as I don't know much about your familial relationships.

-B

Very deep thread, actually.



How does one respond to it? I also have seen the divide and concur. Those who magically proclaim that there reasons, are above all, worthy, and those who cant see their side, delusional. I have fallen prey to it myself, even recently. I also have been the one, to call someone delusional. Is it a condition? Yes. Almost a survival mechanism. Emotions. Its the very essence of everyone, regardless if we are someone that can control them, to a point. I don't think anyone can actually see things in a logical way, sort of like Spock. Not many can turn their emotions off. This thread has and will make me think. It will make me think of the situations, that I am in, and if I am letting my emotions, get the best of me. I think the triggers to these type of outburst, such as your family get-together, are an accumulation of things. Bad day, anger, etc........But in the end, something that we humans, need to keep in check, from time to time.

Thanks for the thread.

reply to post by boncho


The events of todays barbecue were simply an allegorical ( albeit true ) segue into the rest of the information. I'm not at all worried about family members who are offended by my ketchup habits.

~Heff

Narcissism, or excessive self-love, is marked by bloated confidence, vanity, materialism, and a lack of consideration for others.

reply to post by Hefficide


After the description of what you had on your plate, you made me hungry. Sounds crazy to think someone would be so offended by your personal preference. It's amazing how people can make an argument out of something so meaningless.

Oh my, if sauce on steak causes your family to implode and the internet to become 3 pages larger in understanding this, this should tickle your goat!



Sauce on Steak... FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU!!111

lol

I may have jumped the gun here. Should I have done a thread on short attention spans and the human tendency to jump the gun before this thread?



There are two and a half pages after the title and personal story here! Good stuff in all of it!

~Heff

Holy mega-thread there, Heff! Very deep reading, an excellent dissertation on why people feel the need to criticize others, for something that in many cases is just a matter of personal preference. One has to wonder, especially given that it was among family members, why turn something so trivial into something so confrontational? Who committed the more offensive act? You - for dabbling a little ketchup on your plate? Or the other party-goer, for berating you and embarrassing the both of you over something minor?

I sometimes wonder if "offense" isn't a holdover emotion from our primitive state, back when a tribe survived by ensuring conformity among it's members. Those who didn't conform were deemed "offensive" and driven away or had their roles among the community minimized.

I also wonder how people can be 'offended' by one's political preferences, until you consider that those who take the most offense at another person's beliefs, are most likely those who demand conformity with their own beliefs. One of my personal beliefs is "live and let live" as well as "to each his own", which is why I tend not to be 'offended' by other people's political beliefs - except when their beliefs are to encroach on another's freedoms - which I find most offensive!

reply to post by Hefficide


We all have a bit of narcissism running through us, some more than others. But your steak story does bring back memories.

I have been complimented quite often on my cooking skills and really have yet to recieve a complaint, but that could just be people being polite.

My ex-'s daughter one day slapped a healthy portion of ketchup on a steak that I had prepared over the day. Marinade, aging, etc. She had not bothered to even taste it first to see if it was to her liking.

I proceeded to call her a uneducated city-slicker and a few other choice words, though not yelling or cussing. Which I knew would set her off in return as she hates anybody who lives in the country. We're all hicks and hillbillys and the world would be better off without us in her opinion. (I wonder where she thinks ice cream comes from that she kept shoveling into her pie-hole on a daily basis? Dairy farmers?, Nah that doesn't sound right.

From then on, everytime we had a family BBQ, which was often, I would go to Mickey D's and get her a couple of happy meals. I NEVER cooked her a meal ever again.

Needless to say, this caused stress in my relationship, but in the end, we are all better off. With the exception of the daughter who had a heart attack at the ages of 28, 32 and 35. She's still kickin' though...how I don't know.

Originally posted by Hefficide

I may have jumped the gun here. Should I have done a thread on short attention spans and the human tendency to jump the gun before this thread?

There are two and a half pages after the title and personal story here! Good stuff in all of it!

~Heff

Sounds like you're offended that people didn't read your op all the way through - SO WHAT!!!

Originally posted by Hefficide

I may have jumped the gun here. Should I have done a thread on short attention spans and the human tendency to jump the gun before this thread?

There are two and a half pages after the title and personal story here! Good stuff in all of it!

~Heff

Heff, without a backstory or understanding of your family relationships it's hard for us to relate it to the everyday world. It's very easy for you to do so, but then again it's easy for us to do with our own as well.

I suppose with that explanation it may cover why people are really looking at this from the ketchup/steak point of view.

We know it's not about the ketchup or the steak, but your actions tie into it as well. It wasn't played off as a joke by either you or other family members so it turned to an argument. And you carried it even as far as to ATS,

this is just an example of how a non issue turns into an issue. If you quash the non issues as they arise eventually people will be powerless with arguing them.

Originally posted by Hefficide

I may have jumped the gun here. Should I have done a thread on short attention spans and the human tendency to jump the gun before this thread?

There are two and a half pages after the title and personal story here! Good stuff in all of it!

~Heff

Haha I do know that, I did read it, strange as it may seem

The weird part was I was thinking along the same lines as you were, from the opening topic. When I saw you heading the same direction with the thread, it made sense.

Short attention spans are for goldf

Originally posted by boncho


this is just an example of how a non issue turns into an issue. If you quash the non issues as they arise eventually people will be powerless with arguing them.

Agree.

Although, its the non issues that most people WANT to argue about.

Funny, hey?

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


"Being offended" is often in the eye of the beholder, just like beauty.

The people that take it to far though must beware...they are living in glass houses.

I believe in standing up for ones own beliefs, but be civil about it and listen to others as well. (And hope that they treat you the same respect)