Philosophy, et cetera 2008-05-05

Reducing Unnecessary Offense

Infinite Injury writes:It isn’t racist now because it doesn’t suggest any prejudice or dislike and the last thing we would ever want to do is widen the class of comments that we decide express prejudice. We want to reduce the potential for accidental offense not increase it.Hypersensitivity is a bad thing, and we'd all be better off without it. If you insist on turning yourself into a victim, perceiving slights at every turn, the world will offer ample opportunities to feed your paranoia. But why on Earth would you want to? Chances are: most people do not, in fact, hate you. But it's unnecessarily burdensome to expect them to constantly reassure you of this. Things would be much better if everyone could simply assume the best by default, and only take offense if someone was very clearly intending to insult ...

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