Only Stupid People Take Offence

Is that so?

Image by 晓强 付

Taking Offence

I have always been surprised by some people’s capacity for taking offence. Sometimes, the threshold is so low that nobody says much for fear of causing offence. I have seen entire groups of friends having heated arguments about what was offensive and what wasn’t, even if none of them had taken offence at anything personally. I have frequently wondered whether we use the offensiveness card whenever we want to divert the attention from the argument in question. That said, I feel we should not be offensive for no reason; when we have a motive, though, being offensive might be necessary.

The Intelligent

Recently, I heard someone say that intelligent people tend not to get offended, at least not as often as their lower-brow counterparts. In my experience, while bright people seem to have a natural resistance against cheap offences, they can also become susceptible if they feel threatened. What is fascinating about threats is that they need not be real for us to suffer their effects. Thus, we have perfectly safe groups of people, even privileged individuals, who act as though under threat and take offence at otherwise innocuous terminology or topics.

Hand Raised