Take a pill

Dear Readers:

Andrew Coyne is one of my favourite writers. I am really starting to enjoy his work. (Maybe that’s’ why he writes for the National Post and I do this?)

As far as that piece of shit film about Muslims that everyone is getting their underwear in a knot about …………….., he had this to say about that!


Taking offense is a choice. The material in question may be objectively offensive, but it is up to you to decide whether to be offended.

Like any other choice, however, it is bounded by constraints. A civil society, it is often forgotten, imposes mutual obligations on its members: not to give offense needlessly, and not to take offense lightly. But I would go further: not merely to ask whether taking offense is reasonable in the circumstances, but whether it is reasonable at all.

To be offended by something — not to disagree with it, or dismiss it, or object to it, but to be borne aloft on a wave of indignation — is simply a form of self-indulgence. It is not about the thing itself but our emotional response to it, and, inevitably, our experience of that response: any emotion past the first instant, dissolves into self-consciousness. The moment we are aware we are angry, we become performers. We are watching ourselves being angry and rather liking ourselves in the part. How angry I am at this or that injustice, we observe, followed shortly by: how fine I am, that injustice could so move to anger!

Most of us are taught early on that anger is something we can and should master: a useless emotion, confessing weakness, betraying immaturity. But somewhere along the way, anger was elevated into something more: a spur to action, a badge of authenticity, a ticket to moral authority. But if in fact it is mostly fake, consciously (“angry Opposition MPs”) or otherwise, it loses whatever bona fides it might have claimed. To the extent it is anything more than self-gratification, it is a tactic, a means of imposing our will on others, and as such illegitimate.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/09/26/andrew-coyne-outrage-is-the-language-of-our-age/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NP_Top_Stories+%28National+Post+-+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

Couldn’t have said it better myself ……………., no really, I don’t think I could!