The Narcissism of Taking Offense

• by Gitabushi

Every successful system attracts parasites.

There have been plenty of parasites attracted to the trust that results from the rules of manners and decorum that provide the structure for society.

One of the more recent, relatively speaking, is the Offense Industry.

In order to remake society according to their Progressive wishes, they exploit human nature’s natural tendency to want to get along by taking offense at minor “mistakes”. There are multiple, dovetailing purposes behind this, I think.  One of the main ones, of course, is to make you accept the Progressive worldview: someone’s identity as a man or woman is subject to a personal feeling, racism is endemic and prevalent in society, etc.  But in some (most? all?) cases, it is also an exercise of power: if they can make you apologize or change your word choice when speaking, they have power over you, and the feeling of power of others is a pleasure, for some.

But it’s wrong.  It’s just plain wrong.

Taking offense puts the offended at the center of the universe. They expect everyone to know their preferences and sensitivities, and to act according to those arbitrary and unknowable rules. If you “misgender” someone (i.e., call them by a pronoun they don’t want to apply to them), it is *your* fault, and you are wrong.  They’ve made a push to make it actually criminally wrong in California, and possibly other places.

One person, and their preferences for speech, is thus elevated to rules of politeness for everyone else. For anyone else they might happen to meet. They might walk through a city of millions, but each of those millions must immediately recognize and employ only the terms the Perpetually Offended wishes them to use.

This is ridiculous. Society develops organically.  Norms and manners and customs are developed over centuries as the framework by which we are able to interact with some level of trust, without having to have every interaction be governed by an explicit contract, or without killing each other.

The Offense Industry destroys this. One person can demand that everyone else follow their own personal, arbitrary rules, and if others don’t play along, they will be punished. And then this is multiplied by the millions who take up the mantle of Taking Offense.

This is truly a situation where the only way to win is to not play.

Don’t just refuse to be sorry for not coddling their delusions, call them out on it.  Shame them. Take offense at their taking offense.

This, like most Progressivism, is a cancer that destroys social trust, and makes every man an enemy of every other man.

Why do they do this?

Because they can’t take power in society any other way.  If people’s lives are happy, prosperous, and stable, they won’t turn to government for help.

The problem is they destroy all social cohesion to do it. They literally make humans ungovernable in order to get their shot at governance.  They don’t care, because they have no problem using force to obtain compliance. And if they fail, they still exult in exercising their power to smash what they consider stultifying traditionalism.

They will happily destroy the village to “save” it.

Okay, sure, most of these Offense Puppets aren’t thinking that far.  But make no mistake, that is the strategic consensus.  They aim to destroy to rule, or to make sure no one else can.

This is why we can’t have nice things.  Don’t let them win. Stand up for traditional mores, standards, norms, manners, and politeness forms of traditional society.