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pinkmooon 's review for:
'i Find That Offensive!'
by Claire Fox
Thought-provoking, with an emphasis on 'provoking'.
I do consider myself something close to a free-speech absolutist, at least where comedy is concerned, but I would struggle to declare that sensibility as a political one. Partially this is because people who call themselves free-speech absolutists have often been recorded saying really weird and stupid things. I'm against censorship, but partial to self-censorship, something the author seems to know little of. This book is a culture war book, unfortunately -- you'd think I'd have learnt the lesson with my earlier foray into crypto-white nationalism -- but there are always things to learn from exploring the arguments of people you previously considered belligerent idiots. I still think they are, but I've learnt a bit more about the roots of their belligerence, although the idiocy remains a mystifying fact of everyday life.
Some people just really love arguing. I used to think I liked it, in a Socratic sense, with a mutual respect and objective in mind. Of course, then I read more Plato and discovered the objective is rarely achieved and the respect is often strained. I graduated university and decided to stop thinking about class and 'the Left' for a year or two, and it did wonders for me. I allowed previous convictions I believed essential to my identity to internally slacken. Politics, for me, was a game of choosing when and when not to listen. I didn't expect to change anyone's mind anymore; it was not a moral concern.
This book is moreso pro-arguing for its own sake than anything else. It's difficult to take Fox's claims about how sanctimonious and encroaching the left are upon reasonable society when her own opinions are so regularly inflammatory and insipid. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend -- she's not going to convince her opponents to change their ways, and I would cross the street to avoid anyone who was convinced by this.
One can't help but be drawn into the topic considering the pervasive nature of bad faith, misunderstanding and plain bad manners that defines so much of contemporary public discourse. Claire Fox is right - a lot of people are really annoying! She is also really annoying. I know I'm not annoying because I do as little as possible to contribute to these topics. If you want to know my solutions to discourse problems, I'd be inclined toward autocratic, indiscriminate mass murder. So I tend to keep my opinions to myself, as more perhaps should.
I do consider myself something close to a free-speech absolutist, at least where comedy is concerned, but I would struggle to declare that sensibility as a political one. Partially this is because people who call themselves free-speech absolutists have often been recorded saying really weird and stupid things. I'm against censorship, but partial to self-censorship, something the author seems to know little of. This book is a culture war book, unfortunately -- you'd think I'd have learnt the lesson with my earlier foray into crypto-white nationalism -- but there are always things to learn from exploring the arguments of people you previously considered belligerent idiots. I still think they are, but I've learnt a bit more about the roots of their belligerence, although the idiocy remains a mystifying fact of everyday life.
Some people just really love arguing. I used to think I liked it, in a Socratic sense, with a mutual respect and objective in mind. Of course, then I read more Plato and discovered the objective is rarely achieved and the respect is often strained. I graduated university and decided to stop thinking about class and 'the Left' for a year or two, and it did wonders for me. I allowed previous convictions I believed essential to my identity to internally slacken. Politics, for me, was a game of choosing when and when not to listen. I didn't expect to change anyone's mind anymore; it was not a moral concern.
This book is moreso pro-arguing for its own sake than anything else. It's difficult to take Fox's claims about how sanctimonious and encroaching the left are upon reasonable society when her own opinions are so regularly inflammatory and insipid. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend -- she's not going to convince her opponents to change their ways, and I would cross the street to avoid anyone who was convinced by this.
One can't help but be drawn into the topic considering the pervasive nature of bad faith, misunderstanding and plain bad manners that defines so much of contemporary public discourse. Claire Fox is right - a lot of people are really annoying! She is also really annoying. I know I'm not annoying because I do as little as possible to contribute to these topics. If you want to know my solutions to discourse problems, I'd be inclined toward autocratic, indiscriminate mass murder. So I tend to keep my opinions to myself, as more perhaps should.