IMPORTANT: Don't "Fight for the Future"

The following was an email I received for signing up to fight the "Stop Online Piracy Act" in America. I am strongly opposed to this letter, and if you're an American, you should be too.

Hi--
Together, we beat SOPA in a huge victory for internet freedom.  But this Saturday, internet freedom protests are breaking out in over 200 cities across Europe.  Why?
Because the companies behind SOPA are using international trade agreements as a backdoor to pass SOPA-style lawsSOPA's supporters are pushing two agreements: ACTA and TPP¹.  ACTA would criminalize users, encourage internet providers to spy on you, and make it easier for media companies to sue sites out of existence and jail their founders.  Sound familiar?  That's right, ACTA is from the same playbook as SOPA, but global.  Plus it didn't even have to pass through Congress².
TPP goes even farther than ACTA, and the process has been even more secretive and corrupt.  Last weekend (we wish this was a joke) trade negotiators partied with MPAA (pro-SOPA) lobbyists before secret negotiations in a Hollywood hotel, while public interest groups were barred from meeting in the same building.³Trade agreements are a gaping loophole, a secretive backdoor track that--even though it creates new laws--is miles removed from democracy.  Trade negotiators are unelected and unaccountable, so these agreements have been very hard for internet rights groups to stop.
But now the tide is turning.  Fueled by the movement to stop SOPA, anti-ACTA protests are breaking out across the EU, which hasn't ratified ACTA.  The protests are having an impact: leaders in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia have backtracked on ACTA.⁴  Now a massive round of street protests in over 200 cities is planned for this Saturday February 11th.We're planning an online protest this Saturday to support the protests in the streets.  Why?  Because together we can drive millions of emails to key decision makers--and start tipping the scales like we did on SOPA.
Can you take part?  Click here to get the code to run on your site!We just built an ACTA & TPP contact tool, and it's not just a petition.   It's code for your site that figures out the visitor's country and lets them email all their Members of European Parliament--the politicians who will be voting on ACTA in June--or the trade negotiators behind TPP.  This direct contact between voters and their officials, driven by websites of all sizes, was instrumental in the fight against SOPA.  We can use the same tactics to defeat ACTA & TPP, but we need your help!
Support the street protests with a flood of emails to the officials responsible for ACTA & TPP.  Get the code for your website!Don't have a website?  Tell officials in your country to scrap ACTA & TPP!   And spread the word about Saturday's protests! This is going to be tough fight.  But we need to make secretive trade agreements harder to pass than US law.  If we don't, our internet's future belongs to the lobbyists behind SOPA.  
This is just the beginning,
--Holmes Wilson, Tiffiniy Cheng, Joshua Blount & the whole Fight for the Future team.
P.S. This map of ACTA street protests in Europe is amazing. The largest has almost 50,000 RSVP's!
Sources:
1. For more information on ACTA, read these excellent articles from Techdirt and La Quadrature du Net. For information on TPP, read this Ars Technica piece. For video, watch this.
2. Obama's signing of ACTA may have been unconstitutional. See Anti-counterfeiting agreement raises constitutional concerns and Techdirt.
3. Hollywood gets to party with TPP negotiators, public interest groups get thrown out of the hotel.4. Ars Technica: Czech, Slovak governments backing away from ACTA, too.

The reason why you should be opposed to interfering in Europe is simple: America does not rule the globe; American Capitalism does. The MPAA is one of the most powerful capitalist organizations in the world because they control the symbols and culture of society. Broadcast News Companies, some of whom also support his, control the other important symbols in our society. To fight against these companies is to fight against American Capitalism.

Here is how:
America has become a dominant nation not just because it built a powerful navy in the Progressive Era and continued to control through military might. America became a dominant nation because of it's journalism and it's financial institutions.
Yellow Journalism spawned here. It lead to conflicts with Cuba, Spain, and the United States. Since then, the United States has put more strict regulations on journalism. America realized the power that symbol generators (the media) had, and the people in power vetoed. When SOPA came about, the American public, being the power behind America, vetoed as well.
Banks and other financial institutions are the second component to American's global power network. You don't know this, but there are several very powerful, very wealthy banks that reside in the U.S. that affect infrastructure projects throughout the globe. Without providing nation-states with a "bank" to borrow money and repay money, massive infrastructure and life-changing advances would not be feasible in third-world countries such as in South America, Africa, and Asia. This is a good thing. The more developments a country can create the better the living conditions of those countries and thereby stabilizes those regions.

Banks and the Media are powerful, and according to the principles of Democracy, those who are in power should rule while those who are out of power (I.E. Minorities) should abide by the rules of the majority.
America is not the majority on a global perspective, just like no single state is the majority in the United States. All of the states work together UNITED towards the same things, but each state is unique, each state is different. Is it fair for Missouri to reach out it's governing hand and tell Florida how to run? Do people in Missouri oppose some of the practices in Florida? Yes, but that doesn't mean they should rally and protest certain state laws, and if you didn't know, Missourians don't have the right to vote on state laws in Florida.

So is it fair for America and Americans to rally and oppose certain laws in Europe? No, it is not fair. But, is it fair for American Capitalists, who have global corporations such at the movie industry or the financial industry, to engage in politics in Europe? Yes, it is fair. Why? Because they have an established presence there and all they are trying to do is exercise their political freedom.--They are doing EXACTLY what a good citizen does: they are trying to push laws that are in their favor by rallying the majority.

What is the difference? --Jurisdiction.

America, the country, does not have the right to tell other countries what to do. (this gets tricky but follow with me, because we could tangent and talk about how if a cruise missile were pointed at a country and they were told to back down, then America may actually have some dominion over that country and thereby have the right to tell them what to do). The American people, who get their global power from being UNITED citizens in a geographic region all abiding by laws that grant them power, do not have more power than their united body (the United States).
Therefore, American people do not have jurisdiction over other countries.

International Corporations, on the other hand, do have jurisdiction. Why? Because they fall into both countries' laws. Legally, they have phantom power to be considered "citizens" of all countries simply because they have a formal document endorsed by the country they reside in that acknowledges their power.


Long story shot: If you support what "Fight for the Future" is trying to get you to support, you are overstepping your bounds. You are attempting to engage in the politics of another nation who does not recognize your jurisdiction. You are the equivalent of a person who votes for a law or a ruler in another state  simply because you crossed the state line.
It is not ethical to engage in European politics unless you have dual citizenship. "Let the Professionals handle this." I.E. Let the capitalist system work and let the democratic system work. Do not send monetary aid or volunteer your time or any other resources (including websites). Let Europe handle Europe's affairs in the way that they see fit. If the majority supports ACTA, then so be it, but if the majority doesn't they should reserve the right to fight against it without your assistance.

<Insert political comic of France yelling at America for overstepping it's bounds on global affairs>

The Truth and the Truth of Lies

Ryan Tedder, the singer/songwriter behind One Republic admitted in an interview that the meaning of this song is the question: do you want to hear big truths about life, or do you want to hear what will make you feel good at the end of the day?

Sometimes the truth is what we need to know, or think we need to know.
Sometimes we don't want to know the truth, we just want to be happy.

If we are constructors of our own realities and everything that matters to us, then I can see a need for both: sometimes we want to be told lies because it makes more sense, but other times we want to know the truth, because it helps us progress and find closure.
Then again... only knowing the happy lies can bring us as much closure as the truth can


It's an odd balance.





I've been working on a project recently about the human experience known as life. We know we exist because we can think, as one philosopher put it. But how do we choose what to think about? Aren't there triggers that prompt our thoughts? And how do we know that we are alive and not dead while we are thinking?

I don't wish to spoil the project right now, but let me just say that it pertains to empiricism, constructionism, human relationships, the power of thought, positive thinking, the human condition, and human emotions.

The project, which I hope to turn into a 90 min documentary or art-film, begs the question: Are the feelings I feel important, even if they are not based on reality? And I would argue that yes, everything we feel, everything that we experience and perceive, they are important to us, and not just to us individually, but they are important to the progression of mankind because of their triggering effect in other peoples' lives.

To live is to experience as much as to think is to exist. I know I am still alive because I am still experiencing things.

Whether you are awake or dreaming, the experience you are having IS relevant to your future. Modern psychological science is slowly catching up to that statement of truth. You have the ability to live lifetimes in your dreams--a place where memories and symbols collide. Some people find truth in their dreams that they could not find in reality. Our minds are intricate and complex.

Tedder exposed something deep and truthful that I can really relate to:
Is it better for me to focus on the truth, on the things that are "profound" and eternal?
Or is it better for me to focus on telling people the things they want to hear, the things they need to hear, even if those things are not the truth, even if those things are false? Should I endorse a make believe life in which the people are happy so long as they can maintain that reality, or should I endorse a very real life in which people know the way the world works and how humans work, but are happy only when their situations are happy and are sad when they are truly sad situations? --This all ties back to how truth is subjective.

Right now I'm struggling to know which is better, and honestly I'd prefer a world in which both co-exist in harmony: a place where people can talk about the truth and not fear it, not shy from it, not run from it, and yet not be condemned by it but instead embrace it, as well as in that same place the possibility of living in a fantasy and choosing to ignore everything that is wrong, everything that is bad. I would love to live in a world where even though the truth may be known, no one chooses to follow it because it makes their lives more difficult and more harsh.

The problem is... it's a very lonely place. Because the moment that you start clinging to the truth, people want to follow the truth and only the truth, they want to live by the truth and be condemned by the truth because at least their lives would be constant. People who want the truth don't want to be lied to, no matter how much better it could make their lives. They especially don't want to lie to themselves, even if it could improve their attitude and perspective of life. But, people who live in a fantasy, they want to remain there, it is their place, it is their home, and they will accept whatever illogical fallacies can keep them there. They will justify their behavior, they will disguise the truth as lies and they will ignore the truth because they are afraid it will condemn them.

You see--there is no middle ground. And because there is no middle ground, there is no one there. No one who would agree with me that there is a possibility for a wonderful life in which truth and lies co-exist. That is because morals and ethics always come into play. Is it okay to lie to your family about your discovery that you have cancer, if it means that the chemo therapy would pull your family apart? Would it not be better to keep the cancer a secret to your family and to die the natural way than to have them argue with you about whether you should prolong your life? Personally, I would not judge anyone who took that route. However, there will always be someone to argue that those conflicts between family are necessary; that somehow they make the family grow closer together, and they reveal more truth or the way that life SHOULD be. But my argument is again: if the family was comfortable with knowing the truth, and everyone in the family embraced it and didn't allow it to affect them, then wouldn't THAT bring them closer together, wouldn't THAT make them have a stronger bond?
You see, it isn't the conflict that strengthens the bond, it is the acceptance that strengthens the bond. But you can also choose to accept a lie as truth and to act on it as though it were truth and YOU as well as everyone who believes it with you, are perfectly fine. Who is lying, the Communist or the Democracist, when they claim their government type is the best type of government?

The reason why I would be so accepting of this is because I know both the truth and the truth of lies.

I have observed an interesting phenomenon--I say phenomenon but really, knowing what I know, there is nothing phenomenal about it, it simply is, it's a truth: sometimes people are held together because they have gone against the grain, sometimes people are held together because they have gone with the grain together. For example: Jesse James and Frank James had a strong brotherly bond because they engaged in outlaw acts, but tennis players build brotherly bonds together when they compete for championships and follow all of the rules. Are they not the same bond manifested in different ways?


I suppose all that I ask out of life is that I find someone--a female (for several obvious reasons)--who desires to live a life of fantasy in which we both know the full truth and are thankful for it, but only use it to capture us when our fantasies are inadequate.

I don't want a life full of truth, or a life full of fantasy, but I do want a companion on my journey who can help me and I can help her live the fantasy or live the truth when one or the other is necessary.

Life is...Changing

When I started this blog, I wrote an article about how the universe is falling, how WE are falling. Everything is changing in life and I don't mean this in any evolutionary sense. Things aren't changing to survive, things aren't changing because they have to. Things are changing because we don't presently understand the way life works.

There are three governing forces that control change: 1) time, 2) needs, 3) wants. They aren't like switches or triggers that get flipped or pulled they're ALWAYS happening, and so in a sense, these forces are forcing change.

1) Objects, emotions, thoughts, they all have a time limit. Our entire planet, our bodies, there is a time limit placed on them. We can't live forever, we can't always be happy, and the moment that we discover some eternal truth, that's it. It takes one moment to realize something profound, and once we realize it, we are changed forever.
I wrote an article previously on enlightenment. I attempted to explain that once you find enlightenment, life doesn't suddenly end, just that you start to experience life at a heightened level, and everything you previously knew or thought you knew almost doesn't count--but at the same time it does count. People who find enlightenment, they don't avoid negative situations, negative feelings, negative thoughts, they just find peace and acceptance with them and have an easier time overcoming them.
Having a time limit means everything you old in your hands, everything you experience, it has an end and will melt away. Need I refer back to the human condition again? The whole world will roll up like a scroll at some point, I know that much for sure, death happens, people leave, when we discover meaning we find that we need to find new meaning of something else, it is unquenchable, and on and on.

2) Needs force change. Our needs change over time. When something runs out, we need to replace it; that applies to physical things as well as mental, emotional, social, even spiritual. Why does it hurt so bad for so long when we separate from a loved one? Because we realize that we NEED certain things that that loved one provided for us and until we can replace them, we'll remain the same way. If you quit your faith you'll quickly find that you need something to replace it. When you lose the things that once made you happy, you are forced to find something that will make you happy once again. Your needs force you to change, they force organizations to change, they force everything in life to change.

3) You wants are just like your needs, except wants are that extra stuff that you're working for that don't qualify as a need. I don't need to make a lot of money to obtain everything I want from life, but I want a lot of money because I don't want to change my mind later and not have it. Wanting things isn't bad, it just requires change to have it.

In a more grand scale, in order for anything to exist in this life, it has to change. To have seasons, the earth has to change--it rotates around the sun. But it can't just rotate around the sun perfectly, it is slowly drifting further and further from the sun; and the sun further from the center of the universe. That's just how life works.

In essence, we are all falling, a symbol for something much more grand; and this blog is titled: when 1 falls. You are one, and you're always falling, whether you want to admit it or not.

Fight Terrorism

Terrorism is the cause of manipulative rhetorical practices. It's full of fallacies. It often uses a beliefs system. But more importantly, it pits the recruit's beliefs against 'the enemy.' Essentially, what is really taking place is one person with personal agendas, uses their rhetorical power to convince another human being to enact his or her plans in his or her behalf.

The lower dregs of society are always the easiest to manipulate with rhetoric however, they aren't the only ones who are easy targets. People who perceive themselves as oppressed, extremists in any particular belief system who are easily subject to emotional pleas, and even people who are merely looking for a quick fix--both drug users and addicts as well as anyone financially strapped. Simply put, if you can be bought, are over sympathetic, or have illogical belief systems, you are an easy target for manipulative rhetorical practices (MRPs).

Terrorism happens when a person's agenda is to scare or terrorize someone else. Terrorists typically fight dirty, they would rather hire someone else (using MRPs) than do the fighting themselves. There is a sense that terrorism works in the dark places while open war works in the light places. Metaphorically, it can be said that Terrorists work in darkness.

The point of this brief article is that anyone can become a terrorist.

Everyone has a belief system, and with just one life event, that belief system can dominate their life. Take, for instance, the Christian who's unborn child dies and they blame God for it. While they're blaming god for all of their problems, someone could apply just the right kind of rhetoric to convince them that god worshiping society inadvertently inflicted more pain on them during their time of need, and that person could be converted into raging acts of cruelty to other Christians. You think this is far fetched?
How about the guy in Sweden who killed several Islamic school children late last year because he claimed that the over immigration in Scandinavia--all of Europe-- by Islamic immigrants were causing adverse political changes to the whole structure of society. --Was that not MRP? The guy even claimed he was part of a secret Templar-like organization!

But let's not say Terrorist.
If you're being manipulated, the person probably doesn't have your best interests in mind.
So really, instead of fighting terrorism, let's fight manipulation. And manipulation is any time someone convinces you to do something that isn't in your best interests. That includes SOME marketing campaigns (which are illegal, but people still get away with them), and it includes any kind of shaman, preacher, or magician who can predict your fortune if you give them part of your money.

The only way to fight manipulation is to be a savvy rhetorician--you can't fight words with anything other than words, and you definitely can't fight thoughts without other thoughts.

A la: You can't fight terrorist thoughts without anti-terrorist thoughts.

Gender

[[because I'm not a chemist, biologist, or doctor, I'm simplifying things for this sake of macro-observation.]]

I can't recall where I heard this, probably in my intro to ethical genetic bio-technology course, which I was convinced neither of the two professors understood what they were talking about. Paraphrasing, "We don't yet know what triggers specific gender related sequences of DNA code to activate or not activate." --That's a lie. We know that hormones trigger your gender. We also know that stress factors into whether a child will turn into a girl or boy.
Your body transforms from your experiences in the womb to your experiences at 13 to when they start to stabilize at 17-23 and then until you reach old age, your hormones are what continue the process and what shape you into a male or female, up until you reach menopause and beyond, or whatever it's called when old men increase their fat stores and finally our bodies start breaking down. All that transformation happens because of chemicals that your body creates that trigger the morphing

At the end of your life, your body is the product of countless years of female or male hormones. You look very much like a man when you are an old man, or very much like a woman when you are an old woman. When egg and sperm are united, it is as if you start at 0 and suddenly you start progressing towards negative(-) infinity or positive(+) infinity.

When someone wants to get a sex change, they first start taking the opposite hormone pills. Slowly the overbalance of the opposite chemical starts to change the direction of their change. Men grow breasts; but you have to remember two things: first, a woman his age has progressed in that direction for many more years, and in order for him to look comparable to women  his age, he has to morph at a much faster (and likely unstable) rate. Second, he also still has his testicles, which are working in the opposite direction as his new pills.

It takes an operation to get rid of them, and once they're gone, they're gone. If he puts a uterus in its place, it doesn't aid him in his change, because it isn't built into the body properly and doesn't send out compatible hormones. Women, too, who get sex changes and put a penis in place, lack the necessary producers of hormones.

The point I'm getting at is that, you can take pills and "fake" the growth effect of the opposite sex, but you can never really become the opposite sex. Men who become women can't grow babies in "their womb", and women can't fertilize eggs. It's impossible.

While you are in the womb, your brain and your reproductive organs fuse together and constitute who you are. To do that reasonably, you need to build a framework for a larger system of parts, your body. Your hands, legs, stomach, it all goes towards protecting and providing for your brain and your reproductive organs. --to survive is nothing, anyone can survive if they have a simple system that converts food into energy, but to create is spectacular.
It requires one of two things to create something: a brain capable of creating (one that can express its "non-matter" thoughts in complex "matter" symbols), or creation can occur using sexual organs--but not independently.
Life is more than mere survival. To me, it seems, that we have two possible paths in life: sexual reproduction, or mental reproduction, which I would equate to fueling the torch, or passing the torch. If you can't help progress human thought, then you can have children who might progress it or else pass the torch on themselves. Or put a little more correctly: You can help mankind by broadening and deepening our understanding, either improving life quantifiably (improving the convenience of life) or qualitatively (improving the quality of experience in life). I am speaking of deeper qualitative improvements--doing things no one has done, experimenting and inventing methods to improve human quality (such as when the film media[quantitative] was invented and allowed artists to improve the [quality] of life by teaching the world how to really feel through film)

So fitting all of this into gender:

People need to take advantage of their gender, not run from it. You're just wasting your life if you try to play the opposite part. You don't really improve anyone's quality of life by changing your gender from your sex (gender is choice, sex is birth). It's a selfish tactic, and I've tried to argue before that humans aren't meant to be selfish; we're meant to work together and overcome selfishness and create greatness.


[[EDIT: Be sure to read my follow up to this article!]

Advertisements

Everything you need to know about the way humans work you can learn from advertisements. They are a short, 30secs packed with hundreds of hours of effort, study, knowledge, and observation. If you were to only analyze advertisments and how, why, when, they work, you'll learn more quickly than if you study books on the subject or go to college.

Depending on the audience, different ads pop up. I walked in on ESPN the other day, they advertised beer and tums. Then I walked in on some new MMA show on another channel, probably MTV, where these redneck kids in Louisiana duke it out on friday nights in a cage. The show focused mostly on the lives of these high school/post-high aged MMA fighters and how dramatic and stressful their lives are. One kid was married and had a baby but then they divorced. She went to nursing school while working as a CNA; he went to training and...it didn't get into if he had any other job. I turned to my companions watching the show and said, "this feels a bit over-dramatic and girly." No sooner had I said than the commercials popped on: tampons, pro-active, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trailers...

It's interesting that GWDT trailers would pop up.--I haven't seen the show, but from what everyone describes to me the thought just keeps coming to my head that it is more of a girl's movie than a mans. Sure, there are brief aspects of it that are solely for men, but it's about a girl who was severely messed up due to sexual trauma. Men are typically repulsed from that kind of stuff. Most men want to avoid thinking that women suffer from things like that--Not because men are evil and abusive, but because by nature, men like to think life is structured and orderly and that women who appear strong on the surface are strong inside too. It messes with the male mind to discover when women have major issues and is almost a traumatic experience for men just making the discovery. It's a different experience from hearing that a male companion of theirs was molested when he was little... it's just...weird. In this example, advertisements can prompt understanding of human interrelations.

Not only do ads reveal things about the audience of the tv programming, they also reveal things about the audience the ad is targeting. For instance, look at the color paterns in womens' product ads. Shampoos, tampons, beauty products, they like to incorporate white, whereas Male soap, condoms, and shaving gear use darker colors like deep blue or green. Why? I am not sure, but I assume it relates to the emotions those colors conjure, like deep colors are more manly and white and hot pink or orange or bright blue are more pure or "spunky" and fun.

Yogurt ads are clutch too...how many men do you see in yogurt adds? Their colors, even the transitions they use seem to be targeted more for men than women. It's odd really...I enjoy yogurt. It's part of my Swedish blood I suppose, and Yoplait Strawberry Cheesecake is the best ever. My stomach hungers for it just thinking about it. The most dominant Yoplait ads that stick in my memory are the angel women eating up in heaven. --The ads don't attract me to the product, but I find it interesting.

After making my comment about the MMA show, one of the girls in the room (I know!...the guys weren't enjoy it, but the girls were, kinda proves a point, doesn't it?) countered by saying, "I don't get it, earlier you said you wanted to see GWDT, now you're saying it's a girl show."

I didn't get the chance to explain to her that as a student of life, rhetoric, and culture, I on occasion watch, read, and study things that aren't necessarily geared for me, nor will I agree with them. It's the same reason why I occasionally listen to a country song. Watching and experiencing these things helps me to understand other people better. I may not enjoy it, but if I'm careful, I can spot why the other side appreciates it. After all, women's ads aren't all written by women, they're written by men too, (and I'd beg to argue that you're sexist for thinking otherwise!)

Ads are unique because they aren't secret about what they're doing. You know entirely what their argument is up front, and it's easy to pick apart what words they use to argue it. The pictures might be a little more difficult, but it's all common sense stuff; and from that common sense you can infer other "common sense" knowledge that is very practical--like not to watch or comment about that MMA show to "The fellas" because they'd think you were gay. :-/

Offence

People get offended way too often. I know that my views about offence are probably only accepted by 1% of society, even though when I explain them to you now 99% of people will agree with what I say.
However, there is a disconnection between what people think they do, and what they actually do.

Specifically, people get upset more over written communication than they do verbal communication. I honestly don't know why that is because it doesn't make sense to me. They get offended over failure to communicate in a faulty medium--written words are much more ambiguous and indirect than verbal communication, such as on a telephone or in-person. --I'm being facetious. When we communicate in-person, there are actually several communication channels open: there's audio, body language, and even some sort of metaphysical or magnetic field type channel when we talk in-person. With as many channels as are open, it makes the message more direct. Over the phone there are less; in a letter, even still less; in an email, where handwriting is limited, even less; on twitter and facebook, less, because there are less characters; through a text message, even still less.
Each of these mediums have practical benefits of course: when people don't see your body language it's easier to hide useless information or static information that is caused by failure to portray the proper emotions. Slowing down time to have a conversation through texting or facebook gives each side extra thought processing time and allows them to formulate answers more concisely. But some of the time that isn't a good thing: more time to analyze what is written, more time to criticize and evaluate, more time to get carried away and to let tempers flare and to insert things between lines. Without those few extra channels that are provided by in-person conversation, it means we have more room for conflict if it should arise. This, at its core, is why they say writing is more ambiguous than verbal--don't get me started on when in-person conversations are taken over by a 3rd party, who in turn, is able to approach them with the same level of criticism and analysis as if it were on facebook or twitter. --If you were wondering, this is how gossip happens!

In any case, people get offended WAY too easily. The above preface to this remark helps me make the case that, if there is anywhere that someone should let ambiguity overwhelm them, it should be over in-person conversations and not texts, emails, twitter, facebook, or even hand written letters. If they wouldn't take the same conversation that was said in a letter and get offended by it if the person were in-person, then there is no reason why they should be offended at all. Words are words...symbols of communication--they aren't the actual communication themselves. A lot of the intended meanings of things are lost in translation from the writing medium to the medium that thoughts are written in.

Regardless, people always find a way to get offended. They get offended when someone intends to do something but doesn't. They get offended when someone intends to do something that the other person wouldn't like. They even get offended when someone intends to do something malicious to someone else, but then doesn't follow through with it--as if they are just egging them on to start fighting because somehow they will benefit from the fighting. They get offended when people purposefully do harmful things to them. They get offended when people accidentally do harmful things to them. They get offended when people do things to them and then don't apologize for those things as if they were 'going' to forgive them, but because they didn't ask for that forgiveness they have all the more reason to be offended by them --please, give it up, we all know you were never REALLY going to forgive them, what you're doing is called justifying.
People like to get offended when others break their promises. They get offended when they don't ever make any promises. They get offended when they are given a vow to make it up to them for having to break a promise--as if to say they were offended for being offered recompense! People like to get offended when there is no money for them and when there is money for them but they don't get to use it in the way that they want. They get offended when other people get money and they don't. They get offended when people ask them questions. They get offended that no one asks them questions. They get offended that someone asks them a question and then forgets the answer and asks again. They get offended when they ask a question and they don't get an answer. They get offended when they ask a question, get an answer, but don't like the answer to that question.
Had enough?

People can basically get offended for anything that they choose to be offended by; and what's worse is that they get offended by miscommunication, especially miscommunication caused by faulty mediums.

Gee, it would really be nice if we all had telepathy and could just convey our thoughts right over to people and then the offences would be limited to: "I'm offended that you would even think that!"

My take on offense is simple: I don't get offended until three solid strikes and I forgive and forget about it 24 hrs later. When my head hits the pillow I've forgotten about everyone that bothered me that day. It's quite stress free, and I don't care if people think I'm crazy, or bold for coming up to my so-called enemies and acting as though everything is fine.

The thing is, I have found that people will react to you the way that you react to them. If I were to get offended every time someone offended me, it would only make things worse. They would be further offended that I was offended by them, then it would be my turn, and I would get offended that they got futher-offended that I got offended...you can see where this is headed. That's why nukes were put in lock-down and sanctions in place a long time ago...because with the right two people, offence can lead to offence can lead to offence can lead to nuclear war.

The message is simple: You get offended by whatever you choose to be offended by. If you choose not to be offended by things, then nothing's going to offend you. Trust me it's easy to do: if crazy people can accidentally not be offended by things, then you too, who are sane, can purposely not be offended by things.


[[And as a side note, (I can't resist sharing this) my favorite reason for people being offended is when they get offended because they know something that other people don't, or they're talented at something that others are not, and they get offended that someone would ask them if they would volunteer their talents or knowledge ("What's she think I am, her slave!?"). I'm not sure the correct term for that: Is it a form of arrogancy and control, as in, "I don't want you to know this gem because it will make you a more powerful person and I don't want anyone to be more powerful than I am," or is it that they are offended that they aren't normal because normal people aren't as talented or intelligent as they are?--people do, in fact, desire to be a part of the majority, and our definition of sanity is based on how we relate to the majority of society.]]


I opened this article with: 99% of you will agree with this even though only 1% of you really believe this. I suppose what I meant was that only 1% of society practices what they believe about offence. It's easy to be offended, sure. We all get offended, sure. It's easy to justify our behavior and reason for being offended. Sure. But it takes a real man or real woman to choose to NOT be offended and to carry on with life. And I'm going to be really offended if after reading this article you are still part of the 99!

[[Answers: "What's she think I am, her slave!?" "No, but, ya know, you could just politely tell her no and be flattered that she came to you knowing that you know how to do what she can't."]]