The Art of the Insult & The Sin of the Slur
Throughout my blogging career I have occasionally been taken to task for using insults and ridicule on select occasions, and have in turn often discussed the ethics of insults and ridicule. And in The New Atheism+ I articulated some of those principles again, and then I went overboard in using the tactic in comments.
People rightly brought up issues with that, so I reexamined my actions there and what people had to say on the subject, and retracted and apologized for some of my actions there. In discussing the matter further I found I was wrong about a few other things, and realized this is an important issue that deserves an article of its own. Getting things like this right is what Atheism+ is all about, and debating and educating each other on these issues is valuable and ought to be welcome.
Because this article necessitates using offensive (in some cases extremely offensive) words in illustrative examples, a trigger warning is in order for anyone who might have a bad reaction to that. This is a clinical, philosophical post about proper and improper use of words, and should be approached as such. But if that is not possible, you should avoid it.
The Context
In my previous post I wrote:
[Being compassionate] does not mean we can’t be angry or mean or harsh, when it is for the overall good (as when we mock or vilify the town neonazi); ridiculing the ridiculous is often in fact a moral obligation, and insults are appropriate when they are genuinely appropriate (because, in short, human happiness would be destroyed if we didn’t marginalize that which can destroy it). It also doesn’t mean that we won’t act against evil, ignorance, and all the sins of vanity, greed, or self-righteousness. To the contrary, it is our compassion that compels us to do so. Our compassion entails we will and must always be the enemies of the uncompassionate.
The hyperlink was to Ashley Miller’s aptly-named talk, Do Be a Dick (sometimes): Emotions and Skeptics, wherein she discusses the art and ethics of insult and ridicule along lines similar to what I have argued throughout the years. Her talk also provides some good examples of appropriate insults and apt ridicule. I am planning a future post about why ridicule is a necessary tool of social change, when used judiciously and appropriately. But here I will be focusing solely on the case of the insult.
I find that when people take offense at insults and ridicule, sometimes they are right to, but often they are relying in their judgment on mistaken assumptions, or are merely in the thrall of unjustified taboos (or are being insincere: claiming offense is a common tactic used in an attempt to silence, or shame or intimidate into silence, someone who says things you don’t like).
An example of an irrational taboo is always taking offense at the word “fuck” no matter where, when or how it is used. There is no rational basis for that. There are uses and contexts in which the word would be inappropriate, but also uses and contexts in which it is not. Merely being offended by the word itself is simply unreasonable and not commendable.
The emotional reaction of “taking offense” is not always justified, and as such is not itself automatically justifying of anything. Daniel Fincke has analyzed the matter in No, Not Everyone Has a Moral Right to Feel Offended by Just any Satire or Criticism, which articulates the basic principle that “the right feeling of offense is…a proper cognitive recognition of the truth that one has been wrongly slighted” (emphasis mine). His entire article is worth reading, even if you don’t agree with every point in it.
Page 1 of 8 | Next page