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On 1/10/19 12:00 AM, Ben Hutchings wrote: On Wed, 2019-01-09 at 19:20 -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote:On 1/9/19 5:39 PM, Josh Triplett wrote:Anthony Towns wrote:On Fri, Jan 04, 2019 at 10:47:05AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:People seem to feel they're unreasonably put-upon by having to think about what they're saying *at all*, but this is absurd. Everyone else in the world is doing this all the time.There are times when you don't have to think about what you're saying before you say it; that situation is often called being "among friends", or "in a safe space", or "able to let your guard down".If you have to have your "guard up" to avoid hurting people, you have a more fundamental problem. It really *isn't* that hard to just think about the effect of your words on others *all the time*. As Russ said, that's a fundamental skill. Debian is not a locker room.On the other hand, when did people get so thin skinned, and offended by everything?[...] That would be whenever people started complaining about "political correctness" when they were criticised for what they said.
No. That's "fragility," or just plain belligerent obtuseness. Then again, as a friend recently commented, "people who go out of their way to take offense at this or that are exceptionally annoying, but it is those who go out of their way to take offense ON BEHALF of someone else who really tick me off." And that really sums up legitimate complaints about "political correctness." If you want to call it 'in bad taste' for this New York Jewboy to
call himself a Hebe - you might have a point. Call me
anti-semitic, and you're being a politically correct asshole -
particularly if you're a WASP. (On the other hand, call me an
asshole, and I'll agree with you, maybe even thank you.) There's a really large spectrum from "less than civil" or "insensitive" or "oblivious to nuance" or perhaps, to use an old fashioned word, "boorish" to racist, sexist, etc. But somehow, it seems like all too many people rush right to taking maximum offense and calling for censorship or banning. Personally, I find that highly offensive in its own right. Seems to me that all together too many people have forgotten Postel's law - "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others" - which applies just as well to conversation, particularly online, as it does to protocols. (Actually, for protocols, there are some pretty good arguments for being a bit more strict in what you accept. Not so much, for conversations.) Miles
Fidelman
-- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra |